My Time is Valuable

Posted on March 18, 2021 by way0utwest

In most of my jobs, I’ve been given tasks to accomplish, often without a lot of my own input. Someone triages work, or develops a project plan and then assigns me things to do. Often these are fairly narrow pieces of work, but with some latitude on how I might actually complete the task.

Over the years, I’ve been asked to do things that weren’t a part of my job. At one small company, I spent an afternoon making Ethernet patch cables because we needed them, I knew how, and my boss said it was a good break for the two of us. At another job, I was asked to help go through the separation process when employees left, zipping up files, archiving mailboxes, etc.

At the same time, I recognize that for my salary, neither of those were a good use of my time. At least not from an ROI perspective for the company. Those are simpler, low value tasks, and for someone that is paid above a beginning level, these were expensive resource costs.

As we look to improve how software is built *and* managed, we want to take away low value tasks that don’t require human intervention. We want to use computers to do as much of those tasks as we can. That’s a lot of what DevOps tries to get us to adopt as part of our daily work.

However, this can even include tasks where we might think a human is needed. I heard someone say recently that they shouldn’t be spending time with auditors walking through logs or looking up process documentation. That stuff ought to be produced and available automatically or in a a self-service way.

Improving the efficiency of our workforce should mean that we don’t spent time doing simple things that can be handled by computers. Sometimes it’s not easy to decide if the automation or tooling is necessary, but at each point we ought to consider the cost of building and maintaining some solution over the cost of an individual spending time there. Often, though not always, we can find a little software development saves a lot of future costs.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.

Posted in Editorial | Tagged | Comments Off on My Time is Valuable

Daily Coping 18 Mar 2021

Posted on March 18, 2021 by way0utwest

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag. 

Today’s tip is to stay fully present while drinking your cup of coffee or tea.

I usually make coffee in the morning and go to work. Often I’m in a meeting or doing some work while I’m sipping. I might catch up on some recorded video stuff from work, but usually I’m distracted from my coffee. If it’s a slow start to the day, I might read a bit.

When I saw this tip, I decided to have a cup and do nothing. I poured one, walked to the window, and looked out at the world. I tried to observe, be present, and think about what I see, and not work or any other issue.

A minor form of meditation, but a nice one.

Posted in Blog | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Daily Coping 18 Mar 2021

Every IT Organization is a Snowflake

Posted on March 17, 2021 by way0utwest

I was listening to a presentation on IT organizations and how they can change and improve in the future. At one point the speaker said that “every IT organization is a snowflake.”

Is this true? Do you think that each place you’ve worked is completely unique? Certainly the names of servers, IP addresses, and plenty of technical details differ. The internal applications are coded differently, colors, shapes, UX, all could vary.

But do you think that your IT group is a snowflake? That term in some sense means unique, but in a derogatory way. It is used to represent people who are easily offended by something different. While I’ve not always been pleased with the way an IT department is structured or managed, I’m not sure I’ve been offended.

I do think that every organization has some assembled its staff, process, technology, and more into a unique set of resources. However, I also think there are many commonalities between how the departments are run. After all, managers change jobs as often as technical people, and they will bring their processes and habits with them.

While every situation is unique, I don’t know I think that many IT departments are snowflakes. As I work with customers, both in development and operations, I find many of them fall into a few broad categories in how they run their business. If you disagree, leave me a comment today.

Steve Jones

Posted in Editorial | Tagged | Comments Off on Every IT Organization is a Snowflake

Take Care of People

Posted on March 17, 2021 by way0utwest

Many organizations are undergoing changes. The pandemic of the last year has them rethinking their physical spaces, but also the need to hire in their local area only. Add to this the cloud transformation that seems to be a growing trend in many organizations and industries. Then we have the DevOps changes occurring in technology, affecting developers, testers, and operations staff.

As I’ve learned more about this, listened to stories, and watched presentations, one thing I think starts to stand out for the high performing organizations is their commitment to taking care of people. Not everyone, but most of them giving them education, opportunities, and options.

As we adopt DevOps, or really any substantial change, we may find that our existing staff doesn’t fit the new paradigm, or we need more or less of them. Good companies work with people, they help them, transition and adapt. They reassure them that change doesn’t mean a loss of a job, even if their current role is going away.

I’ve seen big companies do this. Microsoft, American Airlines, and Capital One do this, among others. They create pathways and help staff gain skills and find opportunities. Not everyone wants to continue forward, but they do have the choice to do so.

If your company wants to transform, or you want them to, don’t forget that part of this journey is bringing people along with you. Creating pathways that help both the technology and the staff get to a new place from where they are today.

Steve Jones

Posted in Editorial | Comments Off on Take Care of People