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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
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 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?
...
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.
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.
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.
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?"
Want some fish with that chip on your shoulder?
You horde your information because experience tells you that when you share it, bad things happen.
You always give a bullshit answer, because you've been nailed to the wall before because something that you thought to be the case turned out to be wrong, and, in the meantime, the phb you told that poisonous factoid to, turned around and told everyone up the food chain, and now YOU have to find a way to make something happen, which you've just learned is impossible.
If upper management wants open, clear, and honest answers, they need to understand the complexity of the question, and the reality that expensive problems can crop up in routine-seeming tasks.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.