Midwest IT Survival

For both IT managers and engineers alike, it is the least desired activity following a system failure of some kind, coming up with the root cause.  Business and/or product owners outside of IT are waiting, after the dust settles and the system is restored to working condition, to have primarily two questions answered:

1. Why how did the system go down in the first place?
2. What is IT going to do to make sure this doesn’t happen again?

Can you avoid the spinning wheel of blame?

The need for answers to these two seemingly straight forward questions generates an urgency that has all the IT stakeholders rallying together in camps.  This series of articles look at this challenging exercise from an engineering management perspective with the first article introducing the “80% accurate technique” and previous article focusing on communication strategies with your management when the priority of the organization is restore service at all costs, but don’t neglect data critical to finding the root cause.  This article considers an even more challenging element … avoiding the spinning wheel of blame.

1. What is the priority of the organization when it comes to systems outages?
2. Does someone/group need to be blamed for the outage?

Is the priority to restore services as fast a humanly possible, but with this ever present fear of the inevitable “spinning wheel of blame” along the way?  If so, then you have your work cut out for you.  Hopefully this article provides some helpful tips for this most unpleasant IT cultural scenario.

Those working or having worked in an IT culture that embraces what I call the spinning wheel of blame immediately know to what I am referring.  It is that sense that as the duration of the outage increases, proportionally, the need to cast blame on a particular entity for the cause of the outage also increases.  This proportional increase results in significant downward pressure on everyone involved not to be remotely close to the impending blame assignment.  In the opposite culture, though an organization does not enjoy a systems outage, they take a more healthy approach liken to a previous article: restore service quickly, but learn why the outage occurred in the first place so rational steps and associated investments can be made in order to reduce the likelihood of future outages. Again, in this counter case, the priority shifts to restoring service as quickly as possible but at the same time, building a case to point the finger of blame as far from one’s team and one’s department as possible.  This is where throwing the technology vendor under the proverbial bus comes in very handy.  Look for more on this challenging dynamic for the engineering team dependent on a vendor in a future article.

So, you have made it this far and you are either still groaning at the thought of your most recent experience avoiding the wheel of blame in your organization or curious how such an unhealthy culture can actually manifest itself in IT which is known for embracing constant change and the bumps and bruises along the way.  Below is a modification to the two pronged approach I mentioned previously:

Prong One – Keep Your Team Focused

Similar to the approach in this article, identify team member competencies on juggling the multiple priorities involved in restoring service and gathering data and manage accordingly.  But considering the wheel of blame element, coach the senior members to keep you abreast of the current buzz on who the wheel is pointing at before and after each major milestone in the restoration effort.  Instruct them to give you a heads up as soon as their confidence nears 80% your team’s service is likely the root cause candidate: preferably before external parties catch on to this likelihood.  For junior members without leadership provided by a senior member, though it may come across as a little bit of micro managing, step in frequently to get a pulse on their discoveries and remind them to inform you of incriminating facts prior to sharing with a larger audience.  You’ll need to absorb as much of the pulse and data of what is going on as to predict where the spinning wheel is pointing at any given moment and if it is potentially going to point at you as the next log entry is revealed.

Lastly, and very important, make sure you instill trust in your team that you have their back.  If they know the wheel exists and they get a sense you will throw them under the bus at any opportunity, they will quickly adopt non-supporting and counter productive behaviors making your job significantly harder.  Be prepared to go to bat for them when others might like to take the easy route and blame one of your team members in the blame assignment phase.

Prong Two – Keep Your Management Team Informed

While you cringe at the energy you have to expel to keep up with all the activities in flight plus the spinning wheel, your management is crossing their fingers that the wheel will land on someone else with equal fervor.  In addition to providing the information in the thematic format I proposed in this previous article, with each communication, consider including a “likelihood it is us at XX%” indicator, preferably at the top of each communication.  Strive to not have XX go from 5% to 95% in between a 5 minute communication string.  It is best to start with some assumed outage responsibility since your team is being called into the restoration and root cause effort for a reason.  If data even smells like you might have some culpability, start showing it in the XX% indicator right away.  Nothing will grab attention like an XX% going from 50% to 60% to 70% as this is a clear indication the wheel of blame is definitely spinning in your department’s direction.  This gives your management the opportunity to get involved if only to be prepared to erect the blame shields.  Another positive to having your management get involved as the percentage increase is that they can give direction if they see fit.  You have most probably been heads down, focusing on the tactical.  Your management has had the opportunity to be looking more broadly at the situation and can provide some valuable feedback from this more external perspective.

In extreme cases, not keeping your management informed opens the door for the wheel of blame to land on you directly from them.  If you haven’t brought your management in early, then when something goes wrong procedurally or otherwise, you are going to have to retroactively explain.  Unless you have a great story, and more than likely you don’t, you set yourself up for enabling your management to have little choice but to leave you out in the proverbial cold.  Where as, if you have been in regular communication with them and they are interacting in some manner, then they are implicitly part of the situation, not abstracted from it.  Taking a more harsh angle: you have removed their plausible deniability and significantly reduced the “surprise and confusion” opportunity as their out.

In the next article in this series … now that service is restored and a brief sense of calm has returned, how to approach to spirited post disaster “ruggedization” efforts.

Anyone have an example of a do or a don’t when it comes to how you handle these situations?  Anything you did that was helpful or hurtful during these events you can share?

Related posts:

1. The Dreaded Root Cause Meeting for the Manager, Part 4
2. The Dreaded Root Cause Meeting for the Manager, Part 3
3. The Dreaded Root Cause Meeting for the Manager, Part 2
4. The Dreaded Root Cause Meeting for the Manager, Part 1
5. The Dreaded Root Cause Meeting for the Engineer, Part 4