Checklists are a SAM Manager’s best friend (or they should be)
If you’ve read some of my other blog posts, you’ll know that in my spare time I’m sometimes found beneath the waves annoying the fishes.
On a recent trip as I was standing on the dive deck waiting for my turn to jump in, I observed a number of behaviours between the paired-up divers as they moved closer to their own jump-off moment.
Some completed in-depth self-checks and similar quality checks of their buddies, others performed simultaneous checks on themselves whilst watching their buddy’s check and some didn’t bother with the buddy checks at all.
So, why, in an account focused on software asset management am I boring you about diving checklists?
Well, remember those divers who performed different levels of buddy checks on the dive deck? It is interesting to observe later on in the dive those people who experienced a problem that perhaps would have been caught in a buddy check. Dropped a weight out of a pocket? Perhaps it wasn’t secured properly, and a more detailed buddy check would have found it?
The buddy check is essential, a verbally followed checklist. As diving becomes more complicated and technical, with an increase in risk, the checklists move from being a virtual tick list in your head to a physical list of tasks that you tick off as you go.
So, where is this all heading and what has it got to do with SAM or licensing?
Simples! If checklists are seen as helpful or essential in other activities, why would we not employ checklists when we’re running our SAM processes?
There are so many areas of SAM that benefit from a checklist:
- Software onboarding process
- Vendor audit engagement
- Software demand request process
- Software harvesting process
- Software maintenance renewal process
- etc, etc, etc
You get the point here?
Checks and balances for SAM
Humans are naturally inclined to take the path of least resistance; they may have the best of intentions to complete all the steps that they know need to be completed within a given process, but they are easily forgotten when distractions occur, or time pressures are evident.
A checklist, or better still, an electronic gated process which cannot be circumvented, ensures that all that good work you put in to designing the data elements you need to capture for your organisation to manage its SAM estate is well-spent.
An inherently lazy human will, more often than not and if allowed, take the fastest path from A to C, skipping B in the process if they can. You can see this in these things modern culture calls desire paths. These are paths worn down by people taking shortcuts to get to their destination. Even if a landscaper puts a fence in the way some people will circumnavigate that.
So, if people are willing to go to some length to avoid taking a prescribed route, why would they not do the same thing when requested to follow a process? The bottom line is, they can, and they will unless you put in checks and balances to ensure that your processes are adhered to, be that electronically or physically.
The investments you have made in your SAM programme so far demand that they be supported by rigorously policed process checks and balances.
The payback will be greater than the investment.
Remember those buddy checks? A little pre-dive check can save your dive or your life. The same applies to SAM, checks and balances may help you avoid a nasty little audit bill one day or identify a cost optimisation which will boost your budget for the year, and everyone likes a little budget boost!
If you’d like some help setting up these checks and balances, reach out to us here at Version 1 and we will be only too happy to help, be that showing you our SAM4D architecture or helping you design your own.
About The Author
Jason Pepper is the Head of SAM Practice here at Version 1.
