Technically Speaking

Given the state of the global economy in 2009 and the budgets of organizations frozen or sliding, many technical conferences may see attendance drop this year. In a post on Tech Republic, Jason Hiner has looked at conference attendance and put up a poll.

Personally, I will not be attending conferences this year on the company dime, however I am going to attend Tech Ed. Because I have found learning and interacting with those also in IT, these conferences are important, but they are expensive and organizations looking to stretch budgets might be wise to cut back on sending employees there.

I have included a quick poll below to get an idea how the teams managed by readers of this blog communicate. As it is my first poll it is rather simple and to the point, hopefully these are a useful addition and will help gather more information in future posts.

[poll id="1"]

Learning things can be one of the most challenging things for an IT manager to remember. Not necessarily remembering things like “Hey I should learn how to…” fill in the blank with your latest adventure in knowledge, but learning as a tool to help yourself and those you work with grow and provide better value to themselves and the organization.

I have found that learning takes a good amount of focus and determination which can be present in varying degrees depending on the subject matter, the cost of the training, and a myriad of other reasons. Training will take you only so far. The manual or book that you can use to understand a concept or discuss material in a classroom cannot present too many real world scenarios that will determine if the student has understood the material.

Be sure to provide opportunities

Because of the daily changes in technology it is important to ensure that those on your staff with any desire to learn something, no matter how small in the grand scheme of things, have the chance to learn their chosen technology.

For example, when a member of your team suggests a training class in SQL queries to help them better understand how to retrieve information from the database, you as a manager need to work with this person to determine their interest level in the subject and to find out where this will benefit both the company and the individual.

Working with those members of your team who show definite interest in learning can show other employees on the team that learning is a positive experience. The goal with learning isnt to force employees to learn things that are of no interest to them. Doing this may reach the goal of completion of a project, which is necessary, but may ultimately be a waste of time and money if the employee doesn’t take enough interest in the subject to continue using the knowledge.

Try not to confuse training and learning

It is true that users or IT staff members are likely to learn something when they attend a training class. Usually something new comes out of any attempt to learn. However this does not always have to be the case. Think of a time when you were watching television and something you may not have known was presented to you; how to prepare a meal or desert perhaps. Now think of the last training session you attended. Were there some parts of the class that felt as though they were necessary and no new information was presented?

It is far easier to train for something than it is to learn it, however the two are not mutually exclusive. I liken training to the vehicle for learning. If you attend a seminar or training class on a topic, there is a good chance that you might come away having learned something. If you as a manager provide ample opportunities for learning and the training to facilitate that learning, your staff and co-workers will thank you for it.

Follow up

After an employee has learned a new skill, help them put it into practice. You do not need to test them, but provide them projects that will showcase the skills they learned. This will help to keep them from losing the skills they have learned.

Keeping a steady flow of new knowledge accessible to those in your organization who want it can be quite rewarding all the way around. It may bring new opportunities for employees to move between positions or just bring out the best in someone because a manager within their organization listened to their needs to get some training and additional knowledge. This can grow your employees respect for you as a manager and add value to your organization.

Keeping in touch with the technical community is a very good idea for an IT Manager. If this is your primary role and you are engaged with your team everyday it can help you keep in an ongoing state of communication with your team as well as help ensure that technology does not pass you by.

One way to not only keep an ear to the technical community and its ever changing state, but also to provide assistance and get a bit of help when you need it is to become a member of an online community. Every so often I will feature a community or membership that I think will be of value to the readers of this blog. Beginning with this post, I hope to find an interesting online community on a quarterly basis to showcase here as a potential benefit to IT Managers and technical readers. Many times the communities I review are those which I use in my own IT career. I will include disclosure for those communities.

Disclosure: I am a qualified expert member of Experts-Exchange and use the site to solve technical problems.

Community: Experts-Exchange
URL: http://www.experts-exchange.com

Overview

Experts Exchange is an online support community with several levels of membership. The goal is to post questions to issues that are occurring within your organization to receive help in solving these problems from many experts in the subject matter. Currently there are approximately 300,000 members subscribed to the site helping to answer technical questions (and often asking them) everyday.

