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Reporting To Executives
chopsuei3 writes "As a System Administrator, I am charged with providing more insight into the functioning of the system. What types of reports and information do other System Administrators submit to executives and on what frequency? Measurements such as uptime and average page latency are useful, but our site is relatively stable and we see minimal downtime, so I'm looking for other important and useful information I can report up to better illustrate my efforts. Our system is also unique in that about 70% of the traffic we see is from devices and not human browsers. I am a lone System Administrator in a 20-person company which specializes in web-based irrigation management. I also simultaneously perform all IT-related tasks in the office, which may also be important to report up to executives on regular basis."
how about asking them what they want to see? Prepare a short document listing what information you can provide them and in what format, and ask them what they want to see. How often, what detail, etc.
I know, I know. Talking to people, particularly executives, is a daunting task for some in the IT world, but you'd be amazed at how much easier things become when you ask people what they want.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Operations is a bottom-line game. It really comes down to how you're providing the service at the lowest possible cost.
I'd suggest trying to plan and execute projects that will bring down the hardware cost per user (ie, start compiling PHP. That could drive down cpu-cost-per-user).
It sounds annoying, but really that is the math game. Identify cost per user, cost per hit, cost per account or some other metric that management will understand, and then work to push that cost down.
Report on those efforts.
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The only executive who would be meaningfully impressed with technical metrics would probably be in your direct up-chain (e.g., CTO), so tailor those metrics towards their concerns. Things like performance measures that allow you to spot trends ("Is it me, or do those new servers crash more often?") and predict future necessary action ("Are we nibbling into our system resource reserve? Time to budget for upgrades.").
Outside of geek-ville, measure stuff which translates into business terms. Compute uptimes and responsiveness and scale transaction measurements against sales, or eyeballs, or whatever your company is really about.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
How many execs do you have in a 20 person company?
I worked in a 15 person company that had a CEO, 4 VP's and 2 high-level managers, too many chiefs, not enough braves. I used to get advice from the CEO about how we should go and rewrite our software in PERL, or PHP, depending on the article he was reading.
They went out of business, obivously.
Focus on the benefits the systems provide for the business. For example, if you were sysadmin for a website of a major airline, you would focus on the amount of tickets sold online. Management is way more interested in seeing how much money the web site makes, or in what ways it helps people do their job better and more efficient, than purely technical data like system/service uptime or page visits.
be brief, be gone.
That's about the best I can give you.
Your whole summary should fit on 1 sheet of paper, with bullet points.
The whole presentation should take less than 3 minutes.
Ask yourself, if you were flying at 30,000' over your operation, "What would I see?"
That's what the execs want.
I used to work for a head of department who demanded all sorts of printed monthly reports and would start getting on people's backs if it was late. Not only was it a boring time drain but it wasn't difficult to see that they didn't really know what the reports meant but weren't prepared to admit it. So for three months I handed in the same report with the headline date on the first page changed, on the fourth month I didn't hand in my reports and, when taken to task about it, took them aside and showed them the last three months reports I had haded in and the real data I had kept back. Fortunately I managed to get out of that company but I didn't produce any more routine reports after that.
Stupid flounders!
I started working at an organization a while back and I would file a trouble ticket whenever I came across something broken, even if it was unimportant and with an overflowing workload might not be done for a while. A manager was hired after a while who decided to use the trouble ticket system as a meter of progress for tasks done. When he announced this, I immediately closed all of these types of tickets, saved them locally on my machine, and even went into the database so as to delete all vestiges of these tickets. I began only creating tickets when I knew a task would probably be done on-time and quickly. The manager was canned after about two years there - the thing that saved him for so long is that his manager changed three times while he was there, the third one axed him.
What management wants to see is that their investment in you is getting results. If they spend X amount of dollars on something, they want to see how it is helping the company or whatever. Show how successful your projects have been, how your uptime rate is always increasing etc. Use lots of colorful charts, lists with 20 goals and "accomplished" next to 18 of them and "partially accomplished" next to the other two. That type of crap. I mean, if management wants this nonsense from the sysadmin, you're in Dilbert land already.
In France in 1968 there was a massive general strike, with workers taking over factories and the like, and De Gaulle even planned contingencies to leave France and invade it at some future point with the French army and possibly NATO support. One of the wall posters of that time said "The boss needs you, you don't need the boss". Sometimes I think these exercises are more to psychologically mess with you than anything. You do all the work and create all the wealth, the bosses and shareholders don't do anything and collect salaries and profits. By making you do a pointless exercise like this to justify yourself to them, they're putting the idea out of your head of the reverse - of why *they* are necessary to the company. After 13 years in this industry, I'm becoming convinced that the dumb, pointless things management makes you do does have some strange psychological point along these lines. I've quit agreeing with my co-workers that these presentations are dumb and pointless, I think they do have a point - keeping us disciplined, from requesting sane hours and on-call rotation and all of that.
how about asking them what they want to see?
