author Shida released on March 3, 2015 Column Introduction "Best practices for efficient operation and maintenance" is a boutique column launched by Infoq in 2015, written by Touch technology operations Director Shida, INFOQ Editor-in-chief Ben Linders.
Preface
This column of the first article won a lot of peer approval, but also by a number of technical big guy forward, like, it is unexpected. Excitement, trepidation, reasoning, only continue to code word, can chat table thanks. I wish you happiness and joy in the goat.
Spring Festival just past, the vast majority of friends are also facing new work pressure. Let everybody distress is, I ability so good, why not happy? How can make the work not so tired heart, how can have more accomplishment feeling? Do you even have a chance to be happy?
Generally, happiness is largely a matter of external identity (and self-identification based on it), such as the appreciation of outside departments, leaders, or colleagues. There should be only a handful of people who can be self-absorbed without being externally identified (that is, how powerful the heart is).
the reason that causes the technical staff not to be happy is numerous, this article mainly aims at the individual self-management easy to appear four big problems , analyzes its origin, and attempts to give some suggestions for improvement. Due to limited space, as for the technical, process specifications and other aspects of the issue, after a single open topic in-depth analysis.
This article is slightly longer and the main directory structure is as follows:
1. Excessive pursuit of technological progress
2. Unclear priorities
2.1 to classify things correctly
2.2 Key to first things
2.3 Principles of doing things, sorting principles
2.4 How to better answer orders?
2.5 Courage to say no, reasonable refusal
3. Poor expression
4. Love complaining
4.1 complaints and their nature
4.2 The Essence of active initiative
4.3 Co -operation
All right, let's get started.
1. Excessive pursuit of technological progress and suggestions for improvement
technicians sometimes go too far in pursuit of personal technological progress, unintentionally confusing the difference between personal growth and company requirements. Such results tend to reduce customer satisfaction, that is, the demand side of our work is not recognized. This kind of non-identity, will be manifested in various forms, and counterproductive to our own body.
For example, a new business requirement, after analysis, well, there are two scenarios: 1) Adopt new technology, about 1 weeks to complete. You can use a new open source software that you have been watching for a long time, it looks double benefit: personal technology has the opportunity to progress, and is to serve the company's projects; 2) adopt the old routine, 3 days to complete. But there is no technical content, a bunch of shell scripts to piece together, for the individual is repetitive work, and the implementation is not elegant.
which plan will we choose? In practice, the majority of new technology is used. Technical staff (especially those with strong technical skills) are inevitably self-confident about their personal abilities, and subconsciously think that they are great and that any problem can be solved basically. So confidently with the needs of the Department of Chest, and then the result is ... (You know, it's postponed again.) )
new technology may lead to time is not controllable, open source products may be bugs, halfway encountered problems on the trouble: the community is not perfect (post half a day no one back), online search is not a useful solution. On the contrary, the old routine time controllable, even close eyes can Zhou. There are almost ready-made scripts, east to change the west to change, out of the problem is also good to solve, if the business is very tight, buy a few more filling a cow plus overtime, to ensure delivery on schedule.
in fact, the demand department doesn't care what technology we use (and they don't need to care). For them, OPS is a black box, and they know only two of the output: it's done, it's not done. The demand department most helpless is, the technical personnel did not take care of, and then took a pile of not understand the technical analysis repeated commentary, but also have to compensate for smiling face, pretend to understand slightly.
What is the right approach?
first of all, subjectively, need to curb their own technical impulse; second, anticipate the risks in advance, feel a little bit more difficult, choose the old-fashioned method. Deliver business requirements on time, then take advantage of idle time and engage in new technology implementations.
in this way, happy. Although there is no business pressure, the completion time of new technology will be much longer. But in any case, the nature of things has shifted--from corporate demand to personal problems.
2. Unclear priorities and suggestions for improvement
Ops people actually have a lot of time to deal with their daily business needs. In other words, it is not uncommon to deal with failures all the while. Therefore, the same proportion of the outside recognition of our degree, to a large extent, depends on our daily work delivery capacity.
unclear priorities are a common problem, such as: 1 new employees, just participated in the work for several years, each business staff said their needs are important emergency, can be so much time, and want to good performance, so rushed; 2) old staff, multiple needs, problems come, then also unavoidably rush.
just a rush to say, if this leads to man-made accidents, business interruption, system instability, loss of major customers, important internal customer dissatisfaction, the impact of corporate decision-making support, then more trouble, and will seriously damage their self-confidence and credibility value.
so, how to avoid this kind of thing to happen? Can be improved from the following aspects.
2.1 to classify things correctly
when you have more than 5 jobs on hand, you need to classify them. According to the difference of time urgency and importance degree, it can be divided into urgent, not urgent, important and unimportant. All kinds of work at hand, you can make a whiteboard, according to four quadrants, color paste on the sticky.
This figure is believed to have been known to many people. Now you can shut your eyes for a few minutes, remember, think about the past week, the things you have done, you can put in which quadrant, I believe the results will make you surprised.
often unimportant, urgent things, taking up a lot of our time, every business person, look too hectic, even willing to stand in the office next to the results. In addition, unimportant, not urgent things, and sometimes take up a lot of our time.
