Chris Foot

As I mentioned in my last post, our key capabilities at Remote DBA Experts are those that support our ability to be most proactive, responsive and effective.  Let me now expand upon each of the key capabilities.

Proactiveness Capabilities

Proactiveness is first and foremost an attitude. Thus, it comes from people and it starts with them.  That means we must look for this attitude in our recruiting and hiring process.  We hire individuals who are technically capable and meet many other criteria (see our hiring criterion here).  That is where it all starts.  Furthermore, we provide the individual with the ability to be most proactive by enabling proactivity with key capabilities.  In the case of Proactiveness, our primary aim is internal and customer problem prevention.

In order to be most efficient and effective at problem prevention, we focus our attention and investment on the key capability components:

• Key Information
• Key Processes
• Key Skills
• Key Sub Capabilities
• Key Tools
• Other

The first step is to identify these key items and then to ensure they are in place and available to the team.  This is where we focus our optimization efforts.

Here at Remote DBA Experts, our monitoring capability is the primary tool that enables us to predict and prevent problems and we place significant effort to that end.  In fact, this year we invested a lot of money and attention to this capability.  We have also established a new internal organization that is completely focused on problem prevention and customer responsiveness.  It is working out to be one of our best ideas ever!

Responsiveness Capabilities

Like Proactiveness, Responsiveness is also an attitude we look for in the folks we recruit and hire. In this area we have also made significant efforts and investments recently to enhance this capability.  We implemented a new CRM that is the key to improving and maintaining our ability to respond to our customers both internal and external.

Responsiveness involves four key aspects:

• Acknowledging
• Timely Action
• Updating
• Closure

Our Responsiveness Capabilities are focused on enabling these aspects. This ensures that we acknowledge customer requests quickly, take timely action, keep the customer informed along the way, and close the matter to the satisfaction of the customer.

Effectiveness Capabilities

For Remote DBA Experts, Effectiveness means accomplishing two primary things for our customers: Ensure the highest database environment availability and performance possible. That is it!  That is what being effective means to our team.

Our Effectiveness Capabilities focus on two areas: Activities and Tasks.

Activities

Activities are what I call the set of “meta-activities” people must do effectively in order to accomplish value delivering tasks and achieve the key results customer expect.  Effectively completing them is part of the sequence.

• Effective Preparation
• Effective Learning
• Effective Communication
• Effective Documentation
• Effective Search
• Effective Analysis
• Effective Collaboration
• Effective Research

To execute these activities most effectively, you need to clearly define each.  You need to know and understand what Effectiveness means for every one of them.  You need to know which of them are more vital to the end result.  Spending too much time and/or effort on less vital activities will affect their proverbial strength as a link in the chain.

Tasks

Tasks are what customers hire us to do for them.  Each of these tasks breaks down into many more “sub-tasks” for the lack of a better term.  However, the three tasks listed below capture the essence of the services we deliver.  Their effective completion is the ultimate contributor to us being most effective as a whole.  Database availability and performance directly depend on how well we proactively monitor and maintain the databases under our stewardship.  Furthermore, effectively preventing and resolving problems enhances our effectiveness.

• Effective Database Monitoring
• Effective Problem Management (prevention and resolution)
• Effective Database Maintenance

I hope this post gives you a better sense of our Key capabilities and how we go about them.  In my next post, I will delve into the Capability Maturity subject.  Thanks for reading!

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO

Key Capability Maturity Optimization: Key Capabilities is a post from: Remote DBA Experts

Recently I ran into an issue where I had a SQL Server instance that needed to have a database restored on it.  A pretty simple task, right?  Well, it turns out that I did not have rights on the system to do the restore.  My client did not have a system administrator password and did not have a user which we could use to grant us the necessary access.  But, I did have local system administrator privileges on the server.  As long as we have local admin rights on the server we can get the necessary privileges from SQL Server.

1. The first step to recovery is having the ability to bring the instance down.  We can do this a few different ways: either through Enterprise Manager (SQL Server Management Studio), services, or through Configuration Manager.  Once the instance is brought down we need to bring it up in single user mode using the ‘m’ flag.  I usually do this through the command prompt using ‘net start’ or you could put the trace flag in the startup parameter files; however you feel most comfortable.  Example: Bringing the default instance down and starting it back up in single user mode.



2. Use SQLCMD (2005-2008) or iSQL (2000) to connect to the instance.  Make sure that Object Explorer and applications are not connected to the instance.  You can also do this through SSMS or Query Analyzer. Example: Connect to the instance once in single user mode.



3. Add yourself as a user and grant yourself administrator privileges. Example: Adding a test user and giving it system administrator privileges.



4. Congratulations!  You have successfully given yourself administrator privileges, so now stop SQL Server and start it back up without the single user flag.

Tim Foley, Sr. SQL Server DBA

Recovering System Administrator Privileges is a post from: Remote DBA Experts

At Remote DBA Experts, we are constantly optimizing our key service capabilities.  We monitor the maturity and performance of all our key capabilities and ensure our efforts are ongoing to enable the best performance of those capabilities.  In the following series of posts, I will describe our model and approach to optimization.