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I know, I know. Talking to people, particularly executives, is a daunting task for some in the IT world, but you'd be amazed at how much easier things become when you ask people what they want.
Ask?!? Actually asking a question is verboten in IT! First, you have spend meaningless hours researching the question and finding your own answers and then, after exhausting all of your options, then, and only then, can you go and ask a question.
If you don't follow those steps in that order, you will get a snarky condescending answer of "What? You couldn't google it?!" or some other asinine statement. Or the fact that admitting ignorance in IT is equated with stupidity.
It's really awkward when you have to report to someone who's not in IT and they ask "Why couldn't you have just asked in the first place?" It so hard to explain the childish and retarded social dynamics of IT to folks who act on an adult level.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
Is the average manager able to understand the type of information a systems administrator is able to provide? Or, put otherwise, is a systems administrator able to provide the information that a manager can understand? I think we have an issue here.
no, I don't have a sig
There's your first mistake. No, providing more insight is not what you're doing. Your job is to:
Everything else about any reports you fill in for them is just incidental.
Go grab a copy of Dilbert and read it in the can (might as well do it on company time). That's the real world.
Show how the various systems and services directly support Business operations and overall goals like profitability, customer service ratings, etc..
Point out wherever technology is a business hindrance or obstacle, and provide multiple options for systems or software integration to alleviate the problem.
In short, use the opportunity to remind the execs that IT is more than a cost-center, and how its proper usage can enhance profitability.
Careful though; if you do too good a job, they might make you a (gasp) manager, and then of course, you are screwed.
Start out your presentation stating that you're willing to dive as low as the executives ask you to but you're going to give them a high level view.
This is a really REALLY important point for just about anyone, really. I suppose it's a rehash of the old aphorism: "Know your audience." It took me a while, but eventually I learned that most people (even technical people) really don't care that much about the gory details and supporting data. Boil it all down into factoids and front-load your presentation, email, whatever with the simple stuff. If people want more, they'll ask for it.
Really, it works. And it often leads to quicker meetings. You have to be able to back up your factoids with real data, of course, but over time people will learn to trust your high-level analysis and not ask for more (unless you're awful at it, in which case you've got other problems).
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
You work for a 20 person company that has executives and reports? What kind of company is this? My experience (as a sys admin and with simultaneous IT support) has taught me that reports are for shareholders' piece of minds unless you work for a really large company. And if you're a private company then the shareholders are the partners/founders and you should just talk to them like as needed.
Often times, the request for a report is not only just for the upper management, but is also for benefit of the one from which the report is requested. The management wants *you* to know about your job and wants to ensure that *you* know of the status of that which you oversee. While the manager may not know the specifics of your job, he will still need to ensure that you are doing your job and may also want to educate himself on the particulars of your job. The report does this. By providing false data in a report, you did not educate your boss. By providing false data, you did not allow your boss to make informed decisions. By providing false data, you implied that you were the better decision maker. I do hope that when you say "managed to get out of that company" that you were fired for that incompetence. Your actions do nothing but serve as an embarrassment to those of us in IT.
I've worked in large and small companies, and the one unifying truth of executive communication is that they do not want details. In their mind, they hired you to take care of the details, If you say you need $100,000 to increase bandwidth at remote locations, you had better have a one or two sentence explanation about how this is going to make them money or help them make money. If they want to see a utilization chart or two, have that ready, but you're going to be tuned out if you launch into a long explanation.
I'm not an MBA, but my guess would be that they teach MBAs to focus on strategy and leadership, and to hire people to do the nuts-and-bolts work. Same goes for small business owners, but double -- they're doing crazy 120 hour weeks growing the business - why would they want to listen to a report from the guy they hired to make sure they wouldn't have to deal with "all that IT stuff?"
As long as you keep that in mind, reports to executives will go well. Short, simple, money- or productivity-focused explanations, very little technical information, etc. Think like they are thinking -- "Why am I paying for this?" "How does this make me money or keep me from losing money?"
Staying until 2am to fix a problem in the server room doesn't count for diddly if all anyone sees of you in public is you being rude to a secretary for losing her word icon. That's all that will be remembered.
An excellent point, and one which most IT folks fail to comprehend.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
The problem is, especially with suits, is that what they want probably isn't in the same galaxy, let alone ballpark, as what they need or what they can use.
