A brief introduction: My name is Dave Mitchell. I’ve been in the business of delivering enterprise level IT service management for over 15 years. I call uptime software my home.
I believe that far too many IT Managers are pulling the wool over their employers eyes. You know who you are! The one who runs that dark, mysterious department who’s systems administrators and help desk people run around wearing dirty polo shirts, with a half-empty Starbucks Tall Bold in one hand, and a constantly buzzing Blackberry in the other, screaming “MOVE!” as though the server room is some constantly burning pit of fire that must be put out yesterday. This persona is, in my opinion, a ruse. A way to ward off prying employees, managers, otherwise evil spirits, that may get in the way of the Sysadmin’s leisure time. I’m not saying that Mr. Admin isn’t doing his job. I’m simply suggesting that he could be doing it more efficiently.
So, is this you? Are you one of those guys who works for a company full of people who don’t understand your job just enough such that you can pull a fast one once in a while? If so, there’s hope! It’s not so bad running an open and accessible IT department. Really.
Here’s a few questions to ask yourself, your department or your IT manager (depending on who you are);
1. Do you have a Service Level Agreement with your customers? Is it published? Can you prove you’re hitting it? Having an SLA is like a contract between your department and your customers (the rest of the company). It sets their expectations of your group, and allows you to function within them.
2. Is a monitoring system in place? Does it do more than report up/down status? Can other employees see system status at a glance? The ability to report on system status in real time comes in handy when troubleshooting problem, sure. However by allowing other departments visibility into system status you give them the ability to check before opening a ticket. It also gives others a glimpse into that dark, mysterious world!
3. Do you meet with department heads on a regular basis? I mean every department? Not just the technical ones? A brief meeting with Marketing, or Sales management can yield amazingly positive results and prevent potential problems due to lack of communication.
Now, I’m sure you do all these things and more. You are not that IT guy, or girl. You’d be surprised how many of them are out there. If you know someone at another company who deals with that kind of IT department, please pass this post along. Tell them Mitchell says there’s hope! IT isn’t a scary underworld, full of secret rituals and other sorts of geekery. Sure, we’re proud geeks but that’s no reason (to paraphrase Mr. King) ‘we can’t all just get along’.
Tags: geeks, IT reporting, IT Systems Management, monitoring, sla
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