> From: "Aaron McCaleb" <[email protected]>
> I don't want to put words into your mouth,
Yea, that's my wife's privilege. :)
> but is this the sort of
> situation to which you are referring?
Here's a nice solid answer. Sorta yes and sorta no. I know my first answer was
hard to follow and rambling a good bit but I hope some of it fosters dialog
like this to help everyone.
Yes what you relate is a good example and should be included in the examples.
I do think that the "magic wand and fairy wings" would make a cool geek
tee-shirt. :)
One of the things I said badly but you fished out of the cruft is that there's
reasons for what we do and how we do things. These rules are not just rules we
or our bosses explicitly created but also the rules created by inference that
implement the purpose our overlords have charged us with:
"I'm paying you a paltry few cents per year to make sure that our billion
dollar business has it's best face forward on the internet 24x7x52. No matter
who screws it up, you're on my speed dial. Have a nice day."
> Does that match what you were describing?
Yes but also, we have the responsibility (and skill set) of maintaining a
unique viewpoint on the overall process and it is not because of happenstance,
it is because that is what our position/job/profession/skill-sets/purpose are
for and why we were hired to do the job we're doing.
Our "purpose" (I can't think of a better word right now) is not to put
speed-bumps in the road but to smooth out the road ahead for all parties, not
just the developers but the end users, bosses, VPs who need to make spiffy
"overheads" about the compliance we're enforcing, customers (who this is all
about I think), janitors who depend on our doing our job to keep the company
profitable, etc. As companies become larger and more regulated, there's also
compliance officers and auditors who need proof that things are document and
are being done as documented.
Here's another 'fer-instance'. (I apologize for having to resort to this but
quite frankly, the words are failing me and I'm relying on the combined wisdom
to sort through the mud to find the gems. Wasn't it Blaise Pascal who said "I'd
have made this shorter but I didn't have time."?)
I worked at ${COM} a while ago. They created a business selling a "dial by
name" service for companies based on speech recognition. They had developed all
the structure of the business and by sheer luck, someone mentioned it to me in
passing that they were having a "launch meeting" to discuss the "product" for
the final time before they drop the "go" flag. At the time my SysAdmin skills
were green and developing but I knew customer support from first hand
experience. And, up until this point, I was handling the calls from the "beta
customer" as the primary support person. I showed up and in the meeting were a
lot of folks, some sales, some engineering, some I didn't know and me sitting
in the back hiding.
Lots of things got discussed and it was obvious that everyone had done a very
good job doing their jobs and we were now transitioning to a more combined
model where everyone's work was going to bump into each other. Even then, I
knew to look at not just what happens when things go right but also what
happens when things don't go right and how the failures might occur. The
question about how to handle the rotation of the pager prompted a lot of shrugs
from the crowd and a number of comments that resembled "We'll burn that bridge
when we try to cross it." I suggested a few things based on my unique viewpoint
of the whole domain of the problem:
1. Make up a one page document that gets filled out by the person who is
receiving th e pager. The completed page is stored in a notebook for auditors
to be able to audit. (As well as the customer.)
2. The document includes the instructions for forwarding the support phone
line to your cell phone .
3. Make sure the pager has a new battery.
4. Call the service and have them send you a page to make sure everything
works.
5. Check your list of phone numbers for the backup engineer to make sure
you can reach them when you need it.
6. Make sure your laptop has the newest version of the tools you'll need to
do the job.
7. Lots of things like this.
8. Then the last step of that process is they sign it. If they don't sign
it, then you aren't cleared of the pager responsibility.
9. Once you sign it, if something happens, no pointing the finger at anyone
else. YOU own the problem and the responsibility!
The sales folks lit up like christmas..... er... holiday trees! They saw this
as yet another bullet point in their sales vocabulary.
Engineering knew they were out of the loop if they weren't on call or on
backup. That made them happy.
During the conversation there was a discussion about who handles after hours
calls and such. I suggested that sales should be building a tiered offering so
that there was 8-4 M-F coverage as "Tier 1" and "Tier 2" was 4-12pm also M-F,
and "Tier 3" was 24x7x52. If you wanted "Tier 1" and the weekend covered, tough
luck, you have to buy Tier 3. I think that this point the two sales people were
trembling in the throws of a orgasmic waves. (But I'm sure one was picking out
the color of his new car.)
Did I do anything brilliant? No. Nothing at all. But, unlike the sales folks,
engineering folks, or the accounting folks, I could see the elephant for what
it was and was able to offer unique perspectives on run-of-the-mill problems
and solutions. Nothing I did was new, the only thing I did was bring it
together in one package.
Ok, enough of my ambling verbal wanderings. I'll let others contribute to the
chain. And thanks to everyone for their indulgences.
_______________________________________________
Discuss mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators
http://lopsa.org/
