25 Apr
2018
25 Apr
'18
8:49 a.m.
I don't like to lie to clients. Moving a connector should only
take a few minutes.
However, if they blew it on transferring the configuration from the
old switch/router to the new one, it could take hours to get it
fixed while they troubleshoot it. Thus there is no way to give a
reasonable window and then beat it; any estimate that you're
guaranteed to come in under would be several hours.
If you tell people hours and it then only takes a few minutes,
you still get people bothering you with "is it done yet?" because
they didn't even see the interruption and were expecting to be down
for hours.
If there's one lesson I've learned in 30+ years of running networks,
it's that you can't win in this game.
- Brian
On Wed, Apr 25, 2018 at 01:27:45PM +0000, pete M wrote:
Thanks Brian for the head up. But please dont give you
such short time latitude to make the switch.
I used to do service maintenance in security system ( access control and camera system
integration was my principal stuff) And when upgrading a site I always gave me 4 time the
usual time I needed. Let say I planned to do the work in 15 minute, I would always advice
the user that it would take 1 hours, maybe a bit more..
My user where always happy to see the job done in much less time or just in time when
something went wrong ;-)
this help a lot to manage the expectation of the user.
There is notthing more exasperating to manage then a mid executive asking, is it done
yet? when you work on a technical problem.