So, the question is, what good is it for us to allow a lot of time to be consumed by ourselves inefficiently? The advantage is: Escape from the reality (sometimes also used to avoid important not urgent things), to seek a psychological comfort-you see, I am also very busy (note: These words may sting some students, but this kind of situation is more common, right when mutual encouragement!) ）。
2.2 Key to first things
the key to the first thing is to focus more time and attention on things that are important and not urgent, rather than on important, urgent things (which means we can achieve excellence or stop being good). We suggest to set aside at least 20% of the time to do something important and not urgent. This is in line with the 2/8 principle, and often produces 80% of the performance.
The advantage is that it can reduce important urgent and unimportant emergencies. For example, to a large game to import users of the banner ads appear a major bug, the ad is generated by the delivery system, but the need to update the corresponding CSS files to the online environment to take effect, this is an important emergency category; Under normal circumstances, this is a small operation , But OPS personnel on the subway, can not be stable to connect to the server . How sad?! If the previous time, the use of Jenkins, such as the implementation of Web updates, it can be delegated to the needs of the Department of their own updates, operations and maintenance personnel do not even participate.
The tangled point is that because things are important but not urgent, they are easy to drag and drop. If all kinds of bitterly, still often forget important, not urgent things, how to do? Collect this article, read from time to time, so very good.
2.3 Principles of doing things, sorting principles
a lot of principles, said more people are easy to forget, here are only 3 concise and practical.
2.3.11 times do one thing
the characteristics of technical work, decided to have a whole period of time (generally at least 15-30 minutes), in order to sink the heart, analysis and solve problems, only efficiency. In general, do only one thing at a time. We look at the highest guidance (Xinhua published on January 13, 2015).
Sometimes , you can even put on headphones, turn off QQ, ignore non-important messages. Don't make yourself a three heads, seemingly very busy, but actually blind busy.
2.3.2 Fault is the first place.
failure is the most important and urgent, and should be treated as a priority. This seemingly simple fact can sometimes be overlooked. This happens in:
- This kind of fault, did not clearly stipulate the first responsibility person, everybody each other;
- failure of the first responsible person, immersed in the resolution of other problems;
- fault the first responsibility, edgy in a way, the other people subjective feeling and self-concern, did not take the initiative to follow up, work together to reverse the promotion and resolution.
For example, the company's official website can not be accessed, the situation may be DNS problems, Nginix hung up, php problems, MySQL failed, the network blocked. All kinds of situations may have, unless there is intelligent monitoring, fault self-healing system, or the responsible person has rich experience in processing, or operation and maintenance department of all types of work, should take the initiative to check whether their own part of the abnormal, and assist the relevant students to solve the analysis.
2.3.3 Department of Internal work on the back
If there are many important urgent business needs, should be timely to the superiors, the Department of Internal work sorted after the first to do business needs outside the department.
department internal work, generally by the operation and maintenance of the responsible person, such as migration Zabbix database, PHP performance tuning, new technology testing. This kind of thing, in fact, the date of delivery is negotiable and is often not an important emergency.
but also because it is their own leadership needs, so, often by the students to allocate more time and higher priority, to win the leadership appreciation-after all, to the outside department to do more, assessment of their own, the main or superior.
This is under the guidance of the subconscious, a rational behavior, we can not simply deny. Therefore, this aspect needs the coordination of operation and maintenance leaders: the need to actively, periodically inform the Department of the students this point of view, and encourage the queue-jumping behavior (of course, the premise is to communicate with the superior).
2.4 How to better answer orders?
in order to better answer the order, stealing the key point is, to their own ruthless: when receiving business requirements, the need to proactively query time node requirements. Judging from the lessons learned, it is better to have a good deal beforehand than to be urged by others (though there will be some pain). The answer to some business needs is often: the sooner the Better (halo). At this point you have to help them set a time node, and to be specific, can not blur-the following weeks or New Year's Day. Once an agreement is reached, it is a contract.
If you can't finish, please warn me in advance. Politely say a few words, make a phone call, and make a sincere apology. The most feared situation is that the set delivery date is too early, the demand side to ask the progress, and then said: "I forget, have not started to do ..."
2.5 Courage to say no, reasonable refusal
is there a way to politely reject certain needs? There's really a way. Refuse others to be justified and decently. For example, in a situation where the workload is very saturated, the business side (or even its own leader) comes in and says that there is a very important, urgent need that needs to be started immediately, immediately, and time-consuming. What happens then?
You can then come up with your own work Assignment table. Say, you see, this is my last two weeks of work arrangements, all these things, are for these departments to do. If you really need me to finish, you can talk to the demand side of these things, see if you can make a deployment, or we can go to my superiors, see if you can make a small diversion, and so on.
In addition, the important urgency is often for others, to pay attention to the kind of each need is called the important urgent, want to give him a person to serve the classmate. Therefore, to the demand side, we can also be screened, differentiated treatment.
