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📄 Contents

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  1. Management Reference Guide
  2. Table of Contents
  3. Introduction
  4. Strategic Management
  5. Establishing Goals, Objectives, and Strategies
  6. Aligning IT Goals with Corporate Business Goals
  7. Utilizing Effective Planning Techniques
  8. Developing Worthwhile Mission Statements
  9. Developing Worthwhile Vision Statements
  10. Instituting Practical Corporate Values
  11. Budgeting Considerations in an IT Environment
  12. Introduction to Conducting an Effective SWOT Analysis
  13. IT Governance and Disaster Recovery, Part One
  14. IT Governance and Disaster Recovery, Part Two
  15. Customer Management
  16. Identifying Key External Customers
  17. Identifying Key Internal Customers
  18. Negotiating with Customers and Suppliers—Part 1: An Introduction
  19. Negotiating With Customers and Suppliers—Part 2: Reaching Agreement
  20. Negotiating and Managing Realistic Customer Expectations
  21. Service Management
  22. Identifying Key Services for Business Users
  23. Service-Level Agreements That Really Work
  24. How IT Evolved into a Service Organization
  25. FAQs About Systems Management (SM)
  26. FAQs About Availability (AV)
  27. FAQs About Performance and Tuning (PT)
  28. FAQs About Service Desk (SD)
  29. FAQs About Change Management (CM)
  30. FAQs About Configuration Management (CF)
  31. FAQs About Capacity Planning (CP)
  32. FAQs About Network Management
  33. FAQs About Storage Management (SM)
  34. FAQs About Production Acceptance (PA)
  35. FAQs About Release Management (RM)
  36. FAQs About Disaster Recovery (DR)
  37. FAQs About Business Continuity (BC)
  38. FAQs About Security (SE)
  39. FAQs About Service Level Management (SL)
  40. FAQs About Financial Management (FN)
  41. FAQs About Problem Management (PM)
  42. FAQs About Facilities Management (FM)
  43. Process Management
  44. Developing Robust Processes
  45. Establishing Mutually Beneficial Process Metrics
  46. Change Management—Part 1
  47. Change Management—Part 2
  48. Change Management—Part 3
  49. Audit Reconnaissance: Releasing Resources Through the IT Audit
  50. Problem Management
  51. Problem Management–Part 2: Process Design
  52. Problem Management–Part 3: Process Implementation
  53. Business Continuity Emergency Communications Plan
  54. Capacity Planning – Part One: Why It is Seldom Done Well
  55. Capacity Planning – Part Two: Developing a Capacity Planning Process
  56. Capacity Planning — Part Three: Benefits and Helpful Tips
  57. Capacity Planning – Part Four: Hidden Upgrade Costs and
  58. Improving Business Process Management, Part 1
  59. Improving Business Process Management, Part 2
  60. 20 Major Elements of Facilities Management
  61. Major Physical Exposures Common to a Data Center
  62. Evaluating the Physical Environment
  63. Nightmare Incidents with Disaster Recovery Plans
  64. Developing a Robust Configuration Management Process
  65. Developing a Robust Configuration Management Process – Part Two
  66. Automating a Robust Infrastructure Process
  67. Improving High Availability — Part One: Definitions and Terms
  68. Improving High Availability — Part Two: Definitions and Terms
  69. Improving High Availability — Part Three: The Seven R's of High Availability
  70. Improving High Availability — Part Four: Assessing an Availability Process
  71. Methods for Brainstorming and Prioritizing Requirements
  72. Introduction to Disk Storage Management — Part One
  73. Storage Management—Part Two: Performance
  74. Storage Management—Part Three: Reliability
  75. Storage Management—Part Four: Recoverability
  76. Twelve Traits of World-Class Infrastructures — Part One
  77. Twelve Traits of World-Class Infrastructures — Part Two
  78. Meeting Today's Cooling Challenges of Data Centers
  79. Strategic Security, Part One: Assessment
  80. Strategic Security, Part Two: Development
  81. Strategic Security, Part Three: Implementation
  82. Strategic Security, Part Four: ITIL Implications
  83. Production Acceptance Part One – Definition and Benefits
  84. Production Acceptance Part Two – Initial Steps
  85. Production Acceptance Part Three – Middle Steps
  86. Production Acceptance Part Four – Ongoing Steps
  87. Case Study: Planning a Service Desk Part One – Objectives
  88. Case Study: Planning a Service Desk Part Two – SWOT
  89. Case Study: Implementing an ITIL Service Desk – Part One
  90. Case Study: Implementing a Service Desk Part Two – Tool Selection
  91. Ethics, Scandals and Legislation
  92. Outsourcing in Response to Legislation
  93. Supplier Management
  94. Identifying Key External Suppliers
  95. Identifying Key Internal Suppliers
  96. Integrating the Four Key Elements of Good Customer Service
  97. Enhancing the Customer/Supplier Matrix
  98. Voice Over IP, Part One — What VoIP Is, and Is Not
  99. Voice Over IP, Part Two — Benefits, Cost Savings and Features of VoIP
  100. Application Management
  101. Production Acceptance
  102. Distinguishing New Applications from New Versions of Existing Applications
  103. Assessing a Production Acceptance Process
  104. Effective Use of a Software Development Life Cycle
  105. The Role of Project Management in SDLC— Part 2
  106. Communication in Project Management – Part One: Barriers to Effective Communication
  107. Communication in Project Management – Part Two: Examples of Effective Communication
  108. Safeguarding Personal Information in the Workplace: A Case Study
  109. Combating the Year-end Budget Blitz—Part 1: Building a Manageable Schedule
