donoreo Premium Member join:2002-05-30 North York, ON |
donoreo
Premium Member
2013-Feb-6 1:42 pm
$*^%@& Change management proceeduresGrrrrrr arrrrrggghhhhh. It is hard to get any work done. We have had a support incident opened, we need a load balancer restarted, but are told we still need a change request for it and the approvals for that.
It is all fine to have records of things, but sometimes it is just silly.
Last week as had "pass the buck" going on. Corporate Technical services could not do something, that is IT Security. IT Security tried and it had to go back to Corp TS as they have the root passwords, as I said in the beginning, we needed them.
Here I am trying to support an application without full access to my servers and get things done. |
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DSMdude join:2012-06-30 Kitchener, ON |
Yeah - my company implemented Change Management a few years ago and I'll admit, its good from a process support perspective, it can get pretty stupid too. Just to push a stupid button with no impact to the production environment requires a CRQ with implementation plan and approvals. Really? Such a waste |
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JB9Stay Gold Premium Member join:2009-05-14 |
JB9
Premium Member
2013-Feb-7 10:55 am
My biggest annoyance is like what you just said DSMdude, it's not always necessary for small things, it's hard to get that line drawn. |
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donoreo Premium Member join:2002-05-30 North York, ON |
donoreo
Premium Member
2013-Feb-7 11:07 am
They can be compared to "zero tolerance policies" in schools. We have all seen stories of some kid getting expelled or suspended because of them over something stupid. |
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said by donoreo:They can be compared to "zero tolerance policies" in schools. We have all seen stories of some kid getting expelled or suspended because of them over something stupid. It's the paradigm that is established when professional managers are hired rather than technical experts who are mentored into leadership positions. |
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ExodusYour Daddy Premium Member join:2001-11-26 Earth |
to donoreo
Did they force every employee who touches the equipment to get mandatory ITIL training and certification?
I do live in change management hell as well. Some of the environments I work in are worse than others. I can get approval for certain companies in 15 minutes doing everything by the book.
There are certain clients that take six months to complete the same task. |
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donoreo Premium Member join:2002-05-30 North York, ON |
donoreo
Premium Member
2013-Feb-7 1:39 pm
said by Exodus:Did they force every employee who touches the equipment to get mandatory ITIL training and certification?
I do live in change management hell as well. Some of the environments I work in are worse than others. I can get approval for certain companies in 15 minutes doing everything by the book.
There are certain clients that take six months to complete the same task. I wish, I would get them to pay for it so I could go to a better job Then again, I have never actually seen the hardware! This place is not as anal as one I worked at. No one was allowed in the cage at the hosting site between 9 and 4. Our change requests would be rejected if there was a typo. We had to list completely all commands that were going to be done on the server in these requests as well. |
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DarkLogixTexan and Proud Premium Member join:2008-10-23 Baytown, TX |
said by donoreo:said by Exodus:Did they force every employee who touches the equipment to get mandatory ITIL training and certification?
I do live in change management hell as well. Some of the environments I work in are worse than others. I can get approval for certain companies in 15 minutes doing everything by the book.
There are certain clients that take six months to complete the same task. I wish, I would get them to pay for it so I could go to a better job Then again, I have never actually seen the hardware! This place is not as anal as one I worked at. No one was allowed in the cage at the hosting site between 9 and 4. Our change requests would be rejected if there was a typo. We had to list completely all commands that were going to be done on the server in these requests as well. If you have to list all commands then might as well script it then have the list of commands be start run cmd Changes-dd-mm-yyyy.vbs/ps/bat/ect and what if the server doesn't like the command? do you have to setup a test enviro that's identical in every way to production and work out the commands there? |
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donoreo Premium Member join:2002-05-30 North York, ON |
donoreo
Premium Member
2013-Feb-7 5:27 pm
said by DarkLogix:said by donoreo:said by Exodus:Did they force every employee who touches the equipment to get mandatory ITIL training and certification?
I do live in change management hell as well. Some of the environments I work in are worse than others. I can get approval for certain companies in 15 minutes doing everything by the book.
