Emil Imarietli, 123RF

Getting Past the Passion for Passing on Dysfunctional Practices

Article from ADMIN 15/2013

By ADMIN Magazine

Every IT shop has its quirks and anomalies. Some idiosyncrasies are worse than others, but the one consistent thread is that every generation hands down its poor practices to the next. The only remedy for this multi-generational dysfunction is a bit of house cleaning and a lot of training. Too often, though, the acceptance of tradition, even failed tradition, is stronger than all the logic and prevention a single voice in the wilderness can muster.

There's a famous story of a young bride who cooks her husband's dinner, a roast with all the trimmings, as their first meal together as newlyweds. The wife proudly delivers the meal to her anxious hubby, when he notices that the roast's ends are cut off. He asks her, "Why did you cut off the ends of the roast?" "Oh," she said, "My mother always cut off the ends, and so I do too."

The husband puzzles over this for a moment but eats the roast without another thought on the matter. Upon the couple's next visit to his mother-in-law's house, he politely inquires as to why she cuts off the ends of the roast, to which she promptly replies, "My mother always did it."

The husband now has his task before him to uncover the answer to this mystery. After a few weeks, the opportunity presents itself when grandmother visits the newlyweds. "Grandmother, we'd like to know why you cut off the ends to your roast before you cook it." Grandmother replies without looking up from her knitting to say, "My roasting pan is too small for a whole roast."

I hope the point of this story strikes you as obvious in the context of system administration. Some traditions hold no validity when put to the test. You'll find many IT shops whose leaders foster the "We've always done it this way" method of perpetuating many pointless, or even harmful, practices as acceptable. They are not.

That is not to say that all IT traditions are bad, but you have to use

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