Operational Excellence - The Practice of Cloud System Administration - page 412

20.4.5 Assessment and Project Planning Frequencies
The frequencies of assessments and project planning cycles do not have to be the same.
Plan for monthly assessments and quarterly project cycles. Monthly assessment is a good
frequency to track progress. More-frequent assessments become a waste of time if very
little measurable progress will have happened in that interval. Less-frequent assessments
may make it difficult to spot new problems quickly.
Theprojectcyclemaybequarterlytosyncupwithperformancereviewcyclesorsimply
because three months is a reasonable amount of time for a project to be completed and
show results. If the project selection occurs too infrequently, it may slow the cadence of
change. If the project cycle is too frequent, it may discourage large, meaningful projects.
The longer the gap between assessments, the larger a burden they become. If the cycle
is monthly, a meeting that lasts an hour or two can generally complete the assessment. A
yearly cycle makes assessment “a big deal” and there is a temptation to stop all work for
a week to prepare for day-long assessment meetings that analyze every aspect of the team.
Such annual assessments become scary, unhelpful, and boring, and they usually turn into a
bureaucratic waste of time. This is another case of small batches being better.
20.5 Organizational Assessments
As an executive or manager responsible for many services, this assessment system is a
good way to guide the team's direction and track progress. These assessments also clearly
communicate expectations to team members.
The people responsible for the service should do the assessments as a group. When
people are allowed to do their own assessments, it motivates them to take on related im-
provement projects. You will be surprised at how often someone, seeing a low assessment,
jumps at the chance to start a project that fixes related problems, even before you suggest
it.
Your role as manager is to hold the team to high standards for accuracy and consistency
as they complete the assessment. The rubric used should be consistent across all services
and across all teams. If you use the assessment questions and look-for's in Appendix A ,
revise them to be better suited to your organization.
Larger organizations have many operational teams. Use this assessment tool with all
teams to spot problem areas needing resources and attention, track progress, and motivate
healthy competition. Senior managers responsible for multiple teams should work together
to assure that rubrics are used consistently.
Figure 20.3 shows an example spreadsheet that could be used to roll up the assessments
of many teams so they can be compared. Notice that teams 1, 4, and 5 have consistently