Identifying Business Needs

In today's world of enterprise networks, delegation of administrative tasks is important. The purpose of delegation is to distribute administrative tasks among users and groups. Before this can be done, however, a thorough understanding of the business's structure and needs is necessary. To effectively design delegation in Active Directory that will meet these needs, you must first perform a thorough assessment of the current IT structure. During this assessment, you should determine the administrative model and identify who is responsible for administering resources.

Determining the Administrative Model

Determining the administrative model a business has implemented is crucial in designing a delegation plan. The administrative model basically determines who holds the decision-making authority in a business and who is responsible for implementing these decisions. As discussed in Chapter 3, "Gathering Information and Analyzing Requirements," three administrative models can be implemented: centralized, decentralized, and centralized-decentralized. Table 5.1 summarizes these models.

Table 5.1. The Three Administrative Models

Model	Description
Centralized	A central group holds all decision-making authority in an organization (centralized administration).
Decentralized	Different units in a business are responsible for their own administration (localized administration).
Centralized-decentralized	A central group maintains some level of decision-making authority, while certain administrative tasks are assigned to each business unit.

Identifying Responsibilities for Administering Resources

After the administrative model in the organization has been identified, the next step is to identify who is currently responsible for administering network resources. When determining administrative responsibilities, consider the following questions:

• Who is responsible for what? ” Determine which individuals or groups in the business have administrative privileges and what their responsibilities are. For example, one group of individuals might have been given the responsibility of administering user accounts, whereas another group might have administrative privileges over network printers.

• Where do these privileges apply? ” Do the permissions apply throughout the organization or only to certain areas? For example, in an enterprise network, if a user has been given administrative authority over user accounts, should this privilege apply to all domains and organizational units (OUs) or just specific ones? Is he responsible for all user accounts or just certain ones? In other words, what is the scope of the administrative privilege?

• What type of privilege is assigned? ” Does the individual or group have full administrative privileges or control over only certain aspects? For example, what level of control does the individual or group have over user accounts? Does the individual or group have full control or control over only certain aspects of user accounts?

Determining the answers to these questions helps you develop a delegation plan that can easily integrate into the business's current administrative model and its current way of distributing administrative tasks among its employees .