To get started, I will define the following terms so we are on the same page during the rest of the posts in the series:

• Key Capabilities
• Capability Maturity
• Optimization
• Model

Key Capabilities

Capability is defined as the quality or ability of being capable.  A key capability is a mission-critical capability.  In our case, we have identified several key capabilities for our remote database administration services business.  Our mission is to deliver better and more service than in-house DBAs.  In order to accomplish our mission, we focus our effort on three main areas:

• Proactiveness
• Responsiveness
• Effectiveness

Hence, our Key Capabilities are all the things that enable us to be the most proactive, responsive and effective in delivering our remote DBA services.

Capability Maturity

Capability Maturity is simply the level of development and performance of the capability.  It involves three main aspects:

• Approach: The approach or strategy you take to make it happen
• Implementation: How well you implement it
• Results:  What results are produced by the capability

Optimization

This is the process of continuous improvement.  It means setting goals, objectives, and metrics for assessing performance and  taking action to optimize the capability based on how it performs.

The Model

The model we use to frame our key capabilities is simple and straightforward.  It includes five components we believe are critical to a capability’s performance:

• Information
• Processes
• Skills
• Sub-Capabilities: methods, tools, systems, etc.
• Other: control parameters, attitudes, etc.

In the following posts, I will delve into each of these and expand upon them with more detail and examples.  I hope you come back to read the series.

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO

Key Capability Maturity Optimization is a post from: Remote DBA Experts

As Maximizers, leaders are responsible for getting the most and best out of the human, physical and economic resources under their stewardship.  This is another critical aspect of leadership.  Nothing can kill a business like underutilized assets.  Leaders are responsible to monitor and manage this closely.  They need to place close attention to the maximization of all resources.

Leaders are responsible for three fundamental types of assets:

• Human: People
• Physical: Plant, equipment, and capabilities
• Financial: Balance sheet and income statement items

To be the most effective and efficient in this role, leaders need to set up goals and strategies to get the most and best out of their resources.

Getting the most and best out of human resources

In a book I read a while ago, The Breakthrough Company, Keith McFarland identifies strategies and skills that enable everyday companies to become extraordinary performers. According to his research, key managers in “breakthrough” companies have the ability to move away from spending time doing tasks and focus on spending time in three critical areas: Strategy, people and execution.

In the People area, the idea is to spend more time on activities that ensure you are getting the most out of your people. This does not mean “slave driving” or “watching over shoulders.” It means spending time finding out what makes people tick, challenging them, catching them doing good things and bad, and providing productive feedback to make sure they are engaged and aligned with your company’s mission.

Getting the most and best out of physical resources

Companies make significant investments in plants, equipment and capabilities critical to business operations.  Leaders must not only ensure these investments are made wisely during the pre-acquisition phase, but they must also ensure they are implemented, maintained, and fully utilized afterwards.

Underutilized space, capacity, features and functions must be identified and managed constantly.

Getting the most and best out of financial resources

Finally, leaders must keep an eye on the financial resources under their stewardship.  They need to make sure that they are making the best use of the cash they have on hand. They also need to ensure that collections remain in check, they have the best ratios (debt/equity, etc.) given their industry, budgets are under control, and loans are structured properly given the market conditions.

Maximizing is the final role in this series.  Leaders must be constantly vigilant of these four roles and the tasks thereof in order to be most effective in their position.  Depending on their level and the size of their organization, these roles change accordingly. Nevertheless, they are all critical to your success.  Structuring your agendas accordingly will enable you to fulfill them and accomplish your responsibilities as a leader much better.

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO

Four Key Leadership Roles: Maximizer is a post from: Remote DBA Experts

As Actualizers, leaders are responsible for ensuring the execution of the developed strategies and ensuing plans and tasks.  No ideas or strategies will come to fruition without making sure things happen.  Leaders must be vigilant of execution.  They need to make sure they and others follow-through as planned.  Many great ideas fall through the cracks and many strategies remain on paper because leaders fail to ensure execution.

What does Actualizing mean?

Actualizing means both getting things done and making sure things happen.  It is both a personal and a leadership activity. Actualizing is making sure that the key responsibilities of your role as a leader get executed.  When you do, you can lead by example.  If you do not do what you are supposed to do, you will have less integrity to ask others to do their part.

What is the Actualizing challenge?

Chuck Martin and his colleagues, Dr. Guare and Dr. Dawson, recently published their latest book, Work Your Strengths.  This book is based on the results of a two-year study of 2500 individuals in hundreds of American corporations both large and small.  The study was designed to help identify the strongest and weakest of 12 executive skills that Martin and his team identified in their previous book, Smarts.  This book is fantastic — A must read!  One of most interesting findings relevant to this post is the fact that “Task Initiation” came out as a common weakness across all categories of the studied subjects.  Employees, Managers, Directors, EVP/SVP, and C-level folks all have this as a weakness.  In a nut shell, it seems that we are all procrastinators.  Thus, actualization is a big challenge.

I also read recently that a VERY small percentage of strategic initiatives are actually seen to fruition in corporate America.

