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A presentation that I did at the Spiceworks SpiceWorld conference in Austin, TX in 2014.
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Leveraging Good User Mojo…
About Me:
• Matt Simmons
• Northeastern University in Boston
• @standaloneSA
• Standalone SysAdmin Blog
Customers are everywhere
Identifying Customers• Lines on an Org Chart
• Service consumers
• People who ask you for things
Users == Customers
All of the things I said about customers apply to users, too
Customer Service Isn’t (just) a Job Title
• Having customers isn’t an insult
• Treating them well isn’t demeaning
• Establishing positive relationships with them will pay off for years
• You can be the difference between a great experience and misery
The Basics
Use a Ticketing System
• Spiceworks Help Desk is Good
• Anything is better than nothing
• Just make sure you use it
• Even if your customers won’t
Keep Communicating
• Maintain a status page
• Make it automatic if possible
• Make service window updates part of your process
• Send Update and Completion Emails
• Request Feedback
Establish Relationships• Get to know your users
• At the very least, get to know what they do
• Encourage them to let you know when things are broken
• Reward them when they do.
Computers are Easy
People are Hard
Have a Self-Service Portal
• Make it helpful & informative
• Automate IT processes if possible
• Use off-the-shell software if you can
• Pre-link to it on users’ desktop shortcuts
Be Active• Doctors make rounds. Why shouldn’t you?
• Take an interest in what your users are doing with your machines
• Anticipate their needs
• It doesn’t hurt to be sociable. Not much, anyway.
Build Two-Way Trust• Don’t dictate policy from on
high.
• Explain reasoning, even if you don’t think they’ll understand it.
• When someone exhibits responsibility, give them more.
• Work to earn your users’ trust by being honest.
• Even if it makes you look bad.
• If you let them down, make sure they know you know
Building Trust: Find Your Canary
• Contrast with: the squeaky wheel
• The importance of people who work by rote
Ignorance and Stupidity
Ignorance
• Is NOT stupidity
• IS a temporary state of being
• Should not be punished or mocked
• You were (and are) ignorant, too. So am I.
Stupidity
• Should be criminalized
• Until that happens:
• Route around it
• Avoid it
• Don’t get it on you
Egos
They’re GREAT! Get one today!
Egos
• They’re great! Have one!
• Sorry, I meant Eggos.
• Eggos are great. Have one of those instead.
Egos
• WILL get you into trouble
• Impede progress
• Lead to the Dark Side
But…can’t I take pride in my work?
• Absolutely
• People are irrational meatbags
• Disassociate your sense of worth from your work
Dealing with complaints• Don’t read the
comments
• Differentiate between constructive and deconstructive criticism
• They are criticizing your work, not you
• Unless they are
Treat Problems Once• Learn from Aviation and
Medicine
• Documentation Shall Set You Free
• Automate, Automate, Automate
Engineer for (Human) Failure
• People (and the machines they make) are imperfect
• People (and the machines they make) fail
• Assuming things have worked right is wrong
• Failure is inevitable, so don’t treat it as exceptional
Documentation• Common Questions:
• Who am I documenting for?
• One set of docs, or two?
• How to maintain up-to-date documentation
• More importantly: Just do it.
Never do today…
• Users love automation
• Admins love automation
• You don’t have to be an amazing programmer
…what you could have a machine do tomorrow
Avoid unnecessary technical debt
• Technical debt pays compound interest
• The longer it sits, the more there is (obviously?), but the increase is exponential, rather than linear
Technical Debt Suggestions
• See if that can mesh with your priorities
• If not, convince your boss that you’re right
• Establish a timeline for your users
• Stick to it
Identify the priorities of your boss and users
Use Technical Debt as a Tool
• Don’t leave your users without a solution
• Establish a timeline
• Build in parallel
• Test with one, some, many
• Provide rollback for user data, but roll-forward with the migration
• Shoot the engineer and ship
• The borrowed debt is your new highest priority
-Borrow against it-
Technical Debt Suggestions
The easiest work is the work you don’t have to do