The main difficulty in working as an IT specialist is that IT is a very fluid field. If you don’t constantly learn something new, you risk being out of a job. Let’s finish with the commonplace truths, you know them without me. Let’s move on to practical advice.

TIL
Without it a modern IT manager can not live. Most systems are based exactly on the service approach and the ITIL glossary (tickets, incidents, problems, SLA, CMDB, response time, resolution time, escalation, change, service requests, etc.).

Project methodologies (ANSI PMBOK, PRINCE2)
The IT manager constantly comes across these or those projects, so he must be able to manage them competently. There are no options here. This is the basics. Choose what you like and study (PMI PMBOK, PRINCE2). The price of the question is in the range of $ 1000, depending on the level of certification. Which methodology is better – a matter of personal preference and place of work (for example in Europe Prince2 is more popular). However, I strongly advise you to choose one as your primary methodology and to become acquainted with the basics of the second methodology.

Agile
This trendy word hides a whole layer, which is called Agile approach to development (Scrum, FDD, XP and others). Where to read: you can actually read in many places. Only lazy man hasn’t written about Agile.

DevOps
In a nutshell, it’s like Agile, but for sysadmins. It’s very imprecise, but it gets the point across. When developers switched to agile methodologies, IT operations became the lagging block, which slowed down the developers who were giving out “up to the hilt”, every two weeks. DevOps is eliminating this problem (or trying to).

Vendor-dependent certification
I should point out right away that vendor-independent certifications are little more than useless (with very few exceptions) and I won’t dwell on them. What vendor certification to get – I can’t tell you, it depends on the path you’ve chosen.

MBA
Many heated battles were devoted to the question, but is it necessary to spend time and effort on the MBA? My opinion – if there is a possibility, it is worth it.

Finance
An IT manager, in any hypostasis, has to deal with finances. Understanding such things as budgeting, types of costs, depreciation, payback and return on investment and many others is vital in day-to-day business. Ideally, it’s not a bad idea to get a second college degree related to finance and economics.

Security
Ensuring security in information systems is one of the key aspects of an IT manager’s job. At a minimum, it’s necessary to know the basics and know the software for security: antivirus, IDS/IPS/DLP systems, protocol analyzers, cryptographic software, firewalls, means and software for authentication, means and software for video surveillance. It is very useful to get acquainted with ISO 27001 (standard). It is a good experience to be involved in any level of PCI DSS compliance certification.