If all this is true, leaders who find ways to get things done and to make them happen across their organization may have a competitive advantage!

What does Actualizing entail?

Actualizing entails identification, prioritization and organization of critical role responsibilities, tasks, and action items for self and others.  In the context of this post, I will focus on actualizing the things that will make the biggest impact on accomplishing your aims.  Aim Accomplishment Strategies produce action plans that contain the action items necessary to get your aim accomplished.  To actualize your aim, you must make sure the plan is executed.  Everyone who has to take action needs to be held accountable for their part of the plan.  Very often, aim strategies and related plans are developed and launched, but mechanisms to ensure execution are not put in place to track progress. People then get distracted or busy and fail to follow-through, or they do so off schedule.   Leaders must set a process to ensure execution.  There are several mechanisms to help do this.  Regular meetings and reports are most commonly used. There are a number of software packages that can also be used to track project and schedule progress.

Lack of good follow-up and accountability can kill accomplishment.  When people do not do what they committed to do per plan, there probably was a failure in one of the early-on activity stages.  People who did not get the importance of the aim, strategy or action items will have less impetus to do what they are supposed to do.  People who were not energized or lost their “energy” somehow, will also lose their impetus.  Lastly, if people were not properly enabled with resources or capabilities, they will also have a harder time following-through.  One of my tendencies is to set out too many things to accomplish at the same time.  This tends to confuse people and causes poor follow-through as well. Lack of clarity can be a constraint to accomplishment.  I try hard to use the vital few (80/20) principle to keep me and my team from trying too much at once.  It helps!

When things are not getting done, look first at the early-on stages and make sure people are aligned, engaged and enabled.  If they are, look at the mechanisms in place (or missing) to track progress and hold them accountable.  My experience has been that fully aligned, energized, and enabled people need little prodding to do what they are supposed to do.  That is the power of clarity, motivational force, and enablers!  Keep an eye on them and you won’t need a big hammer to get things to happen.

To be more effective in this critical role, leaders must develop an action bias and effective approaches to ensure execution from self and others.

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO

Four Key Leadership Roles: Actualizer is a post from: Remote DBA Experts

As Strategizers, leaders are responsible for developing strategies to accomplish what they conceptualized.  Once leaders conceptualize, they need to develop ways to get from ideas to results.  Strategies provide approaches to ensure that a vision becomes a reality or that a product or service idea becomes a reality in order to produce revenue and profits.  Strategizing is critical to leaders!

What is Strategy?

Strategy is the approach you take to accomplish an aim. It is a series of actions and decisions designed to achieve a particular objective, expectation or goal. The purpose of a strategy is to guide you to accomplishment. Strategizing is the process of planning or choosing a strategy. Strategies are dynamic, rarely static. According to the results of his five-year study of over 7,000 companies, Keith McFarland, author of The Breakthrough Company, discovered that leaders of such companies spend a significant amount of time engaged in strategizing. He uncovered that it was the top activity these leaders engaged in day in and day out.

What Does Strategizing Entail?

As a process, strategizing involves multiple aspects:

• Crafting, or creating strategy
• Adopting, or implementing strategy
• Adjusting, or modifying strategy

On a daily basis, leaders are involved with multiple strategies devised to accomplish multiple aims. Because strategizing is such a dynamic process, leaders find themselves involved in a multitude of strategic efforts on a regular basis. They are constantly crafting, adopting, or adjusting strategies for their multiple aims. Furthermore, depending on the strategy’s level (organizational, departmental, or personal/individual) being worked on, others must be involved. This makes strategizing a very interesting, and sometimes complex, process that needs to be carefully orchestrated. The “classic” strategic framework, regardless of level, is fairly straight forward and involves seeking the answer to a few basic questions:

• What needs to be done?
• Why does it need to get done?
• Who needs to do what?
• When does it need to be done by?
• How does it (best) get done?

Many variables need to be considered based on the level of strategy, and on the impact and consequences it will have. The most important aspect to keep in mind is that the process is usually more important than the outcome itself. Strategies are rarely carved in concrete. It is rare to accomplish an aim with the exact strategy that was devised at the onset. Much can, and does change. Strategies need to be flexible. That is where the adapting aspect comes in and leaders need to spend time adjusting strategies to adapt to changing conditions and circumstances.

Strategy forces us to think critically. It requires that we stop, look, and listen. It requires asking and responding to questions. It requires the involvement of as many as possible and as practical. At the business strategic plan level, there are markets, competitors, employees, products, services, prices, economics, etc. Strategizing time is powerful time. That is why “Breakthrough” leaders spend so much time on strategies; both big and small, simple and complex. They are always crafting, adopting, or adapting some strategy at some level.

I hope this post gave you a better sense for this critical leadership role.  The strategizer role is critical if you want to make what you create as a conceptualizer a reality.

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO

Four Key Leadership Roles: Strategizer is a post from: Remote DBA Experts

As I mentioned in my last post, there are four critical leadership roles:

• Conceptualizer
• Strategizer
• Actualizer
• Maximizer

In this post, I will delve into the first role: Conceptualizer.