Right. They're all a bunch of idiots and got where they are by sheer incompetence. Almost makes sense... I'm sure you understand their job better than they do - after all, engineers like you and me know everything right?
The upshot is once you get that report all nice and automated they'll ask you for the exact same report three months later having entirely forgotten its existence. Don't tell them they've been getting that report daily/weekly already for the last three months. They don't like that for some reason.
Gee, wonder why they might not like a condescending answer...
Perhaps the reason they don't like your answer is found more in how you tell them than what you tell them.
Dude, just slap together some random figures like the number of occupied inodes in your hard disk -- they are executives after all, what do you expect them to understand about technical stuff?
You do realize that the single most common undergraduate degree among S&P 500 CEOs is Engineering right? Over 20% of them have an undergrad degree in engineering. And of course not having a formal degree in the subject must mean they are an technologically illiterate. After all, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison and Bill Gates never even graduated college so how could they possibly know anything about "technical stuff". Good thing we have smart guys like you to explain it to them.
Your arrogance really sounds like ignorance to me.
I give a report every quarter. This most recent quarter report is outlined below. I'm not sure if it will be useful to you, but I have found that If I can explain to the executives in terms they understand why they pay me, they generally feel more inclined to do so in the future.
I put these in financial terms because if you convert this qualitative data (like what you do) into nice easy-to-understand quantitative data (like monetary sums) executives will be able to understand your job and your priorities better.
Summary of Previous Quarter (aka What I did, and why you paid me for it)
- Illustrate changes made to the architecture/infrastructure
Current Status (aka Aren't you glad you hired me to worry about all this)
- Make qualitative data quantitative, so it can be compared to previous quarters
- Group broad technical concepts together into categories that can easily be weighed in terms of risk/benefit ratios
ex: security, infrastructure, storage, architecture, auditing/reporting, backups, disaster recovery
- Include the effects to the overall business (the 30,000 ft/km view)
Expense Report (aka How much I really cost)
-What you spent, where you spent it (again, encouraged to stick to broad categories ex: software, hardware, security, training)
Incident Reports (aka Why you don't pay me enough)
-Document incidents, illustrated how they were resolved, what was learned, and what measures were taken to prevent them from occurring in the future
-Though painful, its generally good to point out your grievous errors here as well
Next Quarter (aka Why you're going to keep paying me)
-Make sure you know where your executives priorities are in terms of Availability/Reliability/Security/Cost and make goals for the next quarter
Hope this helps
Having a bad day?
When it comes to reports, always itemize the things you work, who requested them, when they requested, when you completed it, and the amount of effort (in term of time and collaboration with other teams) that it took you, including the time it takes you to create the report (seriously.) The first goal is to cover your behind. A report like that will show what you are doing.
The second goal is to, without much effort, have a report in a format (.i.e excel) such that you can do your own analysis. Which employee requests the most crap from you - this will also get you which department represents the bulk of your work, and which systems generate the most work. To the report, add an addendum for extreme circumstances (.ie. it took me an additional 12 hours to recover the site because there was a network failure between us and the DBA servers.).
Surprisingly, it doesn't take that much effort. All you do is keep a spreadsheet in which you log each request you receive, when you started working on it, and when you finish it. Format it well enough (or use a mickey mouse db like Access), and you can create a quick and simple report with a snap of your fingers.
Beware, though, of expending too much time trying to get the perfect reports. If it's taking you too much time, stop. The idea is to report a general ball park figure of things.
Now, if they are trying to micromanage you into daily reports with hourly entries, simply tell them that you will report 1 to 1.5 hours of effort devoted to the reporting task. After a few days, they'll back out very quickly.
This is a great question, you’re at the same point in your career as me.
You need to report on the metrics that measure your departments performance, these are monetary values and I know they may be difficult to measure and it’s not accept to suggest the business wouldn’t run with the IT group. Although this statement is true, it doesn’t address the department’s performance.
Try breaking up what you do for the company into Service Desk, Service Support and Change Management. The number of helpdesk enquiries has value to the business, they’d pay maybe $10-$50 per call if an outside desk was used and even more if administrator would be involved and you’re saving the company money.
Maintenance work in a Service Support role and managing system changes could be related to the cost for a contractor and the reduced cost of running the system versus additional revenue generated by the users to determine how much you’re saving the company money.
That’s the small stuff, now work out (with the other departmental/divisional managers) how much of *their* department relies on IT and relate that proportional of their revenue to the value you support for the company. Especially important to look at sales staff if they use a CRM tool that you support.
If all else fails remember it’s how much your department supports the production side to do or enhance their job that counts then second is the cost you incur on the company.
Regards Sinesurfer A Nerd is someone who lives for technology, A Geek is someone who lives for technology and loves it