Congratulations on your new IT management role! Whether you’re a Service Delivery Manager, Help Desk Manager, or IT Operations lead, you’re likely walking into familiar challenges: ticket backlogs, SLA pressure, team dynamics to navigate, and stakeholders with high expectations.
Your instinct might be to dive in with immediate solutions. But seasoned IT leaders know the truth: your first 90 days should focus on understanding the landscape, building relationships, and identifying strategic partnerships that multiply your effectiveness.
At ComputerCare, we work with IT managers navigating these transitions daily. Here’s what makes the difference between struggling through your first year and setting yourself up for sustainable success.
Understand Before You Act
Resist the urge to implement solutions on day one. Going in with preconceived fixes will blind you to the actual problems. Your fresh perspective is your biggest advantage—use it to see clearly first.
Spend your first 30-60 days in discovery mode:
Interview your team individually. Ask what they see as the biggest challenges, where bottlenecks exist, and what’s working well. Take detailed notes. When you remember someone’s specific concerns weeks later, you build credibility fast.
Talk to stakeholders. Learn which business functions are truly critical. A trading platform issue might be a genuine emergency while the same technical problem in HR can wait. Every business is unique—discover what matters most.
Review the data. Pull reports on ticket types, aging, SLA compliance, and team performance. Let evidence confirm or challenge what people tell you.
If you have the patience to observe and learn, your eventual plan will address actual problems, not assumed ones.
Stop the Bleeding While You Learn
You can gather intelligence while making tactical improvements that buy goodwill:
Implement clear closure policies. A three-strike rule (three contact attempts, 24 hours apart) lets technicians close unresponsive tickets. This often clears a good portion of the backlog immediately and sets professional boundaries.
De-duplicate tickets. If 25 people reported the same printer issue, that’s one problem, not 25. Merge duplicates to see your real workload.
Reach out on old tickets. A simple “Is this still an issue?” often reveals that problems were already resolved. Close what’s irrelevant.
Separate incidents from requests. Something broken needs different handling than someone wanting something new. Create distinct queues.
These quick wins reduce visible backlog and demonstrate you’re taking action—without disrupting operations while you’re still learning.
What NOT to Do in Your First 90 Days
Don’t try to do everything yourself. New managers often feel pressure to prove their worth by handling everything internally. This leads to burnout and mediocre results across the board.
Don’t blindly close tickets without user contact. It might make metrics look good temporarily, but you’ll damage trust.
Don’t constantly change direction. Give strategies time to work before pivoting. Leadership-induced chaos is worse than doing nothing.
Don’t ignore partnership opportunities. The “we can do this ourselves” mindset often stems from not understanding the true cost and opportunity cost of in-house operations.
Recognize What You Can’t Do Alone
Here’s what many new IT managers discover too late: you’re being asked to deliver enterprise-level service with limited resources, budget constraints, and a team already stretched thin.
The math often doesn’t work. You need to either:
- Hire more people (expensive and slow)
- Reduce ticket volume through automation (requires expertise and time)
- Offload specialized functions to expert partners (fast and cost-effective)
Smart IT managers recognize that trying to do everything in-house isn’t efficient—it’s a recipe for burnout and mediocrity.
Focus Your Team on What Matters
Here’s the reframe: your team shouldn’t be spending hours tracking down serial numbers, coordinating with vendors, or managing device inventories. That’s work that specialized partners do better and cheaper.
Your team should focus on:
- Understanding and supporting business-critical applications
- Solving complex technical problems
- Building relationships with stakeholders
- Driving innovation and improvement
- Delivering exceptional user experience
Partner Where it Counts
Sustainable success in IT management isn’t about working harder or hiring more people. It’s about working smarter through strategic partnerships. A partnership with a specialized ITAM provider like ComputerCare becomes a force multiplier.
When ComputerCare handles your ITAM needs, you get:
- Immediate capacity relief for your team
- Enterprise expertise without enterprise overhead
- Proactive prevention that reduces ticket volume
- Better data for strategic decision-making
- Scalability without proportional headcount growth
This frees you to focus on what really matters: building a high-performing team, delivering exceptional service, and driving innovation that supports business objectives.
Your first 90 days set the trajectory for your entire tenure. Spend them understanding the landscape, building relationships, and establishing the strategic partnerships that will make you successful for years to come.