As Conceptualizers, leaders are responsible for crafting ideas, visions, goals and objectives for their organizations.   They must be creating constantly.  Business is very dynamic and requires constant flows of ideas in order to survive our challenging environment.  Things are always changing and business must adapt quickly. It is the leader’s primary responsibility to ensure the conceptualization of the aforementioned items.

Leadership is all about making things happen!  To make something happen, you must first conceptualize it by forming a clear image of it in your mind or on paper. Conceptualizing is about developing, conceiving, creating, crafting, or devising things such as:

• Ideas
• Solutions
• Decisions

Let’s delve into idea conceptualization.  Ideas are the life of business.    Without ideas, business would not exist!  Ideas give birth to businesses and keep them alive and thriving.  Creative business ideas are hard to come by.  There are several categories for business ideas:

• Growth ideas
• Profit ideas
• Other ideas

I have devised a four phase approach to idea conceptualization that leaders can use to help them ideate.  These phases apply to any of the categories above.

Phase 1: Framing

Framing provides context for the idea. The purpose of this process is to ensure the effort to generate ideas is efficient and effective.  The goal is to ensure ideas are generated in the context of the business goals and objectives as well as its environment.  The framing process requires certain inputs, takes a number of prescribed steps, and produces an output that feeds the next phase: Idea generation.

Phase 2: Idea Generation

Idea generation is the phase where you come up with a number of ideas regardless of anything.  Whatever comes to mind goes within the frame set in Phase 1.  Think and list whatever comes up.  Let the storm brew in your brain and gather any and all thoughts.  Quantity not quality is the goal at this stage.

Phase 3: Idea Evaluation

In this phase you take the list of ideas previously generated and you take a careful look at it.  There are many ways to sort through them.  You can use affinity diagrams to find common themes or you can look for similar ideas and combine them.  Once you have the list down to a manageable level, you need some criteria to evaluate them.

Phase 4: Idea Selection

Using the criterion you developed, go about choosing the most applicable ideas given your goal.  Ultimately, some gut feelings will come into play as you go about making the final selection.  Obviously, involving others in these processes can always add to the probability of success.

In the case of a growth idea, there are many approaches to grow your business:

• New, improved, or expanded products and/or services
• New, improved, or expanded processes
• New, improved, or expanded methods
• New, improved, or expanded markets
• New, improved, or expanded channels
• Etc.

As you can see, it can get complicated.  Having a well-planned process available to help you can make this a very effective and efficient endeavor.  Give it a try!

In my next post, I will delve into the next leadership role: Strategizer.  It is not enough to have great ideas.  Leaders must make them happen.  The next step to get ideas from paper to reality is to develop a strategy.  That’s what I will focus on in my upcoming post.

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO

Four Key Leadership Roles: Conceptualizer is a post from: Remote DBA Experts

In my next blog series, I will explore four key roles that leaders play in business:

• Conceptualizer
• Strategizer
• Actualizer
• Maximizer

When you boil it down, these four roles capture the essence of leadership.  Leaders in all realms of leadership spend a great deal of time doing things that fit one of these four areas:

Conceptualizing

As Conceptualizers, they are responsible for crafting ideas, visions, goals and objectives for their organizations.   Leaders must be creating constantly.  Business is very dynamic and requires constant flows of ideas in order to survive our challenging environment.  Things are always changing and business must adapt quickly. It is the leader’s primary responsibility to ensure the conceptualization of the aforementioned items.

Strategizing

As Strategizers, they are responsible for developing strategies to accomplish what they conceptualized.  Once leaders conceptualize, they need to develop ways to get from ideas to results.  Strategies provide approaches to ensure that a vision becomes a reality or  that a product or service idea becomes a reality in order to produce revenue and profits.  Strategizing is critical to leaders!

Actualizing

As Actualizers, they are responsible for ensuring the execution of the developed strategies and ensuing plans and tasks.  No ideas or strategies will come to fruition without making sure things happen.  Leaders must be vigilant of execution.  They need to make sure they and others follow-through as planned.  Many great ideas fall through the cracks and many strategies remain on paper because leaders fail to ensure execution.

Maximizing

As Maximizers, they are responsible for getting the most and best out of the human, physical and economic resources under their stewardship.  This is another critical aspect of leadership.  Nothing can kill a business like underutilized assets.  Leaders are responsible to monitor and manage this closely.  They need to place close attention to the maximization of all resources.

In my next post, I will explore each of the four roles in more depth.  I hope you will read them and find them useful.

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO

Four Key Leadership Roles is a post from: Remote DBA Experts

As a DBA who services numerous customers and clients, an issue that crops up relatively often is the need for more disk space. As an organization you do have options:

1. Trim your data
2. Buy new disks
3. Truncate your data (Yeah right!!)

For most organizations these are truly not options at all. With the release of SQL Server 2008, one feature that can immediately address this concern with minimal side effects is backup compression. Here are some stats collected against the adventureworks database:

Uncompressed

Processed 23016 pages for database ‘AdventureWorks2008′,
file ‘AdventureWorks2008_Data’ on file 1.

