Ask Slashdot: How Do You Tell a Compelling Story About IT Infrastructure? 192
An anonymous reader writes "Every month we submit status reports to upper management. On the infrastructure side, these reports tend to be 'Hey, we met our service level agreements ... again.' IT infrastructure is now a lot like the electric company. Nobody thanks the electric company when the lights come on, but they have plenty of colorful adjectives to describe them when the power is off.
What is the best way to construct a compelling story for upper management so they'll appreciate the hard work that an IT department does? They don't seem particularly impressed with functioning systems, because they expect functioning systems. The extensive effort to design and implement reliable systems has also made IT boring and dull. What types of summaries can you provide upper management to help them appreciate IT infrastructure and the money they spend on the services it provides?"
What is the best way to construct a compelling story for upper management so they'll appreciate the hard work that an IT department does? They don't seem particularly impressed with functioning systems, because they expect functioning systems. The extensive effort to design and implement reliable systems has also made IT boring and dull. What types of summaries can you provide upper management to help them appreciate IT infrastructure and the money they spend on the services it provides?"
Some sour lemons (Score:2, Informative)
Don't listen to all these bitter pricks.
Execs know the job of IT is to maintain systems and to increase work-efficiency through collaborative technology.
Instead of being boring "yeah everything fine, piss off" announce internal initiatives and goals that even a commoner can understand. Talk about important milestones or stories of exceptional (and actual) personal achievement. If you track your hours, announce how many man-hours were placed into a particular project. Show me the numbers.
If you fall into that "we work hard" crying bullshit, fuck you. My cat works trying to get that god damn dot with no results. I want to see results that people OUTSIDE OF IT actually like. If you did something that took 5,000 hours and everything sucks and the users don't like it... why did you do it in the first place? That's when the inquisitions start.