> Apologies if all this is obvious......
> I think it would be important to not attack the individual responsible
> directly. It looks like sour grapes / whistle blowing. Rather collate as
> much information as you can and propose a structured procurement
> methodology. That way you can cite all the cock-ups as reasons
> for adopting
> your new procedures, get your message across but not in a way
> that reflects
> badly on yourself.
I will be sending an email to a few of the managers who have or should
have been involved in the project. I am taking the view that, as far as
I am concerned, I am in the dark over this and that there must have been
a breakdown in communications somewhere. Too mnay things have happened that
I do not think its right to sit back and let it happen. I believe that
I should try and make people aware of the problems without proper
communication
discussion but without trying to land myself in the shit.
>
> Meanwhile, you should try to make your position defendable by
> _writing_ to the person responsible (and a copy to your personnel dept)
I have actually spoken to personnel about workloads etc but theres not much
that can be done unless I make it official but at least I have spoken with
my manager and pointed out where we are vulnerable and how I believe we are
not running the department as we should be.
I like your thourough approach to new systems as described below but
unfortunately, this is not done at my place. The development manager and
Head of ops have ran with this themselves and landed it on our doorsteps.
> I look at:
>
> 0) define WRITTEN objectives for the package, in terms of functionality,
> down-time, administration time, cost savings and time to resolve issues.
> You should also define HERE under what circumstances you will back out /
> abandon the project.
>
> 1) total cost of ownership - a bit of an old chestnut, but still valid.
> Look at the costs of acquiring the skills to use and manage it properly,
> the cost of evaluation testing and acceptance testing, and the revenue
> costs over 5 years in terms of support contracts, disaster recovery etc.
> Also cost implications of adapting / extending / customizing,
> re-licensing.
>
> 2) references from existing customers - make sure you are talking
> to IT people.
>
> 3) agree a test period with the suppliers and your own business before
> adopting (evaluation) at the end of this you should be able to commit to
> the capital purchase.
>
> 4) agree a test period with the suppliers for acceptance testing
> at the end
> of which you should be able to commit to support costs.
>
> There may be other more specific objectives added to the project
> depending
> on context - a key one is access for the suppliers support staff, both in
> terms of technology (bit of a poser there for NT) and practices
> (administration of accounts, access to information).
>
> Obviously this is scaled down somewhat when I go out to buy a replacement
> NIC, but I'dd certainly apply ALL of it to a system of the scale you've
> described.
>
> ...and I apply this to most open source systems as well as bought
> software.
>
> My biggest problem is that the rest of the business wants everything NOW!
> The words brewery, organise and piss-up spring to mind (and as
> most of you
> know I CAN). On the other hand I can now point out the projects where we
> did go by the numbers compared to those where we didn't.
>
>
> >>It are very important to remote workers e.g. pgp, access to servers.
> >>How can u bring in a call centre without consulting the people who know
> >>about the network infrastructure etc. How can a development mgr who was
> >>a
> >>mainframe programmer and does not keep up-to-date on technology have
> >>control
> >>of the IT aspect of a call centre project w/o involving sysadmin?
> >>I believe the call centre project will download data from our informix
> >>db each night
> >>onto the NT servers which will run SQL server. Surely me, as dba should
> >>be consulted
> >>and not just expected to look after NT, SQL server which i know nothing
> >>about>
>
> (IMHO it's not to bad to admin, and works quite well - just pray
> you never
> have to restore a system from backups).
>
>
> Colin
>
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