InsideTech

10 years ago at my first PM job, there was a PM Director who by virtue of his forward demeanor would directly ask “What caused this outage?” followed by “What are you going to do about it?” and “When will you have it fixed?” 3 Questions. (Well, 4 but that’s later)  That simple. That clear. It was wonderful. A Director who would actually ask his managers what happened and hold that manager directly responsible for getting it corrected. Problem Management was a dream job. We tracked everything to make sure it wasn’t forgotten and if it was we simply dragged it back on the table for more explanation. This time the meeting was not so simple and way more in depth. Nobody wanted to go to that meeting. Operations Availability was great.

5 years later…ITIL is on the scene and everyone has heard of the “best practices”. There is a meeting where all “problems” are discussed and the Managers are told to update their tickets with information for reporting by 2 Staffers. If the committed date were not met, they would simply reschedule for another date and we would make sure it was updated in case they didn’t. Operations Availability was good and things started slipping.

Another 5 years and a new upcoming company, young and building and they want to implement Problem Management.   They brought in a few people that actually know PM and how to do it. The VP says “Give me Problem Management.” The Director says “Have PM look into it.” The Manager says “Tell PM we are too busy and we will get to it when we get to it.” And when things start…no, they already were slipping so,…when things continue to slip and availability was obviously not good, even though the reports showed it good; one has to ask himself “When is someone going to take responsibility for doing something about it? “

What happened? Was it that we documented and built good procedures and nobody wanted to follow them? Were the problems harder, more complex?   Were the Managers not trained as well? The answer to this is simple and clear, Responsibility. Dedication to providing a service and being held accountable for it. Everyone knows about an issue that happened a month ago but it was never really quite fixed, obviously since it happened again, and who gets blamed for it, PM because they didn’t get to root cause. They called the meetings, they published what information they were given, they updated the tickets, they closed the ticket, and yet nothing was fixed. No Director was involved with the meetings, none of his managers showed up. They were too busy to come to a PM meeting, and just sent e-mail.

 So where is the Beef? The “Muscle”? It’s in the same place it always was, the Director’s seat. You see, there was a 4^th question that followed:

1.       “What caused this outage?”

2.       “What are you going to do about it?”

3.       “When will you have it fixed?” 

It was “Would you bet your job on it?” When that question was asked the responsibility was shifted directly and downward to the responsible party. There was no doubt of what was being said, “If you allow this same issue to impact us again, you should be looking for a new job.” 

By asking these 4 simple questions there was no doubt about what caused the problem, what was going to be done about it, and the responsibility was placed on the people that knew what needed to be done within the time frame they committed to. What more could a VP ask for?

It’s that simple and that clear: Problem Management needs to be directed by the person over Operations  and the responsibility needs to be held regardless of how strict it seems. This is your corporation you’re talking about and keeping the services running uninterrupted is the only way to succeed. In today’s market, if you can’t provide your service every time in as short a time as possible you will be obsolete next year and someone else with a tough director will be in your place.