How does the site work?

Experts-Exchange has a patented system of allowing members to ask questions and then grade their responses according to usefulness. The grades are weighted by the system which then awards points to members for answering questions. The accrual of points allows different ranks within topic areas on the site and can help a qualified expert earn and maintain a free membership. As points are awarded, an expert receives ranks within any of several topic areas. As milestones are reached, signatures and other distinctions are awarded to the member.

No monetary reward is provided to the participants in the Experts-Exchange community for their use of the site. Members are awarded points for answering questions, which they can then use to ask additional questions. Qulified Expert status allows unlimited question points to the member.

Membership

Anyone can register as a member of the site completely free for seven days. This allows perspective members to post questions and get help to the issues they need. If during or after this trial period, the user decides the site isnt for them, the account can be cancelled at any time.

Membership can be purchased for 12.95 per month and additional discounts are offered for extended agreements. Organizations can purchase corporate licenses that allow several employees within the company to have accounts on the site and those are administered by someone within that organization.

Some memberships do not have a cost. When a member begins assisting other members on the site, as answers are selected to questions, the points assigned are totaled. Once the member reaches 15,000 points they receive qualified expert status and the membership fee is waived. Once a member has become a qualified expert, the status must be maintained each month by earning 3000 points. If the point quota is not met the member will use a grace period and be allowed to continue uncharged, however if this continues for consecutive months, the membership fee will be reinstated.

Difficulty of use

Experts-Exchange is very straightforward and it is encouraged that all members actively participate. The membership fee allows unlimited question points to paying members. These points are used to reward experts who answer questions on the site.

Why is this a benefit to IT Managers?

The benefit is quite simple, for a small fee (or no fee at all if participating actively) the manager or staff gain access to a large knowledge base of technical information. This information can be very helpful in solving real world technical issues. Since beginning my career as an IT Manager, I have found this site invaluable to getting timely answers to questions that were just out of my reach or those that were far outside my area of knowledge.

Sharing ability and knowledge
Being able to participate also allows IT Professionals to share things that they have learned with a world wide community. Using the site both for help and to provide help is a small way for the technical community to help one another succeed.

I hope that you will check out Experts-Exchange to see if it might meet your needs and perhaps allow you or members of your team to give back to the technical community.

It goes without saying that users within an organization are up near the top in the heap of priorities for the IT department and thereby the IT Manager, this is especially true when documentation for users is considered.

User manuals or procedure documents should be put together in such a way that the user of the application or process regardless of skill level can follow them. This is not meant to say that all documentation is required to be user friendly, but if there is any chance an end user will need or benefit from a document, it should meet their needs and serve to help them.

When creating internal IT department documentation, or working with your team to do so, there is probably a great liklihood that the document can be a good deal more technical. For example, the IT department probably has at least some understanding of what DNS is and how it is used. Users do not likely have this knowledge nor do they want it.

When describing DNS to an end user, I will usually start with the street address analogy which goes something like this:

“DNS is a lookup mechanism that helps a computer find other computers on the Internet. It works similarly to finding a street address.

A DNS Address looks like this: abc.def.ghi.jkl

A street address looks like this: 123 Any Street, Anytown USA

The DNS octet furthest to the right (jkl) represents the host machine much like 123 represents the house number in the street address above. The next group to the left (ghi) would be a designation for the network segment which is similar to the street in the address.”

This type of documentation may seem very simple, and in many cases oversimplified, but the idea is to provide as much information to the user reading the document as possible. This will help them understand the procedure or technology and should lead their questions making them more focused when they do come to ask questions about the document.

Extra careful pays off in the long run

Providing a simple explanation will only get you so far. Using steps to get the reader through the procedure is often a great way to get right to the point. Keeping the overhead of explaining the process to a minimum, so the reader can dive right in and get started will keep them focused on the task.

