That Time of Year Again
You always hear about people having to do so much work pre- and post-vacation that it almost makes it seem like no vacation at all. It’s true of IT too – you have to put in place the pieces and parts that let you have a true vacation. If you just pick up and leave, you best not leave without your cell phone, laptop and remote desktop applications.
It doesn’t have to be that way though.
In my opinion, one of the *worst* things you can do in IT is to be the ONLY person that knows how things work. If you are, you’re just begging to be on-call 24x7x365. That means no vacation for you! (Said to the rhythm of "no soup for you!"). It’s easy to correct this, but it takes time and you have to really work to address it.
Your goals, then:
– Teach others what to do when things break. Think about it – what could go wrong while you’re away? Heck, what could go wrong simply after you’ve left for the night? These are things you should have documented, people you need to teach, tests you need to run. Don’t leave it to chance that something will happen. Make sure people have instructions and that you’ve not only reviewed those instructions, but gone through touching and using the machine and processes. It’s important! Actually, it’s vital.
– Test your solutions! Make sure you didn’t miss a step. Seems obvious, but…
– Make sure people know where you put the instructions. Make sure you think about all of those impacted by the situation – if you have a helpdesk, what should they be told? What is the timeframe for corrections to be in place? Help people response rationally to the issues you identify.
Items to include:
a. System outages
b. Failed processes and jobs
c. Hacking incursions or other security threats
d. Identifying what’s wrong (as in how to figure out what’s up)
If you can take the time now to work through these things in terms that others will understand and can address, you’ll be taking huge steps toward not being the single point of failure.
Oh, and be sure to do it prior to your vacation. Send me a postcard of you relaxing!
Anything I missed? swynk@sswug.org