Preparing for a Delegation Model

Preparing for a Delegation Model

Preparing for a delegation model requires some planning up front. Deciding how to manage your systems administration can be a frustrating task. The key to success is to define a model that best works for your situation, agree upon the long-term strategy, and discipline those involved to stick with the model. There are three basic strategies to select from when deciding how to manage your environment:

• Decentralized: This is typically designed for small mom-and-pop shops or even home offices. In this model, administrators are present at each site and all share the same responsibilities and access to the servers. This model typically introduces challenges with scalability and standardizations.
• Centralized: Typically found in medium to large organizations, the centralized model focuses on driving standards and consistent management from a central site or from a central group of administrators. Branch sites might employ desktop engineers who have been granted local admin rights to workstations but limited access to servers. In many cases, the centralized approach is what the decentralized model evolves into overtime.
• Shared/Delegated: While a shared/delegated model can be used for an organization of any size, it is typically adopted by large/enterprise class organizations with a larger IT workforce. Containing characteristics of both decentralized and centralized models, the shared or delegated approach focuses on centralized policies and procedures governed by the enterprise admins. Enterprise admins “deputize” junior admins at each site to manage local servers and drive a consistent process among all sites. This approach is hierarchical in nature in that many layers of administration can be defined.
  For example, the main office might contain the majority of the systems. These systems are managed by senior administrators or an enterprise admin group. Branch sites might contain locally significant servers such as file servers that are managed by site admins and/or the enterprise admin group. Desktop engineers might be delegated administrative access to all desktops but might escalate issues to site admins or even enterprise admins if necessary.