It also helps to include screen shots where appropriate. If the documentation must discuss a setting, show the screen the setting exists on to provide clarity and help ensure that the reader is following the correct path. Providing these extra screen shots and taking the extra effort when building the documents will save many questions down the road.

Take notes during any discussion

Taking effective notes can be a bit of a challenge. The notes part is easy, write down as much as possible in any meeting with users covering requirements or procedure or any meeting with users. Making effective use of the notes can be quite different. Many times when an employee asks for a feature or for help with an existing process, they will leave out some key information. Often times IT staff will think of this tidbit of information but expect the user who wanted the assistance will come ask about it.

More simply, if they didnt include it, it must not be necessary at this revision.

Providing good documentation should include listening actively to the users during any discussion. When they ask if a custom screen can be created in the application they use every day, do not skip the question. Instead, ask the entire group to help you understand the need for the screen and how it would be best used. This oftentimes will handle justification of development and get all questions out in the open. It will also involve the users in the process, which is vital for the documentation or customization to succeed.

And one more thing…

Look at your co-workers objectively when they ask you questions. Note: Do not objectify them, however or you could land in hot water.

Understand that their goal is to accomplish their tasks as quickly as they can. When the ask for clarification or help with an issue, your goal should not be to complete their task, just to get them what they need (or feel they need) to do their job as best they can. Excellent documentation, for any tasks that come up, can save everyone in the organization time and sometimes even help before the question is asked.

This isnt likely the only time I will look at documentation for users. The need for better than average documentation grows everyday and helping yourself or your staff to create the best possible documentation for your organization will be a huge positive for the IT department and the IT Manager.

When moving into a position of management for an organizations IT resources there can be quite a transition. Coming from the ranks of the technical, hands on, go out and get it done and being asked to manage those individuals nearly overnight can be a bit daunting.

Your staff will be looking to you for leadership and some may be upset that you were selected instead of… and others within the organization will be demanding results and have expectations of your department. These things can all be difficult to build a routine around, but doing that will help get you on your feet quickly. In my role as an IT Manager, there are no other personnel to worry about and some of you reading this may also be single employee departments. This can be a blessing as the only employee that you need to worry about is yourself, and how you interact with others, but it can also make things a bit more challenging because there are no other people to brainstorm a project with or to get help on a database issue. In a future post, I will look more at single employee IT shops and provide a few suggestions to make managing everything in IT a bit easier.

For now though, let’s take a look at your role as IT Manager, Director, Lead, etc. and see what we can find in a general sense that might make running your department easier and produce great results all the way around.

Communication

In business it seems that good communication is common sense. Many will mention this as a skill necessary to perform any function well. The generic statement that communication is needed for everything does ring true, but mastering communication and being able to provide every bit of information others will need takes work.

For example, suppose there is an outage because something went down. If you haven’t been alerted by text message or email that there is a problem, your co-workers will fill you in as soon as they experience the issue.

When something like this happens, it is best to be proactive. As soon as your co-workers fill you in, you should be collecting as much information as they can provide about the issue that individual experiences. Once you have an idea of the problem it is important to get an email or some document out to the rest of the organization to let them know you are aware of the problem. You might follow that up with more detail to those affected, or simply include it if the issue is company wide.

One of my co-workers pointed this out to me recently. While I admit that it isnt a great feeling to have a co-worker comment about communication on a particular issue, she was right. I was so focused on fixing the problem and finding the solution, I did not take the time to pass this along to everyone.

I would err on the side of overcommunicating when there is an issue or even when working on helpdesk tickets. Getting progress out to the affected userbase is a great way to let co-workers (and supervisors) know that you are working on the issue and keep them in the loop on what you are doing.

Be Humble

The definition given by dictionary.com for humble is as follows:

1. not proud or arrogant; modest: to be humble although successful.

(There are other definitions there, but this one suits my post).

It is important to have pride in your work and abilities, both as a manager and in other areas, but remain humble in your willingness to work with others and in your acheivements. It is ok to showcase awards and certificates, but do not be arogant about them.
The biggest area where managers, especially those in the IT field who have few direct reports, need to be humble is when working with others. When you are not sure of the problem or have trouble understanding an issue, do not be to proud to ask for help. Asking for help is not a downfall. There is no single entity that can know everything. The oracle was from the Superman series (and appeared again in the Matrix) but will not be much help when dealing with IT Management issues.

