Over the past few months I've seen numerous examples of how things start happening once people get together to talking distance, face to face in the datacenter (engine room, this is a "nautically biased" blog).
The latest was the funniest. Someone wanted to move functionality (an instance) from amazon to a private cloud and someone else was helping. The e-mail dialogue was fascinating - first party in India, second in Europe:
India: "i'd like to move an aws instance to cloud xyz"
Europe: "Do x y and z"
I: "did not work,"
E: "check /dev/doohickey"
I: "I only see /dev/whatchmacallit"
[ repeat with variations]
Manager of I: "escalate"
-- at this point a call was agreed on and I and E were talking to each other.
Joint discovery " the aws instance is an old model and x y and z do not apply".
I'm picking on this anecdote (the tall, excitable bearded one - please note how carefully I'm removing all traces if identity) as it us so usual and actually pretty funny.
Two things:
- Face to face is best, phone and screen sharing is good, email chat is marginable and ticketed request response systems are effectively non-functional for troubleshooting.
- Remove managers and other non-essential parties from the discussion! Non professional advice is bad, and is worse if it is coming from a manager - bosses need to be listened to, obeyed abd respected if they are to function, and a boss interfering with troubleshooting is very counterproductive.
Is there a maritime equivalent! Yes, there is to the boss part (face to face is not much of an issue on a ship). Captains or officers who don't have the competence to let their crew to do the job seldom run happy, effective and safe ships.
