Apr 25, 2012

Proper Prior Procedures Prevents Piss Poor Performance

I've said it a million times: "Proper prior procedures prevents piss poor performance."  Each and every day you should consult your procedures prior to performing any task. If not to make sure you are doing things correctly, then to make sure the procedure hasn't been updated in some way.

I work in Information Technology and each and every day I do something that I have done at least a dozen times before.  If it's not submitting a firewall rule, it's assigning an IP address.  If it's not cloning a system, it's adding something to Active Directory.  We all do things every day that are repeated over and over again.  We kid ourselves that we could do these things in the dark, or blindfolded.  Most of the time the tasks get completed in the required time frame and done properly.

But, when was the last time you consulted the procedures for the task and verified that you aren't missing something? When was the last time you had to go back and "re-do" something on systems that had been missed?

I try my hardest to document everything that I do.  If your job requires you to repeat several tasks throughout the day and you find yourself repeating these steps and double-checking your work more than you think is necessary, I suggest you get a good documentation system, or "wiki", learn how to use it, and consult that documentation regularly!