We all know that user surveys can be baked the way we want, picking and choosing the users you include (or invite) in the survey is not uncommon for smaller, less established, helpdesks. What really shows you're worthy of retention is service metrics on the services and resources your department provides to management.
While some technology groups that measure availability can realize over 99% availability for all services, smaller, less responsible groups would be happy to realize 70% if they knew at all how they were doing. Perhaps they don't understand the benefits of high-availability.
Availability is amount of time all critical services are ready to use and functioning properly to the exclusion of planned downtime (within the Change Window). This Change Window can be quite the advantage when considering that while a full week is 7x24, and some services are truly 7x24 services, most applications in a business are NOT 7x24 instead they are 5x12, or 6x10, or perhaps 5x13+1x10. Any of these scenarios provide windows of opportunity for changes and upgrades, if we consider a business running Monday through Friday from 7AM - 10PM, we can safely consider a Change Window of 6 hours a night and 54 hours over a typical 2-day weekend.
Your measure of availability is against the time outside of those windows, in the above example, we have 84 hours of Production Availability for business systems, that shouldn't be too hard to realize on a regular basis, but things do happen. This does not include web servers and Internet-facing systems, and may not include other systems because there are some systems that demand 7x24 functionality. In these scenarios scheduled windows may be permitted and may deserve the use or provisioning for alternate or redundant hardware.
Tracking your availability, the success of your changes, and reliability of the services you provide may be a painful reminder of your challenges, but they also allow you to set goals to improving your services and becoming (proving you are) a world-class technology group.
I use:
Friday, February 02, 2007
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Friday, January 26, 2007
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Funny E-Mail of the Year...
In a note to the help desk at one company, the user's note was a simple request:
{smirk} "Yes I can."
"All of my passwords were written on my calendar and I threw my calendar out. Can you help me?"
{smirk} "Yes I can."
Friday, December 22, 2006
Begging Is NOT Being Professional.
'Tis the season for gift baskets from vendors. They're everywhere and they are designed to make us plump little IT people. This does NOT mean they're not appreciated!
It seems to me that while these gestures of appreciation flow graciously in the direction of customers, potential customers, employees, and management, they are often used as a manner of sucking up. In fact, it seems they are almost exclusively that, though the intent is truly a gesture of kindness, a reminder that the sender is thinking fondly of the receiver.
The employees are the only one's potentially honoured without the idea of sucking up, though the demands on them may seem enhanced post-gift. This is truly an honour.
The one thing I've witnessed this year is the shameless and unprofessional act of calling up a vendor and asking where their basket was. It was a truly horrid to see this, though the benefits of this morning's basket were highly favourable. No, I did NOT make the call.
Begging, for anything, is unprofessional. Whether it's your job at the point of termination, your Christmas basket, your seasonal bonus, or an hour off when it's required.
Good Dog.
It seems to me that while these gestures of appreciation flow graciously in the direction of customers, potential customers, employees, and management, they are often used as a manner of sucking up. In fact, it seems they are almost exclusively that, though the intent is truly a gesture of kindness, a reminder that the sender is thinking fondly of the receiver.
The employees are the only one's potentially honoured without the idea of sucking up, though the demands on them may seem enhanced post-gift. This is truly an honour.
The one thing I've witnessed this year is the shameless and unprofessional act of calling up a vendor and asking where their basket was. It was a truly horrid to see this, though the benefits of this morning's basket were highly favourable. No, I did NOT make the call.
Begging, for anything, is unprofessional. Whether it's your job at the point of termination, your Christmas basket, your seasonal bonus, or an hour off when it's required.
Good Dog.
Friday, December 15, 2006
The new Paint program you will want...
The Paint program, a descendent of the Windows Paintbrush tool that has not gained significant features in all its days has a replacement. Allow me to introduce you to a freeware/donationware tool that is sure to please and dead simple to use, Paint.net.
The tool is wonderful, handy and fills a few gaps between the less-than-adequate features of Microsoft Paint, and a pricey product that is for professional graphics and web building.
Please have a look at their site, for the common user, download and install a non-Beta version. If you're courageous and can accept the risk, go for the version 3.0 Beta and enjoy some additional features.
The tool is wonderful, handy and fills a few gaps between the less-than-adequate features of Microsoft Paint, and a pricey product that is for professional graphics and web building.
Please have a look at their site, for the common user, download and install a non-Beta version. If you're courageous and can accept the risk, go for the version 3.0 Beta and enjoy some additional features.
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