Going From Good and Great in I.T.

Team Typing is Best Typing. The relationship between man and machine is a lot less dramatic (or in some cases, ridiculous) in real life than it’s often portrayed in fiction– but that doesn’t mean the potential for trouble is less real.  At Recast, we have a unique opportunity of getting to talk with thousands of senior-level system administrators about their environments every year.  We often begin conversations with a frank discussion about what’s working and what isn’t– and why.  From our experience, and with few exceptions, the success or failure of a systems management effort at any organization hinges on the ability of it’s IT department to manage people problems.

What Do You Mean “People Problems?”

Simply put– people are messy.  All the great things we can do when we work together are easily turned on their head when we don’t.  In IT, this is often more pronounced than in other professions.  More often than not, those with the technical knowledge to make well-reasoned decisions are not the ones granted decision-making power, which means IT is faced with a fundamental problem and responsibility: communication.

How Bad Can It Be?

Organizations that operate on the highest levels of success in IT are also the ones who have the best communication strategies.  Organizations who utterly lack the communication skills to overcome people problems, well– they end up in the news.  The point is, communicating well, especially when faced with a technically-important decision, is paramount.

Tips? Best Practices?

By and large, organizations who do this well have a few things in common.  Here are a few places to get started:

• Technical teams and Organizational leadership regularly meet and discuss ways to meet the needs from both sides.
• I.T. puts SLA’s on response times for different tasks and sticks to them.
• I.T. over-communicates updates, outages, successes to userbase, and consistently requests/acts on feedback.
• When a poor decision is made– iterate, re-litigate, reiterate.  Decisions shouldn’t be set in stone, as technology advances, so should you.

Right Click Tools Can Help

With smarter data, comes better decision making.  RCT Enterprise’s Security and Compliance Dashboards can help you communicate, decide, and act on common fall-down points for most organizations.  You can get a 1 on 1 session with an expert anytime by scheduling a walkthrough here.