There are certain clients that take six months to complete the same task. I wish, I would get them to pay for it so I could go to a better job Then again, I have never actually seen the hardware! This place is not as anal as one I worked at. No one was allowed in the cage at the hosting site between 9 and 4. Our change requests would be rejected if there was a typo. We had to list completely all commands that were going to be done on the server in these requests as well. If you have to list all commands then might as well script it then have the list of commands be start run cmd Changes-dd-mm-yyyy.vbs/ps/bat/ect and what if the server doesn't like the command? do you have to setup a test enviro that's identical in every way to production and work out the commands there? Yes, we had an identical environment. |
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to donoreo
Maybe it's just me, but I've been working in a Change Management driven environment since I've started my professional career. While I do agree it can annoy, I can't imagine any other sort of environment.
Plus I have my share of horror stories of Change Cowboys an the mess it created.
...Just looking at things from the flip side of the coin.
Regards |
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SlickEnW Premium Member join:2003-01-21 Seattle, WA |
to donoreo
normally it's some catastrophe that started the whole change management process in the first place. Many moons ago some admin probably ran a command against a production box by accident destroying live records and causing an outage with an ultimate cost of $2,$3,$4,$5 million , for neglecting a small check box. Now everything is microscope and has a 6 page backout plan.
But this is what we deal with. Our superiors/CEO don't want to hear about the system being down especially if we brought it down. |
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to Poorfellow
said by Poorfellow:It's the paradigm that is established when professional managers are hired rather than technical experts who are mentored into leadership positions. Funny, I was going to suggest it's implemented by skilled managers after they've experienced a flood of inept IT people and need a paper trail. Over the years I've been through many large corporations and encountered more lazy and/or useless IT people than skilled IT people, that I wonder how a company's network can remain coherent - it's because of these procedures that their IT structure remains cohesive. It also allows non-IT managers to evaluate the performance of their IT staff as a whole, so if a request to complete a simple tasks it still in the queue after a month, someone higher up needs to be evaluated. |
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DarkLogixTexan and Proud Premium Member join:2008-10-23 Baytown, TX |
to donoreo
said by donoreo:Yes, we had an identical environment. I've had a test enviro from time to time but never a full on identical environment. That'd be sweet to have. |
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drewRadiant Premium Member join:2002-07-10 Port Orchard, WA |
to urbanriot
said by urbanriot:said by Poorfellow:It's the paradigm that is established when professional managers are hired rather than technical experts who are mentored into leadership positions. Funny, I was going to suggest it's implemented by skilled managers after they've experienced a flood of inept IT people and need a paper trail. Over the years I've been through many large corporations and encountered more lazy and/or useless IT people than skilled IT people, that I wonder how a company's network can remain coherent - it's because of these procedures that their IT structure remains cohesive. It also allows non-IT managers to evaluate the performance of their IT staff as a whole, so if a request to complete a simple tasks it still in the queue after a month, someone higher up needs to be evaluated. Oh Lord, yes. I work in a place with a pseudo change management board. The meeting only happens once a week, but we have a two-manager approval process with a required follow-up item for the next meeting to close the gap. This whole thing is mostly a waste of time due to the fact that no one actually puts what they're REALLY doing into the (ugh) SharePoint site. I hope to be beginning to implement SCSM with some off the shelf MOF standards next month. Between too much anal retentiveness and not enough care given, in the realm of enterprise IT, I'll take the former before the latter any day. |
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to urbanriot
If one doesn't know how to execute, they will just keep selecting "Approve" after 17 meetings they don't understand. In the end, if it was going to fail, it *will* fail. Overly-beaurocratic change control processes are the religion of refuge for the professional manager types that lack any IT or CS background. Their only skill is Ability to Cover Ones Ass (tm).
There is real value in comprehensive change control, but by and large, sane implementation of reasonable technically-sound processes is botched by these critters. |
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drewRadiant Premium Member join:2002-07-10 Port Orchard, WA |
drew
Premium Member
2013-Feb-12 11:40 pm
said by Poorfellow:In the end, overly-beaurocratic change control processes are the religion of refuge for the IT Management Scoundrels. Horse shit. Without a clear picture of the organization's services and how they interact, change without "management" of said change is rife with disaster. |
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to donoreo
said by donoreo:Grrrrrr arrrrrggghhhhh. It is hard to get any work done. We have had a support incident opened, we need a load balancer restarted, but are told we still need a change request for it and the approvals for that.
It is all fine to have records of things, but sometimes it is just silly.
