Examples on Increasing Productivity: Part 2 (For Managers)

A reader asked me a good question: "Would you provide concrete examples on how to increase the productivity of my Production Support team?" Although I'll answer with points that would be important for any team, not just Support, I'll provide examples that apply more directly to Production Support groups.

This is Part 2 of this article. Click on the link to go to Part 1.

The first thing you can do as a manager is to set high expectations for yourself and your team. This means two things set expectations and make sure they're challenging enough. One thing that has worked great for me is doing strategic planning at the beginning of every year with all my directs. We keep it simple. We identify things we'd like to improve about the applications we support (The Challenges). Then we come up with Action Items. Action Items define three things (Where we are, Where we want to be, and what we're going to do to get there). Incidentally, there's a technical name for just talking about the challenges and not coming up with what you're going to do to fix them...It's called complaining.

Make sure the action items achievable (yes, you can use SMART goals), but make sure they'll also challenge your team to do their best. Having clear guidelines and defined projects has worked wonders for the amount of work that my groups achieve. People don't come into work wondering what they're going to do. If the BAU work (incidents, service requests, etc.) is low, then it's time to pull out the plan and work on those strategic objectives. I review plan progress on a weekly basis and provide quarterly updates to senior management to ensure my directs' work is being highlighted and they're getting the right visibility level.

Keep a constant eye for ways to maximize the productivity of your team. Just because you have a plan doesn't mean you can't include important items on the go. Also, if something that was previously identified as important, no longer is, then remove it from the plan. Work only on those things that will add value to your group.

As I've said in prior posts, take time to reward and reinforce productive behaviors. Production Support teams go through a lot of stress and team members need to know that their work is not going unnoticed.

Finally, use your metrics to determine areas for improvement and to track how Productive your teams are being. If all the work you've planned to do is not having a positive impact on your Availability metrics, Support effort, Time tracking, etc., then you're not focusing on the right things. Keep the Purpose of Production Support in mind in everything that you do.

A Lesson Learned

We had reached a critical point in the meeting. For several weeks now, we'd been focused on defining a laundry list of projects that we were about to embark on. The goal was to standardize Support processes across the organization to achieve greater efficiencies in terms of: tracking metrics, managing incidents, monitoring and alerting, etc. You name it, we had it covered. All of the Support processes were to be same across the organization. Things were going to be much easier for everyone.

Right then, one of the managers declared that he had no interest in doing the work. So, we asked why. Was it a bandwidth concern? Was it a funding problem? Did she not find value in performing the work? The answer to all the questions was a No. So what was it we asked. Her response: "My manager simply doesn't care whether I do the work or not. She hasn't asked me to do it, so I don't think I really need to."

Someone else chimed in and said something quite similar.

There are several things we can learn from this story (true story, by the way). The first is for us Support managers out there:

Show your teams you care about their work.

Support teams go through a lot of stressful situations. It can be a thankless job. But if you as a manager don't take the time to acknowledge your group's efforts who will? There is nothing that kills momentum and initiative more than managers who don't recognize their groups' efforts. For Support teams, not having engaged managers who recognize the importance of the Support effort can be deadly: People get burnt out. The due diligence in monitoring goes away. They snooze on alerts instead of reacting aggressively. Or they simply feel too disengaged to work on those initiatives that can really make things better.

As managers we need to learn to take time to celebrate your teams' accomplishments. Send that thank you note or two. Gather the troops around and recognize that person who went the extra mile. A small cheer or clap might be all that's needed to re-energize that team member who used to be great but has fizzled out a bit.

For team members there's something to learn from this story as well:

Do the right thing.

Never stop doing the right thing, just because you don't think your manager cares. There's value in Availability metrics (this is a report on how well your apps are doing). Be relentless with Problem Management, this is what makes your applications more stable. Take on those projects that will help make it better all around. Never give up. Your efforts will be recognized. Who knows, perhaps one day you'll have the leadership of the group and you can be a different kind of manager.

In the end,We do what we do, not because our manager cares. We do it to enable a business. It takes a special person to wake up in the morning, know you're going to do Support and still come into the office with a smile on your face. In many respects the terms Application Support or Production Support don't really do justice to what we do.

So, keep the goal in mind and keep driving towards it. Your business will thank you for it and you'll feel much better about those daily achievements that come from Production Support.

Be a Part of the Solution: Be a Hero

Remember the purpose of Production Support? There are several things that we should consider doing, as individuals, in order to accomplish our purpose as a Production Support team:

1. Being flexible. I once knew a Production Support manager who's contention was that Production Support teams are "gatekeepers" of Production. This is a true statement. What wasn't true was his contention that any release that went into Production had to follow the Production Support procedures to a tee and that if the Development team didn't follow them, the Prod Support team should push back and delay the release. Does this meet the goal? The answer is no. Though we all want a perfect world, sometimes we need to be flexible in order to get to the goal. If the business needs a new feature urgently, to take advantage of a market opportunity, is it reasonable to expect them not to make money because Production Support didn't have all the documentation checked off? I don't think so. As with many things, finding the right balance between due diligence and meeting business objectives is an art.
2. Raising our hands. In all companies there are two types of people: those who do and those who don't. You've seen the ones who don't. They have an opinion about everyting in meetings. They're experts at letting you know what shouldn't be done and not what should be done. They're great at telling you that your approach won't work, despite evidence to the contrary. But when it comes time to do the actual work, they vanish. I always encourage Production Support team members to be the doers. All that stuff that no one wants to do, but which is important should be something that we should be willing to do. If our aim is to meet our purpose as a Production Support team: do that break-fix even though your stated SLA says you only do Level 2 Support, manage that special project which really should be done a different group, answer the call when someone asks in a meeting who will do the work and you hear silence. Remember not to argue over who's going to do it, as that takes more time, energy and money sometimes, than actually doing the work.
3. Doing the right thing. Many times it's difficult to do the right thing, especially when the number of issues has been high and you feel mentally and physically fatigued. At times, some of the most rewarding work can come when you push yourself a little and you do those things everyone hates doing. For example: clean up that monitoring system and find a way to remove that false-positive alert instead of just clearing it; create that ticket in the system even though the issue is already fixed; run that report and evaluate trends to make sure that the system won't run into issues. The more disciplined you are at doing those little things everyone hates doing, the easier the work will become for you and your teammates.

So be daring. Be a part of the solution, not the problem. Enable your business. In short, don't be afraid to be a hero.