Processed 36 pages for database ‘AdventureWorks2008′,
file ‘FileStreamDocuments’ on file 1.

Processed 1 pages for database ‘AdventureWorks2008′,
file ‘AdventureWorks2008_Log’ on file 1.

100 percent processed.

BACKUP DATABASE successfully processed 23053 pages in 10.842 seconds (16.610 MB/sec).

Compressed

Processed 23016 pages for database ‘AdventureWorks2008′,
file ‘AdventureWorks2008_Data’ on file 1.

Processed 36 pages for database ‘AdventureWorks2008′,
file ‘FileStreamDocuments’ on file 1.

Processed 2 pages for database ‘AdventureWorks2008′,
file ‘AdventureWorks2008_Log’ on file 1.

100 percent processed.

BACKUP DATABASE successfully processed 23054 pages in 5.975 seconds (30.142 MB/sec).

The compressed backup took 4 seconds less and was 75% smaller.

Think about the potential gain once this technology is applied to vldb (very large databases). There is an extreme amount of potential savings in disk space just by utilizing backup compression. With the release of SQL Server 2008 R2, not only are these features available in the Enterprise Edition but these features are also available in Standard Edition.

Thanks,

James Shropshire MCDBA, MCITP SQL Server

Backup Compression in SQL Server 2008 is a post from: Remote DBA Experts

Motivation influences how we make decisions.    According to the expectancy theory proposed by Victor Vroom, employees in an organization are the most motivated when they think an effort will result in better performance, and that better performance can lead to rewards they value.  Based on the same theory, Professor Richard W. Scholl of the University of Rhode Island poses that motivational force accomplishes three things:

• Energizes behavior
• Directs behavior
• Sustains behavior

Let’s explore each of them.

Energizing behavior

Motivational force gets us going.  It gives us impetus to take on an effort. It provides energy to sustain the effort and overcome the challenges and obstacles that always come with worthwhile endeavors.

Directing behavior

It directs our attention towards the things we believe are necessary to accomplish what we set out to do.  It informs our judgment to help make decisions that will be consistent with the aim.

Sustaining behavior

It helps us keep up with whatever we have to do to accomplish our aim or commitment.  It provides oxygen to our persistence and perseverance muscles.

The following diagram, developed by Professor Scholl, depicts motivational force in an equations format.  It further defines and explains the concept:  Motivation = Valence x Expectancy(Instrumentality). This means that motivational force is the product of our perception of the chances or probability that an effort will produce valuable results times the probability that the outcome of our efforts will lead to expected reward times the value we place on the expected reward.

Here are three questions I developed to inform my own decisions and to assess others’ motivation towards assignments and responsibilities assigned to them.

• Can I/you get it done?
• What will I/you get from doing it?
• How important is what I/you will get for me/you?

If you find yourself or others not fully engaged in something, use these questions to explore motivational forces and decision-making approaches affecting job performances.

There are many more motivation theories.  I have found this one to be the most useful at work.  I hope it works for you too.

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO

How We Decide – Motivation is a post from: Remote DBA Experts

The current unfortunate situation in the Gulf of Mexico has made me very aware of the importance of risk awareness.  Risks are everywhere.  We take them all the time. Sometimes we are not even aware of the risks involved or the consequences those risks entail.

Databases are at the heart of today’s corporations.  They make a business tick.   It never ceases to amaze me what we find when we first take over the administration of new customers’ database environments.    It surprises me how some of these businesses have been able to operate without major disasters for some time.  The risk level of many of these environments would make some CEOs and other stakeholders sick.  Not only do we find problems with the environment, but we also find environments without proper backup and recovery setups.  So we have unstable environments, some with high rates of on-going change and several with poor backup/recovery capabilities.  OOPS!!!  By the way, not every environment we inherit is that bad.  We have also seen some very well setup and stable environments.

This situation begs several questions:

• What decisions lead to environments rid with risk?
• Are folks at these companies cognizant of such risk?
• Are IT managers and professionals as risk-sensitive as they should be?

Risk assessments involve two primary dimensions.  The first dimension is severity and the second is probability.  The figure below illustrates the relationship between the two dimensions and the resulting risk level given each of the magnitudes.

Risk mitigation and management starts by identifying the probability or likelihood of database availability and or performance issues and the impact such issue would have on your business.  With those data points in hand, you can determine the level of risk and thus the urgency of attention and action required to reduce your risk.  Risk management is a highly proactive decision-making process.  The first step is to become highly aware of the fact that risks exist and are always lurking out there.   Once you acknowledge this fact, then you need to take the steps to develop a risk mitigation strategy and plan.

Risk should be a key part of most decisions we make regardless.  Risks exist 24x7x365. They are unavoidable but they are manageable.

Here are a few questions to ponder:

• Do you know what your risks are?
• Are you managing them?
• Do you keep them in mind when you make decisions?

Just make sure your IT shop has no unstoppable database leaks in the making.

To learn more about the impact of database risk and our mitigation approach visit our risk mitigation section of the website.

