“I don’t have time to <fill in the blank>. I’m too busy trying to keep things running.”
Isn’t if funny how we have time to …
- reconfigure devices but we didn’t have time to do it right the first time
- keep making the same mistakes over and over again, but don’t have time to document a process or procedure (or anything else)
- suffer service interruptions (and absorb the lost revenue and increased operational cost associated with service interruptions), but we don’t have time to implement change management controls or take time to learn from our mistakes
Operating in this fashion is equivalent to imposing a tax on your business. How high a tax are you willing to pay? How much can you afford? Can you afford 50% of your time spent on unplanned work? How about 35%? Think those numbers are too high?
Our January 2006 Tripwire survey revealed that 65% of respondents spend more than 35% of their time on unplanned work, with 34% responding that they spend more than 50% of their time on unplanned work. [Configuration Control Perspectives - Tripwire]
“What is the precise definition of unplanned work? It is any activity in the IT organization that cannot be mapped to an authorized project, procedure or change request. Any service interruption, failed change, emergency change, or patch or security incident creates unplanned work. ” (Gene Kim, Tripwire http://www.tripwire.com/resources/management-perspectives/article.cfm?aid=4)
Can you imagine the outcry there would be if the government charged us 35%-50% tax on our IT departments? So why do we impose such a high tax on ourselves?
What do you think? Why do IT departments and the businesses they support accept such inefficiency?
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