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• Hire a temporary consultant to put into place the high-level automation framework
and train people on how to use it.
• Hire a junior person (maybe even temporarily) to do the “grunge work” and free
up senior people for bigger projects that would fix the root problem.
• Start small. Automating one small task can be contagious. For example, use con-
figuration management tools such as CFEngine or Puppet to automate one aspect
of configuring new machines. Once one thing is automated, doing more is much
easier. Don't try to fix every problem with the first bit of automation you create.
• Don't work harder; manage your time better. Topics like Time Management for
System Administrators ( Limoncelli 2005 ) have a lot of useful advice.
Less Is More
Etsy wrote a blog post explaining why the company decided not to adopt a new
database technology. The issue wasn't that the technology wasn't good; it was that
thenEtsywouldbemaintainingtwodifferentdatabasesoftwaresystems,twoways
to do backups, two testing processes, two upgrade processes, and so on. It would
be too much work ( McKinley 2012 ) .
12.4.2 Reducing Toil
Toil is exhausting physical labor. It is the extreme opposite of the goal of automation.
However, toil tends to build up in an operations team. It starts small and grows. For ex-
ample, there may be a small project that can't be automated because it is highly specific
and unlikely to repeat. Over time, it does repeat, and soon that one action becomes a huge
burden. Soon the team is overloaded by toil.
A little toil isn't so bad. In fact, it is normal. Not everything is worth automating. If
everythingisautomatedperfectlyandthereisnoworktobedone,thisgenerallymeansthat
the rate of change and innovation has been stifled.
If more than half of a team's collective time is spent on operational “toil,” that fact
should raise a proverbial red flag. The team should review how the members are spending
theirtime.Usuallythereareafewdeeper“rootcause”problemsthatcouldbefixedtoelim-
inate large chunks of manual work. Establish projects that will strike at the root of those
problems. Put all other projects on hold until the 50/50 balance is achieved again.
In companies like Google, there is an established policy to deal with this type of situ-
ation. Specifically, there is an official process for a team to declare a toil emergency. The
team pauses to consider its options and make a plan to fix the biggest sources of toil. Man-
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