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What Would You Demand From Your IT Department?
ZombieLine asks: "The IT department at my company (approximately some 500 people) is showing signs of incompetence, and has been ignoring knowledgeable user input for about a year. Additionally, they haven't been able to sell needed changes to senior management. Unacceptable server down time, maxed network storage, and no backups systems have hit the bottom line, and those on top are starting to notice. We users are staging a revolt to make IT more responsive to users by creating a group from the company divisions and IT to discuss needs and solutions. What would you put in our charter?" What services and responsibilities would you demand out of your IT department?
The UK-based ITIL initiative describes in gory detail a collection of best practices that IT can follow to provide better service to their customers. They can do as much or as little of the whole program as they want, and it can even be driven from the outside by the user community if absolutely necessary. Obviously, if there's cooperation it works better, but if they roll their eyes at "another total quality management initiative" (which it's not) you can still use the terminology and methods and eventually drag them into it.
g y_Infrastructure_Library
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Technolo
http://www.itil.co.uk/
My pet peeve is being told what platforms to support, training budget spent on hardware, having to support a single server that needs to have 24/7 uptime built on commodity hardware, having end users think that a 250 gig hard drive for $150 is going to cut it as enterprise grade hardware, being pestered for every little thing that remotely has to do with IT, answering the exact same question over and over, even though you spent the time to put up a FAQ on it after the same person asked you the answer every damned day. I hate the fact that end users destroy their systems, lie about what websites they go to when you know exactly where they are going, what they are doing, what link they clicked on. I hate the fact that they decide to go to your supervisor before coming to you, and you get shit on because he has to break up his day and deal with an irate phone call because when you told the user that you were aware of the problem, and were working on it, and nothing has changed in the last five minutes, that was too much for them.
The big thing that you need to have a qualified IT department is an actual department. Put training schedules in place, and anyone who isn't performing due to a lack of technical knowledge should be first retrained. Make a gameplan for your business, and ensure that you ask the IT managers to attend the planning. Keep them in the loop, and make sure that you have the equipment to make the initiative happen. Make certain that there are proper procedures in place to handle issues, and the staff and resources to fix them.
As the sole IT employee in my mid-sized company, I understand your wants. However, perhaps you don't see that you're micro-managing a bit?
My bosses want to be kept informed at all times. However, trust me and let me do my job. When I fix something, don't ask me what was wrong or how I fixed it. I don't have time to explain to you what you learn in 2 semesters of network infrastructure classes. Just back off and you'll be surprised how much an IT person will get done. Sometimes you just have to accept, "It was a problem with the hosts file and it was throwing off sendmail" without probing into sendmail.mc theory. And as far as explaining it in non-techie terms, I can only dumb down SSH tunnels and the TCP/IP protocol so much before I want to jab myself in the eye with a spork. OK boss, it works likes this. A computer stands up and yells,"Hey Server!!!". All the computers here it, but only the server yells back, "Yeah, what do you want?"
As an example, my boss was on vacation in Florida. While he was gone, in 1 week, I was able to complete more projects to improve business and workflow then I previsouly had since the first of the year. You know why I was so non-productive? My bosses demanded a military-like work ethic, wanted to be constantly informed, wanted to triple check the line items on a budget request for a freakin tape drive, etc. Without him breathing over my shoulder and constantly asking me why I had a browser open(that better be work related!) and without having to explain to him why DNS is so important to an AD network, I was able to do what he was trying to 'motive' me to do, actual work!
And just because you don't see me doing anything doesn't mean I'm not busy. Sometimes I have to push myself away from my desk and 'space out' for a bit while I brainstorm what the heck is wrong with the httpd.conf file.
IT is a tough job. If people don't know you exist, that means you're doing a good job. Conversly, they get the impression that you don't do anything since you're out of sight/out of mind. And ever since I bought that Time Management for Systems Administrators(previsouly reviewed on slashdot), it seems I have become more productive while giving the illusion of doing less work.
Horseshit! IT support IS about users and you'd better learn how to talk to them if you want to keep working in IT. RTFM as a response to stupid user questions will eventually get you your walking papers.
Wrong. Many supposed IT problems should actually be solved by HR with a good talking to about abuse of company resources and how that might limit your career.
Calling IT when you forget your password for the 5th time that month or with some dumb question because you are too lazy to crack open a manual is no better than stealing office supplies or equipment. It's all just stealing resources.
20% of the users create 80% of the work for IT.