Define All The Steps Up Front

After 23 years in one place, I'm pulling up stakes and moving. We're selling our house in one state in the US and we're buying a house in another state about half a continent away. To say it's a stressful and exhausting process is an understatement. The worst part is that no one has defined the process, on either side, all the way through.

See, we keep finding out there's one more thing to do. "What do you mean you don't have a Title 5 inspection of your septic system? You have to have a Title 5 inspection before you can sell." On and on like that. One thing after another that we didn't hear about up front so we could easily take care of it. Instead, it's always a scramble to arrange for one more person to swing by one of the houses to do something.

How well are your own processes defined? Just how many flaming hoops do you make your developers hop through before they can deploy code changes to production? How many hidden little gotchas do you know about in your systems and their processes but no one else has a clue? Frankly, IT is hard. From the start of developing anything, to maintenance on old, well established systems, the full spectrum of IT is difficult. As much as humanly possible, document that stuff. Make things as clear as possible. Communicate to all your peers everything that they need to know. All sorts of hidden processes, secret tricks, and anything that adds to the difficult of IT should absolutely be eliminated.

All the things we do in IT are hard enough on their own. Don't add to the difficulty by hiding stuff.

Grant Fritchey

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