  110. Combating the Year-end Budget Blitz—Part 2: Tracking and Reporting Availability
  111. References
  112. Developing an ITIL Feasibility Analysis
  113. Organization and Personnel Management
  114. Optimizing IT Organizational Structures
  115. Factors That Influence Restructuring Decisions
  116. Alternative Locations for the Help Desk
  117. Alternative Locations for Database Administration
  118. Alternative Locations for Network Operations
  119. Alternative Locations for Web Design
  120. Alternative Locations for Risk Management
  121. Alternative Locations for Systems Management
  122. Practical Tips To Retaining Key Personnel
  123. Benefits and Drawbacks of Using IT Consultants and Contractors
  124. Deciding Between the Use of Contractors versus Consultants
  125. Managing Employee Skill Sets and Skill Levels
  126. Assessing Skill Levels of Current Onboard Staff
  127. Recruiting Infrastructure Staff from the Outside
  128. Selecting the Most Qualified Candidate
  129. 7 Tips for Managing the Use of Mobile Devices
  130. Useful Websites for IT Managers
  131. References
  132. Automating Robust Processes
  133. Evaluating Process Documentation — Part One: Quality and Value
  134. Evaluating Process Documentation — Part Two: Benefits and Use of a Quality-Value Matrix
  135. When Should You Integrate or Segregate Service Desks?
  136. Five Instructive Ideas for Interviewing
  137. Eight Surefire Tips to Use When Being Interviewed
  138. 12 Helpful Hints To Make Meetings More Productive
  139. Eight Uncommon Tips To Improve Your Writing
  140. Ten Helpful Tips To Improve Fire Drills
  141. Sorting Out Today’s Various Training Options
  142. Business Ethics and Corporate Scandals – Part 1
  143. Business Ethics and Corporate Scandals – Part 2
  144. 12 Tips for More Effective Emails
  145. Management Communication: Back to the Basics, Part One
  146. Management Communication: Back to the Basics, Part Two
  147. Management Communication: Back to the Basics, Part Three
  148. Asset Management
  149. Managing Hardware Inventories
  150. Introduction to Hardware Inventories
  151. Processes To Manage Hardware Inventories
  152. Use of a Hardware Inventory Database
  153. References
  154. Managing Software Inventories
  155. Business Continuity Management
  156. Ten Lessons Learned from Real-Life Disasters
  157. Ten Lessons Learned From Real-Life Disasters, Part 2
  158. Differences Between Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity , Part 1
  159. Differences Between Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity , Part 2
  160. 15 Common Terms and Definitions of Business Continuity
  161. The Federal Government’s Role in Disaster Recovery
  162. The 12 Common Mistakes That Cause BIAs To Fail—Part 1
  163. The 12 Common Mistakes That Cause BIAs To Fail—Part 2
  164. The 12 Common Mistakes That Cause BIAs To Fail—Part 3
  165. The 12 Common Mistakes That Cause BIAs To Fail—Part 4
  166. Conducting an Effective Table Top Exercise (TTE) — Part 1
  167. Conducting an Effective Table Top Exercise (TTE) — Part 2
  168. Conducting an Effective Table Top Exercise (TTE) — Part 3
  169. Conducting an Effective Table Top Exercise (TTE) — Part 4
  170. The 13 Cardinal Steps for Implementing a Business Continuity Program — Part One
  171. The 13 Cardinal Steps for Implementing a Business Continuity Program — Part Two
  172. The 13 Cardinal Steps for Implementing a Business Continuity Program — Part Three
  173. The 13 Cardinal Steps for Implementing a Business Continuity Program — Part Four
  174. The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)
  175. The Origins of ITIL
  176. The Foundation of ITIL: Service Management
  177. Five Reasons for Revising ITIL
  178. The Relationship of Service Delivery and Service Support to All of ITIL
  179. Ten Common Myths About Implementing ITIL, Part One
  180. Ten Common Myths About Implementing ITIL, Part Two
  181. Characteristics of ITIL Version 3
  182. Ten Benefits of itSMF and its IIL Pocket Guide
  183. Translating the Goals of the ITIL Service Delivery Processes
  184. Translating the Goals of the ITIL Service Support Processes
  185. Elements of ITIL Least Understood, Part One: Service Delivery Processes
  186. Case Study: Recovery Reactions to a Renegade Rodent
  187. Elements of ITIL Least Understood, Part Two: Service Support
  188. Case Studies
  189. Case Study — Preparing for Hurricane Charley
  190. Case Study — The Linux Decision
  191. Case Study — Production Acceptance at an Aerospace Firm
  192. Case Study — Production Acceptance at a Defense Contractor
  193. Case Study — Evaluating Mainframe Processes
  194. Case Study — Evaluating Recovery Sites, Part One: Quantitative Comparisons/Natural Disasters
  195. Case Study — Evaluating Recovery Sites, Part Two: Quantitative Comparisons/Man-made Disasters
  196. Case Study — Evaluating Recovery Sites, Part Three: Qualitative Comparisons
  197. Case Study — Evaluating Recovery Sites, Part Four: Take-Aways
  198. Disaster Recovery Test Case Study Part One: Planning
  199. Disaster Recovery Test Case Study Part Two: Planning and Walk-Through
  200. Disaster Recovery Test Case Study Part Three: Execution
  201. Disaster Recovery Test Case Study Part Four: Follow-Up
  202. Assessing the Robustness of a Vendor’s Data Center, Part One: Qualitative Measures
  203. Assessing the Robustness of a Vendor’s Data Center, Part Two: Quantitative Measures
  204. Case Study: Lessons Learned from a World-Wide Disaster Recovery Exercise, Part One: What Did the Team Do Well
  205. (d) Case Study: Lessons Learned from a World-Wide Disaster Recovery Exercise, Part Two