Take the time to understand the strengths of your team and know where they can provide the most helpful information. Do not be affraid to look outside your own department, or even outside your own organization. The solution may be simple, but spending three days beating yourself up because it isn’t right in front of you is far less productive than asking someone for help.

Be Honest

This one rides along with being humble, at least in the capacity I am concerned with here. Being honest overall is the only way one should do anything, but that is for another post.

Being honest in the capacity of this post refers to being honest about your abilities and knowledge. When someone asks you a question, you should be honest about the answer. If you know the answer and can provide it, do so as needed, but if you are unsure the best response might be to disclose that you do not know the answer but will do your best to find out.

If you are asked questions that you should not or cannot answer, be honest about that and let the asker know you are unable to assist. This will help your position in the long run.

It is likely that refusal to answer might anger the person asking, but if you are honest about the reasons for your answer it should not be a problem.

Also, if you are honest when you do not know the answer, but that you will do your best to find out, the asker will appreciate the effort and your willingness to help them with an issue.

These few items should get you moving in the right direction. I am sure there are more general purpose techniques for IT managers, but these three are near the top for me.

Many in the financial world will often tell their clients that diversification of funds is the best way to ensure that (or these days, try to ensure that) your whole account does not go down with one particular ship. A college professor I had would simply say “Diversify, Diversify, Diversify” as a way to remind we students that diversification was better for investing than unification.

I have found myself thinking about this saying quite a lot lately in terms of managing a network. To help keep everyone on the same page with an update or upcoming change, document, document, document.

This post will look at documenting things within an IT environment and discuss the importance of keeping documentation up to date.

What kinds of things should be documented?

This is a rather tricky question to answer because the documentation for your environment depends on the amount of assistance you or others in your department are providing (even to each other). Any time a change is made to an application, the change should be documented. This helps others who might work on the application see the latest changes that were made and avoid confusion, or worse yet, re-coding because they were unaware the change was being made.

All installations should be documented. This will help the IT staff in an organization keep track of when licenses are used, which users are using the licenses, and which computers the licenses are being used on.

There are likely many many more types of things that can and should be documented, but there isnt enough space here for all of them. Suffice it to say that the more documentation available for an environment or things within the environment, the better.

Document formatting

The documentation does not have to be fancy or bound or even printed and stored (until needed). The most important part of the documentation process is legibility and understanding. If the reader(s) of a document cannot determine what the content is explaining, the documentation is no good.

For example, suppose I have written a document about how to create out of office templates in Microsoft Outlook. The document includes no screenshots showing the reader what is on each screen. Presenting this to a group of users to put into practice might be disasterous. It certainly would not be very helpful.

Sharing documentation

Most of the documents produced will be living documents. The documents will change with each iteration of the environment. Because of this, it is important to share each update to a document with all of the users (in or out of IT) that make use of the document.

It may be beneficial to have a meeting after each round of documentation updates to discuss changes and ensure that all involved users are aware of changes made.

Documentation for all

Most of the documentation that will be produced by the Information Technology staff will be used by employees outside of your department. When creating documents be sure to consider that not all of the users of this documentation are going to be as technical as those on your team.

Where necessary, take the time to review the language of the documentation to ensure that the average reader of the document will understand what is going on. It is a good idea to ask someone outside of your department proof the documentation to check readability.

This should get you started on the documentation path. Remember that there really can never be too much documentation. Document, Document Document. In an upcoming post, I’ll check out documentation specifically for users.

One thing any IT manager (and their team) could benefit from is a set of resources for keeping tabs on the latest technologies. The most comprehensive of these resources for those working with Microsoft technologies is a TechNet subscription, which offers full blown test copies of most of the software in the Microsoft catalog. A great addition to any toolkit for sure, but some organizations may not be able to justify the expense of the TechNet subscription.

