“Pro-active Maintenance" - Section 11 of 14: THE DATA ARCHITECTURE CONSTRUCTION PROJECT (free excerpts)

This is the eleventh part of the chapter titled “The Data Architecture Construction Project”, from the book “The Data Garden And Other Data Allegories”.

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Pro-active Maintenance

Turning your attention to the Head of Infrastructure Maintenance, you confirm to him that you know that there is still a need to react to urgent maintenance needs, especially where the safety of data people is at risk.

However, building on what you’ve just said about the Strategic Architecture team, you would like the Architects to be involved in any significant maintenance works, because there may be opportunities to use new technologies and techniques, to improve the longevity of repairs and also make them easier to maintain and build on in the future.

Before there’s a chance for a disagreement to be raised about this, you hold up your hand and continue assertively. You respect and appreciate the expertise of the people who have been using tried-and-tested technologies for a long time. You are not dismissing their value and you just want the right solutions to be implemented for the right jobs. If old technologies are the right things to use, then they should be used. However, if they’re not, then it’s important to be honest with ourselves about this and to consider better alternatives. By involving the Architects, the Infrastructure team can teach them about the old technologies, so they can learn the best ways to use them, and at the same time, the Architects can teach the Infrastructure team about new tools and techniques, so they can be upskilled and be even more useful and effective in the future. If both teams enter into this with open minds, it will be a win-win scenario for everyone involved.

Next, you address the reactive nature of the team and how important it is to be more proactive. Whilst responding to emergencies is undoubtedly critical for the health and wellbeing of data people using the town, doing everything this way is inefficient and unsustainable. The team will be under far more stress working in this way and they could also end up missing important opportunities because they’re so busy just dealing with the tasks immediately in front of them. In order to help with this, you’ll be asking the Programme Delivery team to provide support and would like to encourage the Infrastructure team be open to their advice and guidance. 

Finally, in order to support the more pro-active management of the data infrastructure across the town, you would like the team to start reporting on the condition of the data structures that they’re fixing, and also to start monitoring the data people and data cars that are using the infrastructure. Without knowing the condition of the data structures and how they are being used, it will be impossible to know which ones need the most attention and why.

There’s a bit of a pause, as you observe the reactions around the room again. You can still see some concern on some people’s faces, but there’s been a lot less resistance than there could have been, and no-one’s actually complained yet. You take a breath and continue. 

______________________________


I hope you’ve enjoyed this excerpt. 

If you are interested in reading more, please do check the book out on Amazon:

  • The Data Garden on Amazon.CO.UK
  • The Data Garden on Amazon.COM

    • Thanks for reading!


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