Most IT organizations have processes that run outside of standard business hours, namely nights and/or weekends. In most cases, if these nightly or weekend processes fail, people within IT must get involved to fix it. This raises the question of who on your staff gets called at 2:00 in the morning or on Sunday afternoon when these failures occur. To answer this question, most companies create an on-call rotation schedule which rotates who is on-call. This is generally done on either a daily or weekly basis. For example, if there are five people in your group, including yourself, you are each on call once every five weeks for a one week period.

The truth is that no one really likes to be on call; however, people are generally willing to tolerate it under the following circumstances: 1. They think the rotation schedule is fairly... Read More

Being a manager of Information Technology (IT) is a wonderful profession. When done properly, it combines creativity, pragmatism, leadership, and an understanding of the people, users and the businesses you serve. I hope you find the below list to be fun and a little informative #10 Tell your Java programmers how much you like .NET and visa versa #9 Gossip about your staff in the office, on your Facebook page, and in the restroom without checking to see that no one is in the stalls. #8 Put next year’s salary plan on your whiteboard and forget to erase it #7 Pick your favorite staff members and let everyone know who they are #6 Have really boring weekly staff meetings and make them three hours long #5 Take credit for great tech work done by your staff members, even if you have no clue how the work was done #4 Make your Help... Read More

One day last week I was up early, worked all day and was in the car on my way to a dinner meeting. Having not slept well the night before, I needed some caffeine, so I pulled into the drive-through of a fast food restaurant to get a soda. I ordered my soda, went to the first window and gave them my dollar and change and proceeded to the second window to pick up my drink. The person at the second window handed me a bag of food. I told him I just ordered a soda and gave him the food back. After some confusion and a minute or two looking at computer monitors, he gave me my soda. I then asked him for a straw. He told me the straw was in the bag and again handed me the bag of food. I again told him I did not order food and all I wanted was a straw for my drink. Dazed and confused, he called the manager over. The manager looked at the computer... Read More

Giving someone a promotion sounds like it should be easy. You call the person into your office, tell her she has been promoted, tell her to continue doing great work, shake her hand, and send her on her way. In one sense, it is that easy. However, there are a number of factors to consider when deciding who to promote and when to promote them. Additionally, there are a number of ramifications associated with giving someone a promotion, and they’re not all good. You thought promotions would be all about good news? Well, welcome to management. When you promote someone, you are telling that person and the rest of your team that the person being promoted embodies the desirable qualities, attitude, and attributes that deserve recognition and promotion. As a result, you are telling the rest of your staff to model that person’s behavior.... Read More