As with IT processes, a number of vendors and consultants have put together team models, which you can leverage in designing your own team. One such model is the Microsoft Solutions Framework Team Model, which uses six teams to plan and deploy an IT project.

Working together, these teams cover the various aspects of a significant project, such as rolling out Windows Server 2003.

The Microsoft model is just that: a model. It serves as an example, yet you will not necessarily implement it, or any other model, exactly as designed by someone else. Although all IT projects share some things in common, and therefore need someone to handle that area of the project, that's where the commonality stops.

Each company is in a different business and has IT needs related to its specific business activities. This might mean additional team members are needed to manage those aspects of the project. For example, if external clients and/or the public also access some of your IT systems as users, you have a set of user acceptance and testing requirements different than many other businesses.

The project team needs business managers who understand, and who can represent, the needs of the various business units. This requires knowledge of both the business operations and a clear picture of the daily tasks performed by line staff.

Representatives of the IT department bring their technical expertise to the table, not only to detail the inner workings of the network, but also to help business managers realistically assess how technology can help their departments and sort out the impractical goals from the realistic ones.

Make sure that all critical aspects of business operations are covered—include representatives from all departments that have critical IT needs, and the team must take the needs of the entire company into account. This means that people on the project team must collect information from line-of-business managers and the people actually doing the work. (Surprisingly enough, the latter escapes many a project team.)

Once you have a team together, management must ensure that team members have adequate time and resources to fulfill the tasks required of them for the project. This can mean shifting all or part of their usual workload to others for the project duration, or providing resources such as Internet access, project-related software, and so on. Any project is easier, and more likely to be successful, with this critical real-time support from management.

Inside Out: Hiring talent

Sometimes you don't have people available in-house with all the needed skills and must look to consultants or contracted workers. Examine which tasks should be outsourced and exactly what you must receive from the relationship. Pay particular attention to highly specialized or complex areas—the Active Directory directory service architecture, for example— and those with a high rate of change.

One-time tasks, such as creating user training programs and documentation, are also good candidates for outsourcing. For areas in which there will be an ongoing need for the lacking expertise, such as security, it might be a better idea to send a staff member to get additional training instead.