I needed an IT problem fixed at a remote site, so I asked the responsible IT guy*, “Are you the man?”.

‘What do you mean?’

“You’re the IT guy for Tennant Creek, so can you fix the problem?”

‘Oh, yeah!’.

“So you are the man then, go fix it.”

If he only saw this IBM advertisement first

(more…)

Back in October 2006, one of the CSC Australia sales reps rocks up to my desk
“That price quote Wayne gave us for support 4 different versions of SheepBotherer, is unacceptable, the customer won’t wear it AND I want you to change it!”

Who’s doing the work?
“Ah, Wayne’s team.”

Wayne has a fair idea of the cost to do it, his team has been doing that type work for the last year.
“Ah, but the customer thinks it’s too expensive”

Perhaps the customer needs to realise that juggling 4 balls is more difficult than one ball.

Now go away.

It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled, or how the doer of deeds might have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with sweat, and dust, and n blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, if he wins, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
- Theodore Roosevelt

Note: this was a post from 2008, when I was working for CSC Australia.

And it’s been a painful time.

Issues I’ve dealt with so far:

1. recalcitrant off-shore Delhi-based IT workers not taking any responsibility for making things happen.
2. recalcitrant on-shore IT workers not taking any responsibility for making things happen.
3. a couple of “Health and Safety” issues.
4. a contractor thinking that we subsidise his 2 hour lunches.
5. customers complaining that work is delayed (see points 1, 2 & 3).
6. staff complaining that “we don’t provide any training”, but when I organise funding for training, they can’t be stuffed registering for it until all the training places are gone.

It’s rather like cat herding, which EDS demonstrates below:

Work with a big enough organisation and you’ll come across the Service Level Agreement (SLA).

An SLA basically says, “we’ll provide you with x level of service, for y dollars.  If we don’t provide you with that service, we’ll give you something in return.”

That “something” might be a partial refund of your y dollars; or a credit towards a future service.

There was one customer organisation who demanded that they have an IT technician based at their head office.  But didn’t want to pay for the premium service.
Big IT Company did the calculations, and said

No, that’ll cost us $10,000 a month to place someone there.  And only $5,000 a month in missed SLA penalties if we don’t.  We’ll take the penalties, thank you.

My, didn’t THAT improve the relationship with the customer.

Note: I wrote this in March 2007, but didn’t publish it at the time.  As far as I know “George” is still working for my previous employer.  There was a price in saving George.

The day started at 6am, with me speaking with a USA based co-worker.
The day finished at 9pm with me speaking with a UK-based co-worker.

I love working for a Global IT company, NOT.

I do have a couple of work practices that I try and live by:

• always try and have a "win" on Fridays.
• avoid those people who schedule meetings on Friday afternoons, they are a waste of space
• OA5, which was something I picked up from a Dilbert book.
  Out at 5, where all staff should be out the door, and on the way home to their families.
• POETS day is Friday.
• Never give bad news on a Friday.

So when my boss rang Friday and said "We can’t afford George anymore, we need to let him go", I was p*ssed.

George is one of the nicest guys I’ve worked with. He’s a fine, righteous gentleman who’s nearing retirement. A quiet achiever.

"Bugger that", I thought.

After having a think about George, I suggested that it would be poor form to sack George, as he’s:

• one of us, and we should look after our own.
• working on a sledload of customer issues.
• we recently gave him an award for outstanding customer service.

Boss advises today (Tuesday) that George has been saved.

I’m happy, (but it’s not a Friday.)

And there will be a price to pay for saving him, I wonder what it will be.

“FIGJAM, what’s that?”, asks my significant other.

Oh, just an industry acronym.

I’ve worked so long in IT, that I was trained on the 7 OSI protocol layers, as part of a job requirement.  I don’t think people learn it these days, unless you’re doing your Cisco CCIE certification.

Anyhow, there is now an 8th layer, as in “It’s a Layer 8 issue”.  The 8th layer is the person who is causing the ID10T error, all because they have not RTFM’d.

Now IT users are funny beasts.  Often when we see a problem reported though to us, it’s not stated clearly.

“It doesn’t work”

… or in one recent case “My computer is slow”, actually was “I am not able to read emails on my BlackBerry.”

That’ll be because Chucky, you don’t have a BlackBerry Service with us.  “Would Sir like us to arrange one?”

The legendary Roger Forsey* tells the story of the bloke who wanders into a hardware store,

“I want a drill.”
’What kind would you like Sir?’
”I don’t know, I just want a drill.”

The customer actually needs to make a hole in something.  Whether he actually wants a drill to do this, is unknown.

