Frozen Zone Sneakers

A « Frozen Zone » is a well known concept of the IT Production : at some critical calendar dates, all changes will be frozen (ie : blocked, not iced) to allow a « smooth » run of some vital jobs. Typical frozen zones include the last and first days of the month, quarter and year (to allow accountancy matching, invoicing or inventory check-up for example). Some frozen zone can be declared in summer, while all the technical experts are away on vacation, or when a critical production run is performed for an usual order in a factory…

The “Frozen Zone” comes with two paradigms:

First, it’s a further proof that one of the foremost (the main?) causes of incidents are changes (many of those being corrections to previous changes).

Second, no matter what you do, you can’t change human nature (even with process consultants): some people will always try to sneak around the Frozen Zone, by obtaining derogations for THEIR changes.

Those people tend to be (according to their own opinion of course), “the only ones who’ve got a real job”…

That’s why, even in Frozen Zone, critical incidents occur, by the fault of changes…

Premium IT Service

Customer relationship is not always easy... But after all, we must keep in mind that we’re running computers, not space shuttles nor jetfighters (even if the cost is the same). It is very unusual for a IT Production to have lives at stake (well maybe those who work for hospitals). Most of us work in offices, endangered only by back pain and dry air conditioner. So, when tone is rising in meetings, when clients and techies are angered, when people insult and threaten each other, keep cool and relax: it’s just about machines, we’re not killing or saving people!

And remember: always try to deliver the best service for your clients, within the scope of your SLA!

the return of the CAB - real life experiment

People can’t help it : their changes are always either “urgent”, “most urgent”, “critical break fix” or “an emergency”. No matter how well (and how lean) you design and run your change process, there will always be a lot of “bypass” (or attempts at least). Perhaps the true solution lies elsewhere, far from our ITIL reflections. Perhaps people just have to understand and above all accept that they are not alone on earth nor the centre of thereof. There are other people around us, with equally important claims for urgent changes and swift incidents resolution.

Perhaps ITIL is about people, after all… Not about computers…

Improve the service! (or at least, think about it!)

Summer : time for holidays, traffic jams, desert open-spaces, and (for those happy enough to remain at work), budgets elaboration…

As usual, vital projects are “arbitrated” (cut in half) while costly consulting missions are commissioned to produce emergency advices on how to improve the services… However, their recommendations will (probably) imply vital projects. Projects that will have to wait at least a year to begin (meaning that most of the recommendations will be obsolete). Projects that will be cut in half, just to be sure we still have enough money to pay for both the new consultants and the old – now meaningless- projects, dragging desperately behind the schedule…

Sounds familiar?

Paint It Black

No matter how many layers of paint you lay, no matter how fashionable it is, a good paint will NEVER fix a broken engine...

Improvement of the Customer Relationship needs, from time to time, to REALLY improve the service, and not only the way we report on it... :)

I Got a New Job

That's true, "Happy IT" lay dormant for many weeks, idle as an unplugged, unmonitored broken cluster of obsolete servers.

But now we're back into business.

I got a new job, about Operational Risk Management, I'm knee-deep into Basel II, and more eager than ever to publish stupid strips on the most laughable aspects of the "IT Services Production" and its relevant "Best Practices"