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO

How We Decide – Risks is a post from: Remote DBA Experts

There is a field of forces that plays into our decisions.  Identifying, visualizing, and analyzing these forces can be a useful exercise for important decisions.  I have devised a form to help you do this easily.  Your intention or the decision you want to make goes in the center box.  The driving forces go in the left hand boxes and the restraining forces go in the right hand boxes.

Notice that there are three levels of boxes on each side.   This is intended to help you explore the driving and restraining forces further.  Sometimes, these forces need further exploring in order to get to the root or true meaning of them.  By providing two additional levels of space on each side of the forces, you can think and identify critical aspects of the meaning a force may have to you.  Simply ask why the force is the force a couple of times until the true or root force emerges.  When we can visualize what drives or constrains us, our decision-making process  becomes easier.  Give it a try!

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO

How We Decide – The Field of Forces is a post from: Remote DBA Experts

The human brain is lazy.  It does not like to work very hard.  This is a scientific fact!  Our brain is “programmed” to conserve energy.  This is because it needs to be ready to operate under danger (mostly from the olden days).  Thinking too hard takes energy and uses brain resources that can peg our “CPUs.”  Thus, our brain has devised mechanisms to avoid resource overload.  Hence, we make assumptions all the time.  Assumptions are perceived truths.  They are things we believe to be true, but may not be so.  We presuppose with little or no facts.  We make connections where none may exist.  Stereotyping is a classic form of assumption.  Unchecked assumptions can get us in trouble and make our decisions weak and costly.

When dealing with important matters, it is critical that we keep this important human frailty in mind.  We must examine our own and others’ assumptions before critical choices are made.   Assumptions that have supporting evidence are considered to be warranted assumptions.  Those that do not have supporting evidence are unwarranted assumptions.   When we read there are implicit and explicit assumptions.  We must be vigilant for all assumptions and must surface as many as possible if we are to make the best decision.

While assuming is driven by the brain’s attempt to save energy, it can also become a habitual thing.  The more we assume the more energy the brain saves and the more it wants to save.  That is what habits are—ways for the brain to conserve energy.  To break out of it we need to keep assumptions in the forefront by reminding ourselves and questioning others about it.   Remember, we are looking for false or incorrect assumptions, those without merit or factual basis.

One way to surface assumptions is to use perspectives.  Two popular metaphors for such process are: “Walking in someone else’s shoes” and “wearing someone else’s hat.”

When we look at things from different perspectives we can surface assumptions in ourselves and others.  Another way is to ask questions to clarify needs, wants, beliefs, conclusions, etc.  As a leader, this is one of the most critical roles you can play.  Asking people what they mean by their statements, where they got the facts that led them to a conclusion, etc. can help change habits and force everyone to drop unwarranted assumptions and work to dig facts.  Don’t let the brain be lazy—make it work for the money.

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO

How We Decide – Assumptions is a post from: Remote DBA Experts

This post is dedicated to the subject of blunders.  Since this is a post about how we decide, I will delve into a number of reasons why we make mistakes or blunders.  In preparation for this blog series on decision-making, I read a few articles and books.  One of them was a book written by Zachary Shore titled Blunder.  In his book, he identifies seven reasons why smart people make blunders.  A blunder is defined as a stupid, careless, or thoughtless mistake.  Let’s explore a few of these reasons.

Fear of being seen as weak

Many decisions we make are made out of fear of being perceived by others as a weak person. Depending on the meaning “being weak” has to a person and the implications they attach to such perception by others can lead to distorted judgment and “good” blunders.

Thinking others think like we do

This is probably a very common issue for many of us.  The truth is every human sees things differently.  We filter stimuli, the things we see, hear, etc. according to our own map of the world.  Our map develops from our experiences.  While we can agree and reach common ground, the meaning, value or importance we give to things are different.  Assuming others see, hear, and more importantly, understand the same is highly unlikely.

Confusing causes of complex events

According to one of the laws of Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline, “Cause and effect are not closely related in time and space. There is a fundamental mismatch between the nature of reality in complex systems and our predominant ways of thinking about that reality.  The first step in correcting that mismatch is to let go of the notion that cause and effect are close in time and space.”  We must be keenly aware of this fact.  When we make decisions based on false assumptions regarding its cause, the solutions we choose will ultimately not solve the problem or prevent it from recurrence.

In order to prevent blunders, we must become as present as possible to reality and avoid our habitual thinking pattern from interfering with the decision process.

As I suggested in my last post, making a list of these blunder drivers can help you remember the possibility that one or more of these can get in the way of the best decision.  It may save you from some unnecessary pain and sorrow later.

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO

How We Decide – Blunders is a post from: Remote DBA Experts

In this post, I will continue my discussion on how we make decisions.  I will specifically focus on a mechanism the human brain devised to help us deal with decision-making.  According to the Wikipedia definition, cognitive bias is a human tendency to draw incorrect conclusions in certain circumstances based on cognitive factors rather than evidence.

Biases can emerge from several mental processes.  However, I believe that these biases are easy ways out for us to cope with the sometime difficult process of making decisions.  Similar to the way we delete, distort and generalize the information received by our senses, biases may be a way for our mind to short-cut the decision process.  We have to make so many decisions so often that it can be overwhelming.  The lazy brain facilitates this by enabling us to bypass the difficult process substituting thoughts for facts or reality.

