Archive for the ‘Hidden Anchors’ Category

Visibility Trumps Performance

Friday, January 16th, 2009

“We can’t log the data because it would affect system performance.”

How many times have you heard this statement?  Maybe you’ve said it yourself.  This is faulty thinking.  Challenge your team to find a way to capture system performance information without affecting system performance.  

Visibility to system performance trumps performance.

If you choose not to capture system performance measures for performance reasons, you’re crippling your organization’s system improvement capabilities.  Without visibility to performance data, you’re hiding critical system problems and improvement opportunities.

So stop using ‘performance’ as a false rationalization not to capture data.  Implement an efficient framework for capturing system performance information.

-Donny

 

 Sample IT SPC Chart

Many changes never yield their expected improvements.  This chart shows the average daily cycle time for a key subprocess.  The subprocess is part of a complex system with a high level of variation in overall cycle time.  Because performance data on key subprocesses are captured and plotted, a configuration mistake made during a June 2 database upgrade was detected and corrected.  With this chart, it took almost two weeks to isolate the root cause.  Without this chart, the misconfiguration is an invisible anchor on system performance. 

Content Advisory: This Post May Be Offensive To ITIL Advocates

Thursday, December 18th, 2008

 

Some observations on ITIL:

 

 

The Good

 

ITIL establishes a common language.  Common nomenclature and shared understanding is valuable in a complex environment.

 

ITIL is comprehensive — it covers everything.  The courses force you to think about all the stuff that an effective IT organization needs to do.

 

  

 

The Bad

 

Looking at ITIL from the perspective of effective organizational leadership, ITIL is overweight. 

 ITIL Jabba Beast

No, it’s worse than overweight:  ITIL is obese — as in can’t-get-off-the-bed-without-heavy-equipment obese. 

 

When teams discuss implementation of ITIL processes, I hear an incessant sucking sound in the back of my mind — the sound of company resources and energy being consumed by the ITIL machine, until nothing is left but a huge ITIL Jabba beast. 

 

I can’t help but feel that ITIL will mark the beginning of the death spiral for more than one company.  ITIL will help companies reach the point where more effort is spent holding the ship together than is spent powering the ship to its destination. 

 

 

Don’t get me wrong — the procedures and practices described by ITIL range from important to critical.  But implementation attempts will overburden companies in cost and bureaucracy.

 

ITIL will become known as a model of organizational bloat.

 

  

Just my two cents…

 

-Donny

Automatic Retries Considered Harmful

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

With a nod to Edsger Dijkstra and aplogies to Eric A Meyer, auto retries and restarts are shiny rings that lead to pain and suffering!

Auto retries are frequently implemented as work-arounds for processes or requests that fail intermittently. Auto retries address the symptom rather than the cause. They chew up system capacity and hide problems.  With every automatic retry you implement, you are adding invisible anchors to your system’s performance

Resist the temptation to implement auto retries and auto restarts.   Identify and address the root cause. 

If you feel you *must* implement an auto retry, establish a performance counter that automatically alerts the right team when the auto retry count spikes or trends above normal levels.

-Donny