SA Tenets – Manage the Interesting

This post was written by Jim Sheafer on May 3, 2009
Posted Under: Philosophy

This is a continuation of the “SA Tenets” series of posts in which I discuss my beliefs about System Administration and work in general

Manage the Interesting

So, you are collecting your statistics. Any you look at them every so often. Maybe you even meet to review them with your customers and bosses.

Don’t waste everyone’s time by reviewing graphs of stats that never change.

Spend your time managing the stats that are interesting. If someone asks “Why did that happen?” Or makes a comment like “That’s strange…” that is what you should be spending time managing.

This one seems very basic, but I have seen too many instances of people trying to demonstrate that all is well. Don’t do that more than once. Show what you are collecting, then only show it again if something is wrong. Going on for even a few minutes about how everything is wonderful is just a waste of time.

The full list of my tenets can be found at the top of the site.