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Prelim Lecture 2

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Kyla Pineda
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32 views

Prelim Lecture 2

Uploaded by

Kyla Pineda
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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System Administration

System administrators and Business conflicts

LECTURE II
System administrators can better support the strategic
goals of the workplace

 Achieving business alignment should be the desired end-state both for


system administrator and for the business for which they work.
The problem

 System administrators are usually viewed as technicians, not strategic advisers

 Theyneed to think like business leaders, communicate their value and impact in a
way that business leaders will understand, and establish a consistent value-driven
model for IT within the organization.

 The ability to create a partnership with business leaders should be added to that list?
The tale of two worlds

 According to industry analysts, business leaders typically view IT


services as a cost center or a sump into which funds disappear; they fail
to see the strategic potential of IT services as a tool to support business
growth or new opportunities.

WHY DO SOME BUSINESS THINK THAT WAY?


Why do some business think that way?

 Arebusiness people behind the times? Are they incapable of


understanding simple technology?

 Or
have IT departments failed to keep them abreast of the cost to
implement today’s technologies in the business world?
Problem Dialog:

A business executive sees a business need and requests help from the IT department.
Instead of saying, “I really need an email system that lets me do X,” the executive says,
“You must install product XYZ that my buddy recommended.” The system administrator
might respond, “It’s impossible to support that product in this environment because it is
insecure and not compatible with our other systems.” The two parties are communicating
on different planes.
Business alignment research

Can we find ways to manage systems to make them align better with business goals?

Two workshops were hosted at the USENIX Large Installation System Administration (LISA)
conference to hear ideas directly from system administrators.

Conclusion:
 No technical issues or hindrances stood in the way of business alignment.
 There is a need to improve communication between system administration and management.
 System administrators are not included in the decision-making processes, but are sometimes asked
for advice on purchasing.
Business alignment research

System administration needs upward visibility. Strikingly, these were all human
management issues; nothing technical was considered central to the issue. The results
pointed to the lack of a trusted relationship between business and IT. A
The IT Landscape Today

Today’s IT environment contributes to the business alignment problem in several ways.


From System Administration to IT Support

 Business often does not differentiate between IT support and system


administration; it is all one and the same to them.

 System administration has been re-branded “IT services,” and support


personnel are “IT workers.”
From System Administration to IT Support

 Desktop Support is your front line. They go to User desks (or remote in)
and solve issues directly. System Administrators are your behind the
behind the scenes people.
From System Administration to IT Support

 IT Support is your front line. They go to User desks (or remote in) and
solve issues directly. System Administrators are your behind the behind
the scenes people.
Project-Oriented Thinking

 IT operations have become project-oriented. Many organizations lock everything down


and dislike change.

 When change must occur, organizations initiate a project to change in one quick action.

 ITIL, for instance, assumes that change must be managed in projects, governed by
releases with version numbers and extensive preparation. This has been termed a “best
practice”[3, 4], but it is mostly a compendium of existing practice
ITIL STANDS FOR INFROMATION TECHNOLOGY INFRASTRUCTURE LIBRARY
Project-Oriented Thinking

 Statistics indicate that as much as 50% of all IT projects are considered failures.
 Project launches (often called rollouts) are special events, so there is no rehearsal or
opportunity to develop best practices.
 Projects often bite off too much in one go, have unrealistic expectations and unclear
goals.
 An organization
 commonly has much riding on the success of major projects. What happens when they
 fail? (example is change of technology)
Project-Oriented Thinking

Consider the following analogy: On which of these would you choose to


travel?
#1 scenario:
A rocket: an expensive and untried project, consisting of 90% overhead to deliver a 10%
payload, with a many-month planning phase, multiple prototypes, and an unstable
launch date, that explodes changes into the world in a single high-risk event that cannot
be undone. Once it has exploded, there is no turning back: Make a mistake and you have
to pick up the pieces and start planning the next rocket. This is our caricature of IT
management today.
Project-Oriented Thinking

Consider the following analogy: On which of these would you choose to


travel?
#2 scenario:
A 747: a reliable, reusable multipurpose vehicle which can be adapted and altered
continuously, turned around in an hour, used to carry a variety of payloads to any
destination, and adjusted on the fly. This is where IT services need to be for business.
Project-Oriented Thinking

As a technical person, you might prefer to work on the rocket project, because it
challenges your skill and creativity and it seems to provide job security,3 but most
people do not get rich by marketing a rocket. The rocket approach in the IT industry
contributes to negative attitudes toward the IT department by business leaders, who are
focused on the bottom line.
Project-Oriented Thinking

Frameworks for industry-labelled best practices—e.g., ITIL, Control Objectives for


Information and related Technology (COBIT), enhanced Telecom Operations Map
(eTOM)—have been brought in to try to cope with high-risk habits by adding layers of
management overhead to the mix, rather than changing the root cause of the failures.
This is an attempt by business to rein in IT services using common business processes
and language, but business leaders trying to solve the problem without including the IT
department further the alignment problem. It is typical of a broader issue: People
generally fear change and will fight to the last to defend something broken rather than
risk the unknown. These issues contribute to the high percentage of failing projects.

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