Information Technology Reference
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The team manager should be part of the operational rotation. This practice ensures the
manager is aware of the operational load and firefighting that goes on. It also ensures that
nontechnical managers don't accidentally get hired into the operations organization.
Teams may combine oncall and ticket duty into one position if the amount of work in
those categories is sufficiently small. Some teams may need to designate multiple people
to fill each role.
Project work is best done in small teams. Solo projects can damage a team by making
membersfeeldisconnected orbypermitting individualstoworkwithoutconstructive feed-
back. Designs are better with at least some peer review. Without feedback, members may
end up working on projects they feel are important but have marginal benefit. Conversely,
large teams often get stalled by lack of consensus. In their case, focusing on shipping
quickly overcomes many of these problems. It helps by making progress visible to the pro-
ject members, the wider team, and management. Course corrections are easier to make
when feedback is frequent.
TheAgilemethodology,discussedin Section8.6 ,isaneffectivewaytoorganizeproject
work.
Meta-work
There is also meta-work: meetings, status reports, company functions. These gen-
erally eat into project time and should be minimized. For advice, see Chapter 11 ,
“Eliminating Time Wasters,” in the topic Time Management for System Adminis-
trators by Limoncelli ( 2005 ) .
7.3.1 Team Member Day Types
Nowthatwehaveestablishedanorganizingprinciplefortheteam'swork,eachteammem-
ber can organize his or her work based on what kind of day it is: a project-focused day, an
oncall day, or a ticket duty day.
Project-Focused Days
Most days should be project days for operational staff. Specifically, most days should be
spent developing software that automates or optimizes aspects of the team's responsibilit-
ies. Non-software projects include shepherding a new launch or working with stakeholders
on requirements for future releases.
Organizing the work of a team through a single bug tracking system has the benefit of
reducing time spentchecking different systems forstatus. Bugtracking systems providean
easy way for people to prioritize and track their work. On a typical project day the staff
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