The following list includes some of the most commonly used biases.  The idea is to keep a few of them in mind when making critical decisions that may be better done with facts or based on reality as opposed to one or more of these so called biases.  This particular list includes biases that are commonly applied in business judgment scenarios.

• Avoiding options for which missing information makes the probability seem unknown.
• Relying too heavily on a single piece of information or past experience when making decisions.
• Neglecting relevant data when discerning correlations or associations.
• Valuing something based on the opinion of someone who is seen as an authority on the topic.
• Estimating what is more likely by what is more available in recent memory.
• Seeing patterns where no patterns exist.
• Believing that the closer the average performance is to a target, the tighter the distribution of the data set.
• Assuming that specific conditions are more probable than general ones.
• Selling assets that have increased in value but hold assets that have decreased in value.
• Thinking that future probabilities are altered by past events, when in reality they are unchanged.
• Performing differently when we know we are being observed.
• Seeing past events as being predictable.
• Supposing a relationship between a certain type of action and an effect.
• Believing that someone must know what is going on.
• Neglecting known odds when reevaluating odds in light of weak evidence.
• Expecting a given result and unconsciously manipulating an experiment or misinterpreting data in order to get it.
• Being over-optimistic about the outcome of planned actions.
• Ignoring an obvious negative situation.
• Overestimating the probability of good things happening to them.
• Perceiving vague images or sounds as real, significant, or important.
• Weighing initial events more than subsequent ones.
• Weighing recent events more than earlier events.
• Expecting extreme performance to continue.
• Distorting evidence or data by the way data is collected.
• Expecting a member of a group to have certain characteristics without having actual information about that individual.
• Judging probability of the whole to be less than the probabilities of the parts.
• Perceiving something to be true if beliefs demand it to be true.
• Concentrating on the people or things that survived some process and ignoring those that didn’t.
• Arguing that a strategy is effective given the winners, while ignoring the large number of losers.
• Believing that recent events appear to have occurred more remotely and remote events appear to have occurred more recently.
• Selecting or adjusting a hypothesis after the data is collected, thus making it impossible to test the hypothesis fairly.

This list is by no means a comprehensive one.  I suggest you do more research to learn additional biases.  Ultimately, we all fall prey to these and many more biases.  Accepting that we may do so and paying close attention to other’s and our own decisions can help us avoid making poor decisions due to one or two of these biases.  Create a list of those you may be most prone to and keep it handy to use a checklist for critical personal or business decisions.  Doing so can go a long way in improving your and other’s judgment.

The BEST is Yet to Come!

Epi Torres, CEO

How We Decide – Biases is a post from: Remote DBA Experts

The Perils of the IT Profession

One of the common challenges that all technicians face, no matter what area of IT they work in, is the absolute attention to detail our profession demands. Switch a couple of characters in a script, forget to set your SID, set the wrong flag at the wrong time and the end result usually isn’t very pretty. Many commands we issue on a regular basis are destructive by their very nature.

If you never make mistakes, send me a resume. I’m always looking for a “Patron Saint of IT” here at Remote DBA Experts. It will also save us on travel costs because I’m sure you’ll be able to spread your wings and fly here on your own.

Then there’s the software glitches. The problems that pop up out of the blue and make you go:

“WHAT THE? – How did THAT happen? I’ve done this 317 times in a row and it worked every time.”

For you math majors, here’s my calculation for one of the Foot Principles of IT Support:

CLOSER YOU ARE TO PRODUCTION TURNOVER

+ THE GREATER THE VISIBILITY OF THE PROJECT

= THE MORE LIKELY A PREVIOUSLY UNKNOWN SOFTWARE GLITCH WILL OCCUR

I don’t care what software you are using, you will run into the “only occurs on this release, on this version of the operating system, using this particular feature on the third Tuesday of the sixth month when it’s cloudy outside” BUG. Be sure to expect management to stop by and ask “well, why didn’t you test this on the third Tuesday of the sixth month when it was cloudy outside?”

Finally, there are the hardware problems that we have all come so accustomed to and fond of.   It’s that triple redundant, super fault tolerant, titanium based, twice-the-price component that you just got management to sign off on a few months ago.    The one that your hardware vendor assured you would solve all of your performance and availability problems.   The component they described as “state-of the art and self healing”.  Fixes itself, they said.

The one that forced you to create that 15 page justification document with all the pretty charts and graphs stating that this piece of hardware will still be running in the year 2040.   The component that just decided to flake out and take down your entire online, 10-thousand dollar a minute web-based ordering system.  You then call the vendor and they say “yeah, we’ve heard about that happening occasionally – we thought we got that fixed.”

Root Cause Corrective Action Reports

A customer that is affected by an application outage or slowdown needs to have a firm understating on  what caused the problem, the activities performed to correct the problem and the action items that will be undertaken to mitigate or prevent the problem from occurring again.