There are many traits that distinguish a world-class infrastructure from that of a mediocre one. Table 1 below summarizes twelve of the most common of these characteristics as they might appear in world-class and mediocre infrastructures. In this first of a two-part series I describe in more detail the first six of these traits.

  1. Executive Support – As we discussed in chapter six, executive support is one of the primary prerequisites for implementing a world-class infrastructure. Executive support does not mean the mere approving of budgets for hardware, software and human resources. Executives in many firms with mediocre infrastructures readily approve budgets. What this does mean is an IT executive who actively participates in the planning, development and decision-making processes of Systems Management.

    Active participation by executives can take on many forms. It may involve executives taking the time to understand the challenges and obstacles of providing sound infrastructures. It may consist of managers helping to prioritize which functions of Systems Management are most important to their firms. It may result in executives backing up their staffs when negotiating reasonable, rather than the more frequently unrealistic, service levels with customers. Finally, it may be the CIO or his representative ensuring that other departments within IT, notably applications development, actively support and comply with established infrastructure policies, procedures, and standards.

    Table 1 Common Traits of World-Class and Mediocre Infrastructures

    World-Class Infrastructures

    Mediocre Infrastructures
    1. Totally Supported By Executive Management
    2. Meaningful Metrics Analyzed, Not Just Collected
    3. Proactive Approach To Problem Solving, Change Management, Availability, Performance and Tuning, and Capacity Planning
    4. Employees Well Trained
    5. Employees Well Equipped
    6. Processes are Designed With Robustness Throughout Them
    7. Help Desk Involves Call Management, Not Just Call Tracking
    8. Employees Empowered To Make Decisions and Improvements
    9. Standards Are Well Developed and Adhered To
    10. Technology is Effectively Used To Automate Streamlined Processes
    11. Functions of Systems Management are Integrated
    12. Technical Goals are Aligned withBusiness Goals
    1. Little or No Support From Executive Management
    2. Convenient Metrics, Not Necessarily Meaningful, Collected, Not Analyzed
    3. Reactive Approach To Problem Solving, Change Management, Availability, Performance and Tuning, and Capacity Planning
    4. Employees Poorly Trained
    5. Employees Poorly Equipped
    6. Processes Designed With Little or No Robustness in Them
    7. Help Desk Focuses on Call Tracking, Not Call Management
    8. Employees Empowered Very Little, or Not At All
    9. Standards Poorly Developed With Little or No Enforcement
    10. Technology is Applied, if At All, Inappropriately
    11. Little or No Integration of Systems Management Functions
    12. Little or No Alignment of Technical Goals with Business Goals

  2. Meaningful Metrics Analyzed – One of the most common characteristics I have observed over the years that differentiate well-managed infrastructures from those poorly managed is their use of metrics. One of the first distinctions in this regard is the difference between merely collecting data, and establishing truly meaningful metrics as derived from this data.

