Has working in IT become boring?

I was reading an article from ServiceDesk 360 last week which was about how IT departments need to become "profitable" to the business. Obviously this is not in monetary terms but by adding value to the organisation. I agree fully with this concept, however some changes to the running IT departments needs to happen first. If you want your teams to be embrace this idea they are going to need support from the business to be allowed to think outside the box and watch out there may be some mistakes along the way too. I know many people who have got a bit disillusioned with the industry saying it has become boring.
The red tape surrounding the IT department has certainly bred an attitude of "there is too much hassle to get that change made", in my opinion let’s start evaluating the real risk of changes and not the perceived risk.

If we give these engineers, professional, call them what you will to add value to the business we need to give a little breathing room to explore & experiment and I am positive you will reap the rewards.

Ricky Doyle
http://www.practice-it.co.uk/
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Practice-Lab, I don't need to practice...

I sometimes come across IT engineers who tell me that they don't need to practice IT (that is not a play on words by the way), which is utter nonsense. The truth is we cant remember everything that we have done in the past, we may need a refresher on how to do it again; like a "practice" run. Imagine a premiership footballer saying to the manager "I don't need to practice just let me play", it would not happen.

I think if you want to keep your skills sharp, learn new things or test "what if scenarios" you need to practice it (now that is a play on words). How you do this is up to you, whether it is in your test lab, home server or virtual environment get stuck in and get your hands dirty. This is why we built Practice-Labs so that all you need is an Internet connection to access real kit, the idea actually came to me when I was working with a guy called Winston Cheung. Winston came and asked me how to create an A record in DNS. The conversation went a little something like this:

Winston: "How do I actually create an A record?"
Ricky: "Jump on the sever or do it through the DNS admin console."
Winston: "I don't have the rights to do that."
Ricky: "OK, well build a server at home and play around with DNS."
Winston: "I don't have any spare kit." (and this was the days before virtualisation software was freely and easily accessible)
Ricky: **light bulb moment** "If I could give you access to a server online to play with would you use it."
Winston: "Defo"

Something like that; this is the story I tell and how I remember it anyway. Thanks Winston, you are the seed of Practice-Labs.


Ricky Doyle
http://www.practice-it.co.uk/
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Of course we can! Lets get SMART

When I used to go to meetings to discuss IT training requirements I would ask the IT manager I was meeting to tell me where his teams skills gaps were. Based on that information we would provide a training solution to address these. Just like most any other training company I expect, until one meeting I was in the head of IT asked  me "why don't you tell me where my skills gaps are?" Of course we can I said, I think we have a web interface that we could use.

I went back to the office to tell the development guys what I had just promised, as you can imagine they were well please with me. But this little zealous behaviour has turned out to be one of our key services we now provide in our training approach. SMART (Skills Matrix Assessment Resource Tool) as we have called it has the ability to identify those weaker areas quickly, consistently and accurately. We use it as standard in all of our engagements to baseline knowledge before training and as measurement of the success of the training once completed.  

This may come accross as a bit "salesy" but in my opinion this has always been the problem with IT training. When I was in an IT support role there was never a constructive way to detemine what training I needed, my managers wanted to send me on training but because they were not that technical they did not know what courses were best so it was either left up to me to choose or simply I did not go on one. So whether it is SMART or another solution try to indentify where best to allocate your training budgets so that your IT teams get the training they actually need and not the training they think they need.   

Have a look at SMART in action!

Ricky Doyle
http://www.practice-it.co.uk/
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Practice-IT US Visit

Having made a few contacts in the States it was time to make a visit over there to show our friends what services we actually offer. On "display" were Practice-Labs and SMART, we actually had a proto-type of 3g as well. The people we met there are interested in re-selling these services along side their existing content portfolio.

The visit was very positive and we have signed 1 re-seller agreement since returning and some others looking very promising.

Who know we may have to move over there and change the name to Practice-US......


Ricky Doyle
http://www.practice-it.co.uk/
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