Last week as had "pass the buck" going on. Corporate Technical services could not do something, that is IT Security. IT Security tried and it had to go back to Corp TS as they have the root passwords, as I said in the beginning, we needed them.
Here I am trying to support an application without full access to my servers and get things done. I revised my post, but found it curious that you called horseshit on a specific mention of *overly* beaurocratic processes. Interesting... There is absolutely a place for sane, technically-sound change control. Managers who continually say, "I'm out of my depth - I'm just here to delegate and manage" when faced with basic IT concepts probably shouldn't be building change control. That's what I'm referring to. |
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DarkLogixTexan and Proud Premium Member join:2008-10-23 Baytown, TX |
DarkLogix
Premium Member
2013-Feb-13 12:02 am
Agreed, there should not have to be a change request to make a ticket that a server has failed and is going to be fixed.
true story.
they wanted to require a change request (and they might have implemented the idea) to go into SCOM and pause a monitor while a change request would be made to fix the error that SCOM was alerting to.
So here's a scanario
server abc005's c drive is full SCOM sends an e-mail that the C drive is full before touching server abc005 a change request must be made to first pause the monitors related to the server, then another change request to actually suggest a fix to the problem.
then each must be approved by a manager in a very differant timezone.
so now you've gotten the request to pause monitors related to server abc005 (IE all that will go off when it might have to be rebooted)
but now you still need the 2nd request approved to fix the issue
now keep in mind you might not know the full issue yet, because you needed a change request to diag it.
so the fix is yet another request.
now based on timezone differances it could take a minimum of 3 days to follow this change request plan and the server could be a mission critical server.
And don't forget a change request to maybe prevent the issue, oh and this 4th one will be denied. |
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donoreo Premium Member join:2002-05-30 North York, ON |
donoreo
Premium Member
2013-Feb-13 6:39 am
said by DarkLogix:Agreed, there should not have to be a change request to make a ticket that a server has failed and is going to be fixed.
true story.
they wanted to require a change request (and they might have implemented the idea) to go into SCOM and pause a monitor while a change request would be made to fix the error that SCOM was alerting to.
So here's a scanario
server abc005's c drive is full SCOM sends an e-mail that the C drive is full before touching server abc005 a change request must be made to first pause the monitors related to the server, then another change request to actually suggest a fix to the problem.
then each must be approved by a manager in a very differant timezone.
so now you've gotten the request to pause monitors related to server abc005 (IE all that will go off when it might have to be rebooted)
but now you still need the 2nd request approved to fix the issue
now keep in mind you might not know the full issue yet, because you needed a change request to diag it.
so the fix is yet another request.
now based on timezone differances it could take a minimum of 3 days to follow this change request plan and the server could be a mission critical server.
And don't forget a change request to maybe prevent the issue, oh and this 4th one will be denied. At least in my case, all of those things would be part of one CR. That is horrid! |
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DarkLogixTexan and Proud Premium Member join:2008-10-23 Baytown, TX |
You'd think it'd be reasonable for it to be one CR, but some management types don't have logic or best practices going for them. |
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donoreo Premium Member join:2002-05-30 North York, ON |
donoreo
Premium Member
2013-Feb-13 9:00 am
said by DarkLogix:You'd think it'd be reasonable for it to be one CR, but some management types don't have logic or best practices going for them. In our case that would be a support incident and I could work with it that way. |
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DarkLogixTexan and Proud Premium Member join:2008-10-23 Baytown, TX |
If the alert was set to go off at x% free instead of 100% full then they didn't consider it an incident because no user was yet effected. |
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to Poorfellow
said by Poorfellow: Overly-beaurocratic change control processes are the religion of refuge for the professional manager types that lack any IT or CS background. Their only skill is Ability to Cover Ones Ass (tm). Some of the most effective people I've encountered in IT management have zero background in IT or have a basic knowledge from what they've picked up along the way. Overseeing a highly functional IT structure is more about selecting the right people, overseeing the creation of efficient and easy to follow procedures, ensuring these procedures are followed, ensuring that 'paperwork' is regularly maintained and ensuring your site(s) is/are running smoothly. |
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to DarkLogix
...Was about to ask why they didn't just have an incident ticket to track for troubleshooting... but you just answered the question DarkLogix.
Regards |
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