Expert Advice:
IT Management: Avoiding
the Pitfalls of New Technology Deployments
IT leaders recognize the need to balance controls with
incentives to creatively review and improve their systems.
Employees must be empowered to propose new technologies or
strategies to tackle nascent concerns over cooling, data
storage, security, provisioning and monitoring strategies.
It's often said the definition of insanity is doing the same
thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
Nothing could be more applicable to IT management.
Here are the five most common mistakes repeated time and again
by IT managers, along with recommendations for how to avoid
them.
Pitfall No. 1: Reactive vs. Proactive Response
IT managers are in a constant fire drill, responding to some
"unbeatable fire" when they are desperate to correct an ensuing
disaster. There is no due diligence with responses made in these
situations -- it's all about getting and keeping the
infrastructure Barracuda Spam Firewall Free Eval Unit - Click
Here up and running.
Stop-gap measures merely address the symptom, but not the root
cause, of most problems.
There are many reasons for this reactive mindset -- lack of
budget, legacy technology and perhaps the biggest one of all --
IT operations and development teams consistently working at odds
with each other.
Frequently, the development department designs a solution that
meets the business needs and then implements it, without the
participation of the operations team.
his leaves the operations group either unaware of the new
project or without encouragement to participate in its
definition and creation.
In the end, operations is usually left cleaning up the mess when
that new project is unleashed on the network.
Given these realities, how can IT managers work around them? The
key is communication -- the best IT operations managers ensure
their requirements are known throughout their companies. The
most effective managers regularly review capacity plans with
business goals and development plans.
They demand that the new application or functionality meets
their monitoring standards, with adequate logging and debugging,
as well as their overall disaster recovery Manage remotely with
one interface -- the HP ProLiant DL360 G5 server. plans,
including hardware failure, security breaches, natural disasters
and any other consideration. They justify limitations to the
breadth of technology, for both hardware and software that they
can realistically support.
They create transition plans for knowledge transfer and SLAs
(service level agreements) for development to participate
upgrades and support.
By proactively evaluating the bigger picture early and often,
they pave the way to providing the highest level of availability
from their data center.
Pitfall No. 2: Breeding Conformity, Not Innovation
IT departments prefer predictable results and are typically
adverse to change. With good reason. Seventy percent of the time
when a system malfunction occurs the appropriate fix can be
determined by answering a single question: "What changed?"
IT leaders recognize the need to balance controls with
incentives to creatively review and improve their systems.
Employees must be empowered to propose new technologies or
strategies to tackle nascent concerns over cooling, data
storage, security, provisioning and monitoring strategies. By
implementing regular performance audits where contextual
analysis is encouraged, introducing employee contests or
establishing an open door policy (and really meaning it),
innovation -- rather than conformity -- becomes the rule.
Pitfall No. 3: Failing to Set a Reasonable Pace
Delivering too much too fast or too little too late seem to be
the bane of any IT department's existence. Growing too rapidly
stresses more than hardware; it can equally overwhelm the
operations department, as well as the users expected to use the
new functionality with too much to learn and adapt into their
daily activities.
Conversely, delivering too little ultimately restricts the
capabilities to respond to system vulnerabilities such as
security and performance monitoring, and can frustrate users
with inadequate or outdated functionality.
To successfully maintain a network, an IT manager needs to
adequately assess the strengths and weaknesses of not only the
IT department and its resources, but the business goals as well.
If the user base is decidedly not computer savvy, technology
should be rolled out in smaller chunks and accompanied by
extensive training and support.
Similarly, if the functionality the business demands is really
big or complex, it may not make sense to break it up into
smaller features, which could ultimately delay the needed
solution. Regardless of the situation, the most successful IT
departments deliver a constant stream of incremental solutions
that make sense for the business to receive.
Pitfall No. 4: Failing to Share Knowledge
IT professionals are notorious knowledge hoarders. There are
multiple motivations behind this -- from job security to egos to
interdepartmental politics to just plain not having enough time
in the day. Silos of information are built within individual
teams, often resulting in redundant work by multiple teams.
Skill-sharing becomes complex and political within a department,
and new hires struggle to succeed until they are able to
establish their own turf and unique domain expertise. Of course
the ominous "bus factor" (where a key resource could get run
over by a bus and a project or business might fail) constantly
hangs in the air. While individuals may succeed in this
environment, the organization as a whole suffers.
IT departments need to invest in collaboration. This can mean
deploying full collaboration suites like Microsoft SharePoint or
Alfresco Collaboration Suite to an internal wiki or a series of
topical group e-mail Email Marketing Software - Free Demo
aliases. The bottom line is that all organizations within an
enterprise are encouraged to publicly document solutions,
research questions centrally and engage the entire group on a
topical level when new questions emerge.
The constant activity provides incentive to add to the group
knowledge base, and empowers the organization as a whole to
succeed.
Additionally, by encouraging and leveraging participation in
outside communities for various technologies, opportunities for
mind share and innovation increase tremendously.
Pitfall No. 5: Not Separating the Big Rocks From the Little
Rocks
Anyone who has ever taken a management class knows the
experiment that involves a glass bucket, some big rocks, some
pebbles, some sand and a beer. In the rush to put everything in
the bucket, most people start with sand, then pebbles and then
the rocks, usually saving the beer from an untimely rock death.
The lesson is learned when they realize that all of these
objects are organized to fit only if you put the big rocks in
first and work down from there -- with the idea that there is
always room for a beer in the end. As obvious and overused as
this exercise is, it applies to almost any situation, whether
business, technology or personal.
However, in a highly reactive IT department, it becomes almost
impossible to discern the big rocks from the sand. Focused on
solving immediate problems, and driven by an insatiable need to
service everyone, it's easy for IT folks to get mired down in
the undiluted torrent of service requests. It's therefore up to
management teams to lay out the big rocks for the whole team.
They need to identify and maintain a singular long term focus,
and remind individual teams of the focus for the week. The most
successful IT departments value prioritization and actually
teach employees how to say no. Ultimately, this empowers the
whole IT department to meet its most valued commitments, and
reconcile the rest of the efforts with their ability to deliver
effectively.
By
Javier Soltero
LinuxInsider
Part of the ECT News Network
06/25/07 4:00 AM PT
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