The Root Cause Corrective Action Document provides information on the underlying causal factors that generated the problem and a timeline of events that occurred during the problem event. This ensures that all problems are properly analyzed and that all steps are taken to prevent future occurrences.  This is a key component of our problem resolution strategy in addition to obtaining customer feedback on the quality of our problem resolution capabilities.

I can’t stress the importance of using some form of problem notification document.   A customer that is unsure of “what happened” is going to an unhappy customer.   Giving your customer a clear picture of the problem event and the steps you will take to prevent the problem’s reoccurrence  shows them that the quality of their environments is IMPORTANT TO YOU and you do NOT TAKE PROBLEMS LIGHTLY.    The time you spend crafting the Root Cause Correction Action Document will pay big dividends in customer happiness.

The Root Cause Correction Action Document’s components are fairly simple.   Here’s a brief description of each of the sections:

Heading

The heading section contains the customer name, document date, numeric document identifier, the date the problem occurred and the person preparing the document.

Problem Definition

A clear, concise definition of the exact problem.   You need to remember that not everyone reading your document will have a technical background.   Leave the technical mumbo-jumbo out of it.   You are trying to inform your customer of the event NOT confuse them.

Business Impact

What was the impact on their business?  Don’t sugar coat it.   Tell them that the failure caused a 14 hour outage on their production ERP system.   The business impact of the example shown below would be “A 37 minute delay occurred in replication between server ORAPGH and DB2DEL.  During this time DB2DEL reports did not provide current data.”

Event Timelines

This is a chronological timeline of the events that led to the problem (if you know what they are), and the steps that were taken to correct the issue.  Include every step that occurred up to and including verifying that the fixed system was indeed operational.   Here’s an example:

Wednesday May 5, 2010

18:08    Remote DBA Experts’ log monitor for the replication engine determined that replication was not successfully occurring between the two production platforms (ORAPGH and DB2DEL)

18:10     Remote DBA Experts notifies Delaware business units that data replication has stopped and reports being generated will not be current.

18:15     As a recommended action previously provided by the software vendor, Remote DBA Experts stopped and started the replication engine on both platforms.

18:30    Remote DBA Experts verified that the replication engine was running and restarts replication processes.

18:45     Remote DBA Experts verifies that replication was successfully occurring between ORAPGH and DB2DEL.

18:47     Remote DBA Experts begins monitoring the delay to determine the length of time it will take the replication engine to resynchronize the data between ORAPGH and DB2DEL.  Delay estimation is calculated to be 15 minutes.

19:00    Monitors show that both environments are synchronized.

19:05    Remote DBA Experts notifies Delaware business units that replication is occurring and all data is current.

19:10    Logs and trace files are collected and a Severity One problem is initiated with software vendor.

Thursday May 6, 2010

07:00   Software vendor contacts Remote DBA Experts support personnel.  States that problem was caused by a previously unidentified software bug.  Recommends upgrading product to newest release (we’ve never heard that one before).

Problem Root Cause

The underlying causal factor that created the problem event.  In the case above, the root cause was due to a software code issue that caused replication to terminate abnormally.

Contributing Factors

There are times when the problem is exacerbated by contributing factors.  In our example, if a long running job prevented us from successfully stopping the replication engine (leading to a longer outage), we would include a description of that issue in this section.

Resolution

This section contains the actual steps that were taken to correct the problem.   It does not restate the steps in chronological order.   It is a brief description of the activities taken to correct the issue.

Future Prevention

The Future Prevention Section is the most important component of the Root Cause Corrective Action document.  This section provides the steps that you will take as a service provider to ensure that the problem does not reoccur.    It contains a list of action items, the person responsible for completing that action item and a date the action item will be complete.

Signature Section

Signed by the technicians involved with the problem and a member of the service provider management team.

The Importance of Following Up
If you have been reading my previous blogs, you know that we feel so strongly about customer feedback at Remote DBA Experts that we have created a customer feedback strategy called “The Customer Feedback Engine.” We have established multiple communication flows to ensure that we receive feedback from all of the personnel that we support including management, DBAs, developers and end-users.

One of the key strategies is the role our Service Assurance Manager plays.  Remote DBA Experts’ Service Assurance Manager contacts all customers when a problem occurs.  Whether or not we caused the problem is immaterial.  We feel that is our responsibility as a service provider to let our customers know that their application’s performance and availability is important to us.

As my old boss Dan Pizzica used to tell me (when I was a VERY junior technician) “It really doesn’t make a difference who or what broke YOUR database (strong emphasis on the word YOUR). You are the technician who is ultimately responsible for fixing it. The buck stops with you. If you can’t protect your environments, you aren’t doing your job.” We all know he’s absolutely correct.

Wrap-up
It was not the intent of this blog to coerce readers into using the Root Cause Corrective Action information we provide to customers here at Remote DBA Experts verbatim.  It was to promote the benefits that a structured, well thought out problem notification document provides to all of us who are responsible for keeping our customer’s environments highly available and high performance.

Thanks for Reading,

Chris Foot
Oracle Ace
Director Of Service Delivery

Root Cause Corrective Action Reports is a post from: Remote DBA Experts