System Administrator — Guiding Principles 2

This is continuation of earlier post System Administrator — guiding principles 1 .

• Checklists — area great way of getting things done . So much so that Atul Gawande in his book Checklist Manifesto has explained how these were implemented in Hospitals all across the world. These checklists have been used to manage complex surgeries & assist critical care patients. I’m sure Checklists or Run-books I call it are really helpful especially if you are managing a disaster like scenario .
• Performing Planned Maintenance — Its important to get the planned/ preventive maintenance regularly . Most often than not businesses do not permit to take the system down, especially if you are operating in a 24/7 scenario . However a-stitch-in-time-saves-nine. Keeping the system updated, especially with the security patches are critical to ensure, the systems are available to keep the business running. Having a weekly or monthly dedicated/ publicly accepted window is better than trying to message users informing them of a shutdown later in the day.
• Only Change what needs to be Changed : If you have got the maintenance window right, there are possibilities & not short on budget ( which is not usually the case anyway), however you’ve to be careful what you are upgrading . The overzealous sales person of your hardware vendor would want you to upgrade to the latest technology & may be looking at you to do their Proof of Concept, at your expense. Make sure to validate & confirm the Hardware is Software Vendor in this case SAP certified. Also looking at bench-marking information is helpful .
• Don’t Change the System During Critical Phases : Publish a change freeze calendar & inform Business users in advance that no critical changes will be transported to Production Environment during financial closure periods. These periods are usually the month beginnings, month ends, quarter ends & annual closure. During these periods, stakeholders are keen to know how the business has been performing & if your company is publicly listed, they will have to publish their numbers as a statutory obligations. And being able to do so can be detrimental for investor’s confidence in the company.

P.S: If you have any more questions on any of the above points, I would be more than glad to discuss.

Originally published at www.sarfarazmulla.com on August 2, 2015.