I came across a fairly succinct article about what IT managers can learn from software developers which is a good read if you find yourself in a chaotic environment with no issue tracking, documentation, etc.
There are various practices associated with software development that can be of great benefit to an IT department, but since few IT managers follow what goes on in the software engineering field, and even fewer come from a software engineering background, most managers are unaware of these ideas and technologies. This is unfortunate, as there are so many tools and techniques employed by programmers that could be put to good use in IT.
If you’re looking for a free solution to solve similar issues in software development, I’d personally recommend using Subversion and Trac, or if you have a budget, both JIRA and SourceForge Enterprise are good ways to go (still using Subversion of course) which are still flexible enough to let you get things done. Of course there’s always Bugzilla, but something just doesn’t sit right with me with that Perl beast– perhaps that I think the usability is terrible?
I can easily say I agree with the article based on experience of organically starting to do all of the things listed over the past few years. I know that not everyone is a Wiki fan, but it does actually make documentation sort of fun and if anything, easy to do. Rather than worrying about formalities you end-up with a lot of information which otherwise wouldn’t have made it into any sort of documentation, thereby making the “hit by a bus” factor a much less catastrophic event (except for the bus part of course).
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Brandon,
these are preciesly the technologies we’re using on Grid7. Trac is great and anyone who is not on SVN is seriously missing out. We’re also setting up an internal Jabber server and planning to use Asterisk to do some ad hoc telephony stuff that will be required by each project. middle managers: take heed of Brandon’s solid advice
sean
One other tool not mentioned which is immensely useful is having something like an internal IRC server. It allows for quick group discussions at developers own discretion (ie.. if you’re busy you don’t have to login), and I think helps build a team a bit as well. Even if the medium is mostly used for non-pc conversations, which tends to happen with a group of developers together, at least there is some form of group communication happening without forcing meetings and the like.
Ahh, yes…the IRC server. I’ve been thinking about getting that going over at the new gig.
I have fond memories of the IRC server at the last job. Remember the kick race? LOL.
I remember Conrad with his ( BUM ) emoticon…ha.
Oh yeah, and it had the added benefit of not having to actually go and sit in a room…you could passively participate if actual work was more pressing than a weekly status meeting.
I’m currently taking a look at TikiWiki at my current job - the reason I didn’t install that one at IA was because it wasn’t in the FBSD ports tree….that, and it has so much stuff in there that it could be overwhelming.
The thing can even export pages as PDF. Seems a bit buggy on doing tables from what I can see…maybe some newer version already fixes the problems I saw with it.
We use a lot of sharepoint, and from what I can see, it doesn’t seem to offer the degree of collaboration that a properly set up wiki has. There may be a wiki plugin for it, but so far, no one but the developers has shown real interest in wikis (it’s mostly the developers that even know what it is, of course).