Technically Speaking

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.

I have found myself using OneNote 2007 to accomplish a good number of tasks during my workday. It has helped me eliminate a good deal of paper for single use tasks like jotting down voicemail messages or taking notes when in a meeting. Since I use it alot during the course of my day I thought I would outline some of my process here.

Note: I loosely follow David Allen’s Getting Things Done, for those of you who have seen that methodology some of this will look familiar.

When I get to my desk in the morning, after getting some coffee and getting into email and a browser OneNote 2007 is next on my list.

OneNote contains several notebooks. One for current items, like voicemail and notes, one for Work related reference, Personal reference and Writing assignments. Separating these items amongst several notebooks helps keep my work area current with the items in front of me, but also allows the storage of other items to be looked at later.

The GTD portion of OneNote for me is the Reference notebooks, One Note allows me to move any text or page to another notebook where it can live forever (or until the drive holding the notebook fills up). Because I can search across all notebooks, I usually have no trouble location items filed for reference. I also keep current copies of the company directory or other documents I might need to reference stored in One Note. Doing so, if I search for 144 One Note will find all instances of 144 in any notebook that is open. This allows me, in this example to look up a phone extension (or the name of a co-worker) and find the person or extension to call.

A sample of my current info notebook is shown below.

Voicemail in OneNote

The portion of the image outlined in red shows that my notebooks are currently not in sync. This is because the notebook files are stored on a flash drive to allow them to be used on multiple PCs. One Note syncs between the actual files and temp files for the notebooks stored in this fashion, allowing work to continue even when the stored files may be unavailable.

Because it behaves more like a paper notebook than the usual PC file/folder structure there is no need to worry about saving things you record. Like a paper tablet the saving happens automatically.

Aside from quick and easy note taking, if you are able to use a pen tablet (or even better a tablet PC) One Note supports ink entry. This will allow sketches or drawings to be included in typed notes. If a microphone or web camera are available, video and audio notes can also be stored.

The last feature that I use regularly is the office based integration between Outlook and One Note. This helps keep email messages I need for reference off of the mail server and allows me to clean up email messages as soon as they are processed.

When One Note is installed with Outlook, an add-in is configured that will allow messages selected in Outlook to be sent to One Note for safe keeping. Copies of attachments can be stored with the messages as well.

My goal was not to review One Note as a whole and go through all of the bells and whistles that the application has to offer, of which there are many, but to provide a brief look at how I use One Note to manage my day to day work. I am beginning to think I would be quite lost without it.

Managing technicians and equipment can provide quite a challenge for the new manager. The servers and workstations need constant monitoring and support but the people within the department need opportunities to grow and learn new technologies. Where does an IT manager look to ensure that all of these things are being accomplished as efficiently and effectively as possible?

Using a social bookmarking service, like TechNet Bookmarks, can help you easily store information that you may need at any given time. This new social bookmarking service was created to help users of the TechNet website keep track of items they read or sites they frequent. Any social bookmarking service can be useful for these items, however TechNet bookmarks is geared toward technical users and if you are visiting TechNet for information on a regular basis, why not store your bookmark list there as well.

Account Setup

Many of you reading this have probably heard of delicious.com, the social bookmarking application from Yahoo!. The Microsoft Technet Social Bookmarks application is quite similar, but the focus falls to technical users who use the Technet website. To get started, sign in with your Microsoft passport at http://www.technetbookmarks.com and create a profile.

Once you have created an account, you can provide some information about yourself, and upload a photo, and then begin saving bookmarks. Each time you login to TechNet bookmarks and return to your profile, you will see a list of the bookmarks you have added recently.

A brief version of my profile is shown below.

My Profile

As you add bookmarks to the system you can share them with the TechNet community and other users of the application or mark them as private to keep them for yourself.

Contexts for bookmarking

While this post is primarily concerned with the TechNet and IT Professional role for Social bookmarking, there are other sites at Microsoft where the service is available. This allows others, such as programmers or designers to store bookmarks and have content shared with others using the service like they are. For example, if a programmer visits http://social.msdn.microsoft.com and stores bookmarks, others accessing the website from the MSDN context of the application will see those bookmarks when they are discovered by the service. Someone who visits the TechNet side of the application at http://social.technet.microsoft.com will not see the bookmarks stored in the MSDN context.

This helps the application focus on a specific scope. Allowing IT Professionals to see content related to TechNet and developers to see content related to MSDN.

Once you begin using the service, any of the contextual sites you visit, will allow you to see your bookmarks when logging in, regardless of where you were when you saved them.

Existing bookmarks online or off

In addition to managing new bookmarks online with Microsoft TechNet Social, you can also import bookmarks stored in your web browser or in other social bookmarking services. This will help you keep all of your bookmarks in one application, and make them accessible from anywhere there is a browser and Internet connection.

The application also has bookmarklets and browser extensions to make using the TechNet Social bookmarks site even easier. To install these items, simply click the tools link at the top of the page. Doing so will provide all of the links to tools and importers available with the service. This page is shown below.

Tools available for easier use and importing

When importing bookmarks from another service, like delicious.com, you will need to export your existing bookmarks to a file and import the file into Social. The goal of importing is to make your bookmarks accessible from any web browser and keep them all in one place. Because all browsers support bookmarks or favorites, the concept of storing frequently used web addresses has been around a long time, social bookmarking allows content to be shared by a team or just accessed from anywhere, making them even more useful.

The Microsoft TechNet Social bookmarking application is relatively new so the best advice I can give about getting started is to jump in with both feet and give it a whirl, it might make your memory for those once in a great while fixes a bit longer and easier to thumb through. There may be additional posts in the future as I play with the application and see new features that may help you manage your online resources, but for now creating an account and adding some links is a great place to start.

Get started with a few bookmarks

There are many resources online, including TechNet for the infrastructure items. I have compiled a list of resources that many technology managers may find useful.

• TechRepublic – a collection of blogs on all things IT. From the latest gadgets or patches to the best advice on handling career moves or issues at work.
• BNet – a business management blog by CBS Interactive
• Experts-Exchange – a community driven support site available for solving technology problems
• Petri.co.il – a technology knowledge base created by MS MVP Daniel Petri

This list is certainly not all inclusive, but can assist IT managers in solving both technical and non-technical issues.

Until next time… happy bookmarking.

Being my first post at TechNet I thought I should take some time to point out what to expect from the blog and the posts made here.

My goal is to help beginners to the IT profession learn something that will help them succeed in this field. Sure there are tons of tricks out their and technologies that have grown a lot in the past few years, but we all started somewhere and I would like to look at some of the basics and hopefully make the jump to IT a bit smoother for everyone.

Hopefully there will be enough daylight to bring two posts per week to the blog with a certain theme. If the theme happens to be one near and dear to me, i might carry it for a while. I encourage feedback and surely the folks at TechNet do as well.

For a bit more about me, please check out my bio and feel free to contact me or post comments to interact myself and other readers. This hub at TechNet is really here for all of you both beginners and seasoned professionals please help make this worthwhile for everyone.