    For example, most all companies today collect some type of data about outages to their online systems, regardless of whether the systems are hosted on mainframes, client/servers, or the Internet. A typical metric may be to measure the percent uptime of a particular system over a given period of time and to establish a target goal, for instance, 99% uptime.

    The data collected in this example may include the start and end times of the outage, the systems impacted, and the corrective actions taken to restore service. The metric itself is the computation of the percent uptime on a daily, weekly or monthly basis for each online system measured. Compiling the outage data into a more meaningful metric may involve segregating the percentage uptime between prime-shift and off-shift. Or reporting on actual system downtime in minutes or hours, as opposed to percent availability. A meaningful availability metric may also be a measure of output as defined by the customer. For example, we had a Purchasing Officer customer who requested that we measure availability based on the number of Purchase Orders his staff was able to process on a weekly basis.

    Instituting meaningful metrics helps improve the overall management of an infrastructure, but the ultimate use of them involves their analysis to reveal trends, patterns and relationships. This in-depth analysis can often lead to the root cause of problems and more proactive approach to meeting service levels.

    An example from an aerospace client can illustrate this point. This firm was running highly classified data over expensively encrypted network lines. High network availability was of paramount importance to ensure the economic use of the costly lines as well as the productive use of the highly paid specialists using them. Intermittent network outages began occurring at some point but proved elusive to troubleshoot. Finally we trended the data and noticed a pattern that seemed to center around the afternoon of the third Thursday of every month.

    This monthly pattern eventually led us and our suppliers to uncover the fact that our telephone carrier was performing routine line maintenance for disaster recovery the third Thursday of every month. The switching involved with this maintenance was producing just enough line interference to affect the sensitivity of our encrypted lines. The maintenance was consequently modified for less interference and the problem never re-occurred. The analyzing and trending of the metrics data led us directly to the root cause and eventual resolution of the problem.

  3. Proactive Approach – World Class Infrastructures employ a proactive approach to identify and prevent potential problems impacting performance and availability. Marginal infrastructures are forced to take a more reactive approach toward problem solving. For example, a proactive strategy may use the analysis of meaningful utilization metrics to predict when an out-of-capacity condition is likely to occur. Armed with this information, technicians can then decide whether to add more capacity or to re-schedule or reduce workloads to prevent outages or performance problems. A reactive approach allows no time to identify these conditions and to make proactive decisions. Other performance and capacity indicators, such as memory swaps and bandwidths, can similarly be analyzed to proactively identify and prevent bottlenecks and outages.

  4. Well-Trained Employees – World-class infrastructures invest heavily in training their staffs. This training may take the form of on-the-job-training, onsite classroom instruction, offsite courses at local facilities, out-of town classes, or bringing vendors in to conduct customized training. Top-rated infrastructures often employ a buddy system, or a one-on-one mentoring program in which experienced senior level technicians share both the content and the application of their knowledge to more junior level staff. Cross-training between infrastructure departments such as operations and networks, or between system administration and database administration is another effective method used by well-managed organizations to optimize employee training.

  5. Well-Equipped Employees – An attribute of world-class infrastructures that parallels well-trained employees is ensuring they are also well-equipped. Less sophisticated shops sometimes sacrifice hardware and software tools in the name of cost savings. This is often a false economy that can drag out problem resolution times, extend the length of outages, occasionally duplicate work efforts, and eventually frustrate key staff members to the point that they seek employment elsewhere.

    While budget items need to be justified and managed, top rated infrastructures usually find the means to provide the tools their technicians need. These tools may include pagers, cell phones, personal assistant palmtops, laptops, at-home high speed network connections and specialized software for desktops.

  6. Robust Processes – World class infrastructures know how to develop, design and maintain robust processes. The topic of robust processes, and the characteristics that define them, are described at length in the previous part of this section under Developing Robust Processes.

    This concludes the initial part of this piece on the Twelve Traits of a World-Class Infrastructure. In part two I describe the last six of these characteristics.

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