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What you can accomplish as an IT manager is closely tied to how much money the company is willing to entrust you with. The more money that they are willing to give you, the more you'll be able to get done. The way that you'll get your hands on the company's money is to create a budget and then manage it. Let's talk about what you'll need to know in order to do this correctly…

Planning

IT managers get to show leadership by starting their budget creation process by thinking about what their team is going to be asked to accomplish during the upcoming year. This is done by selecting the goals that you want your team to achieve. In most cases these goals will relate to the overall goals of the IT department or the ones that your company's senior management have set for the firm.

Your next step will be to evaluate how you can achieve these goals. There is always more than one way to make this happen. At the same time you are going to want to take a close look at each option and use your best judgment to determine what you think the most likely outcome would be.

Once you've identified your options and their probable outcomes, now comes time for you to make a decision. Using the costs and benefits of each option, pick the one that you believe will have the best chance of leading your team towards accomplishing their goals.

Coordinating and Communicating

Most IT leaders will have multiple goals that they will want their teams to accomplish each year. This means that the budgets that they are creating will have multiple parts to them.