Bring a piece of TechNet to your desk… for free

While the full TechNet subscription is prohibitive for some, there are a few pieces of the TechNet tool set that any IT manager can use to round out their knowledge of Microsoft tools.

• TechNet.com – the website has blogs and downloads covering Microsoft products and application usage (as well as the new IT Management hub)
• TechNet Magazine – offers reviews on software, both Microsoft and third party, and book reviews, scripting tools and other helpful information.

Being a heavy TechNet user I would recommend a subscription to TechNet Magazine. For IT professionals the magazine is free and can provide a great resource to learn about upcoming and newly released products. The biggest benefit to the subscription is the free advice and answers to reader questions.

Readers of the magazine can submit questions and comments about the pieces found in the magazine which adds another resource for an IT Manager. Like an article about a SharePoint webpart, but have questions about deploying it, send the question to the author. It is likely that the question will be answered and printed in an upcoming issue of the magazine.

New features

I found an interesting feature that is now available for a small fee and it inspired me to create this piece about adding TechNet Magazine to your toolkit. The feature? CD Archive.

Until the end of December in 2008, a complete archive on CD Rom of all the articles in the TechNet magazine library from Winter 2005 through 2007 can be ordered for a small fee. The archive will remain available after the end of 2008, however the cost to order will be increased. The cost of the CD Archive will run about $30, but includes a great deal of tips and tricks that can be quite useful.

If the folks over at TechNet Magazine read this… keep up the good work, the publication is really quite useful and the CD archive idea is great, as long as it continues to include all the articles in the library.

There are other IT publications that are well worth a read. Some of them are free and some require a subscription. A couple of these are listed below:

Windows IT Pro magazine (http://www.windowsitpro.com) – Available online or in print. Also offers a all inclusive CD subscription.

Redmond Magazine (http://redmondmag.com) – Online only

SQL Server Magazine (http://sqlmag.com) – Available online or in print.

You might also want to look for RSS feeds or newsletters from these or other software vendors.

While a paid TechNet subscription is a tool worth investing in, TechNet magazine can get you a wealth of knowledge about Microsoft products. Using magazine subscriptions and blogs to grow your own personal knowlegebase can be a great way to stay current on technologies coming from Microsoft and other application vendors.

Until next time… happy reading.

I wanted to wish everyone a very happy holiday season in 2008. Hopefully during these rather tumultuous times your holidays are filled with joy and good cheer.

I will be back regularly with new IT management items in January to help you be the best Information Technology Professional you can be. If a new tool or idea crosses my mind between now and then, I will send it your way as soon as I can.

Have a great holiday season.

Cheers!

Derek

Many larger organizations are facing cutbacks to their labor pool and the IT department is no exception. It is likely that the smaller the organization, the less likely these cuts are to occur, but IT managers need to be prepared for the best and the worst either way.

My day job as a systems administrator/help desk/support/project manager/application specialist brings a number of hats to my office and though my official title is IT Manager, some days managing IT is the last thing I get to do. This makes it increasingly more difficult to be seen as a manager, sometimes there are things that just need to be done, one such project is Windows Update management.

This is ongoing for us due to the frequency of the updates and the number of computers in our environment. We do have a WSUS server (more on those in a coming post), but as many IT managers know, automation is perfect only in theory. Getting patches caught up to allow the WSUS server to function as best it can is one of the biggest tasks I face at the moment. It is coming along, but coupling it with support and disbelief in our back office system… managing IT, even in a small organization can be quite the task.

On another blog recently, I read an interesting post comparing IT leaders and IT lemmings. The post is found here, and is worth a read. Just for something to keep in mind as you move ahead in your IT management career.

One thing that remains hard for me as a single employee technology department is being able to feel ok relying on outside consultants for help with any problem. If there is something that needs to be solved or changed and the answer is on the tail of your mouse, it might be worth putting in a ticket with a consultancy to aid in the process. Putting your pride aside to get a solution implemented correctly can be a tough spot, but as I too am learning, it will help you in the long run and you might even learn something.