3. Poor expression and suggestions for improvement
not to express more is the character, the reason for this part of the analysis and suggested methods, in the previous "efficient operation and maintenance of best Practices (01): Seven words, no longer hold the bend of the operation and maintenance" has been focused on the expression, we can refer to a bit. This article again mentions, only because of this problem, the situation is widespread, the lethality is big, moreover is easy to improve, the effect is remarkable.
like to delve into technology, and to find fun and identity, this is the general situation of operations personnel. Some students and others to discuss technical issues, can also be well-reasoned, in the qq/also talk more, humorous. It was only when I met in person that I became a "silent lamb" in minutes.
If the demand side is also a poor expression of classmates, each other some of the "old", in the daily communication mixed with emotions, it may be even worse. There are examples of evidence.
This is not a rare situation, is to seek abuse, to seek complaints ? To say a few words, with some polite words, to some tone particles, really so difficult? Do you have to cherish words like gold? Not to cut meat from the body, not to be reluctant to ...
improve the customer interface, first of all from the level of consciousness, whether there is a customer interface unfriendly issues. Solutions include, try to communicate in person, sincerely apologize.
4. Love complaints and suggestions for improvement
We are a part of the company, a lot of small companies, large companies have a variety of common problems. In a company to stay a a year, often found not as good as the original expectations, the mood is not smooth, coupled with the pressure to face life, inevitably all kinds of bad mood.
among them, complaining is one of our most common emotions, even a kind of contextual existence. To observe the chatter that comes out of our minds is, in all likelihood, complaining. Complaining is too much to be a broken-hearted person who complains about the possibility of assembling resentment, even resentment, and damaging your body.
4.1 Complaints and their nature
The implication of the complaint is that I am right and put myself in a fantasy of moral superiority. Complaining is a low-key attack that is often used for self-protection and self-defense. Complaining, is the past things, will be in vain to consume their own energy. (words may be a bit harsh, please try to read the following text.) )
suggest to complain lightly, do not indulge, don't walk heart. It doesn't hurt to think of complaining as a topic between friends, and of course, hopefully at these times you know you're complaining (the process of complaining, it makes sense, but it's hard to believe you try).
things do not become less because we complain. Instead, we may become more complicated by complaining.
The more people complain, the more often they are complaining. The result is often negative passivity. So the good news is, be proactive, and be an autocratic complaining.
In addition, I am planning a topic of emotional management, "My War", which has more analysis of common emotions such as complaining, anxiety, fear, etc., so please look forward to it.
4.2 The true meaning of positive initiative
American Master of Management Stephen Covey in the senior bestseller "Seven Habits of high-performance people", to give a positive definition is very interesting: when our behavior, will affect the circle expansion (by this to eat the attention Circle-Shida note), is called the positive initiative, otherwise is passive.
The so-called Circle of influence is the thing that we can control (directly), and things that can only be controlled indirectly, or not controlled, belong to the circle of concern.
So, what are the things that we can control? Reasoning, in fact, is their own behavior. If we manage a team, we can direct the students to do this, do that, this is the indirect control of things. The weather is beyond control.
we tend to focus on the circle of attention, which is an important reason to complain and be complained about.
For example, the business promotion because the website overwhelmed and failed, the boss scold. At this point:
Everyone is right, but neither is wrong. For example, for the website operations, can not be the control system operation of the server delivery date, but the things that you could do, really end it? In this case, do you report to your superiors and business units in time? Is there really no way, from the business in which you are responsible, to temporarily redeploy?
for system operations, is it really impossible to borrow a few servers from another business to carry them first? For the purchasing department, is it really not possible to borrow several servers from the server vendor first?
"Ask" the environment around me so bad, I was miserable, you also let me actively, you are not in my wounds to sprinkle salt?
"Answer" I'm really sorry, my friends. We are all in the bitterness of the big, the taste, I feel empathy. But, besides changing ourselves, we really can't do anything anymore. Right when the health tastes bitter? Together to share the mutual encouragement.
4.3 Co -operation
If there is a major failure, don't assume that the part you are responsible for (such as a data Bank ) is not a problem, and with a subjective tendency to analyze the problem, this may be offensive in speech expression, but also often incorrect.
In addition, do not feel that they are responsible for this part of the problem, so on the occurrence of a major failure, and no matter how not to ask, sidelines. We should take the initiative to analyze and discuss with you, brainstorm and solve problems. If the next time you are responsible for this part of a serious failure, the other people are indifferent to sit on the view, you will also chilling?
or that sentence, everyone is a line of grasshoppers. Major failure occurred, long time unresolved, the company and the outside department will say, you do not work, not professional. At this time, even if can be spared, what is the use?
Easter eggs
I really don't know what to prioritize. This is good to do, ask the superior Bai, do not hold on their own. What does the leader do? is not to help subordinates burden-solving, hehe. Even, secretly said, if there is a demand, really can not be completed, do not always go to and outside the department to explain, you can ask the leader to come forward. Their leadership and demand-side leadership chat, may be a big incident oh.
The four misunderstandings of employees and the way to solve them