* – The sharpest Active Directory bloke I know.  Some of the Department of Civil Aviation stories he tells are hilarious.

At my last employer, there was a focus on “Performance Management”.  I always felt, even as a team leader, that we paid lip service to the whole process.
eg.  we were going though the motions.

Performance Management has many goals.  The primarily one is to ensure that the team is working towards/contributing to the objectives of the business.  The credibility of such objectives would be shot by the employer producing the objectives 6 months into the business year.

It was also shot like a lame duck, when one of our Human Relations people, was giving us a update on the Performance Management programme.  A couple of chaps were discussing a point which was raised by the HR person.

SHUT UP, I’m giving a presentation

bellows the HR person.

I can’t remember the substance of the programme update, but all the attendees remember “Freida Nurk” as the HR person who told people to shut up.

… so writes Scott Barnes over at The MossyBlog Times.

The larger an organisation becomes, the more it’s Mass of Stupidity grows.  Until it reaches critically.

Sure, there are pockets of brilliance in one field or another, but on the whole, once an organisation reaches Stupidity Critically, it’s lost.

Even if the CEO might realise this, and wants to change:

No one person can control Microsoft today, which has been obvious to Gates for at least eight years, since that’s how long ago he put Steve Ballmer in the CEO job. For at least eight years, then, these guys have known that their jobs are not so much to steer the Microsoft ship as to try and keep it from drifting onto the rocks. That’s the way it is with huge and successful companies. At best you can trim the sails, because to come about (to significantly shift direction) is just too dangerous for the money machine.
- Robert X. Cringely reflecting on Bill Gates in Go Home, Bill … (my italics)

You can tell that Stupidity Critically is reached when management starts talking about cultural change.

Used to carry this around in my wallet, and whether someone said:
”CA UniCentre is a crap product”
I’d point out that we thought it was a fabulous solution, at one time.

April 2003.

By Greasy Poleclimber

The project was to install the CA UniCentre toolset within FLIC Inc.
Initially this was to an additional 700 terminals that were part of the FLIC Inc. takeover of IJI Insurance, and then to upgrade the original FLIC Inc. CA UniCentre environment totalling a further 3,400 workstations.

The objectives of the project were to stabilize the previous CA UniCentre environment and ensure ITO retained the business against the threat of competition from Microsoft’s SMS for the management of the desktop environment.

The ITO Systems team in Australia, led by Chief Greasy Poleclimber, Solid Worker and Greasy Poleclimber, were engaged to demonstrate to FLIC Inc. the functionality and increased reliability and availability of the latest version of CA UniCentre. This ‘proof of concept’ commenced in May 2002, was followed by a ‘pilot’ and final customer sign-off was achieved in November 2002!  This extended period was due to many problems within the environment and with every new problem that arose CA UniCentre had to be re-proven.

The continuous problems provided an opportunity for ITO to not only demonstrate the robustness, capability and functionality of the CA UniCentre toolset but also the high level of skill set available within ITO – especially from the Systems team and Server Engineering. The competitive solution using SMS was totally overcome and the client accepted the CA UniCentre comprising Software Delivery (USD), Asset Management (UAM), Remote Control Option (RCO) and eTrust Antivirus (EAV) and ITO services as being the best solution.

The client is already appreciating the CA UniCentre tools and gaining immediate benefits including two very recent situations that required levels of urgency and reliability to resolve urgent issues:-
Virus outbreaks in FLIC Inc. seriously threatened their environment. FLIC Inc. urgently requested ITO to upgrade antivirus software to 232 workstations in a remote location. Once commenced, within the first hour, 96% of the workstations had received the life saving upgrade via USD.

A patch was required for in excess of 600 desktops in Oakley:
Once again USD was utilized to easily and remotely implement the patch to over 94% of the desktops with no manual intervention, thereby providing a level of service and response second to none.

Six years on:

• Chief Greasy Poleclimber is in executive management
• Greasy Poleclimber is a Service Account Manager
• Solid Worker shunted to another team.
• FLIC Inc. had a dismal experience with CA Unicentre because ITO failed to support the product properly.  Spreading support staff over multiple accounts meant the product was not being maintained, and therefore unreliable.
• FLIC Inc. told ITO “If you bid for our business again with CA Unicentre”, we’ll go elsewhere.
• FLIC Inc. now has Microsoft SMS v4 (aka SCCM 2007)

The moral of the story?  Any product is crap if you can’t be bothered supporting it properly.

1. IT Labour
2. Helpdesk Support
3. Licensing
4. End user productivity.

- as seen in a senior management “Let’s reduce costs by off shoring to India” briefing paper.