So Many Things

Where I work right now there's a mighty IT team of one.  There's a whole lot to recommend working in an environment where the only IT resource is yours truly. But sometimes... every so often... It'd be nice to have a peer to bounce stuff back and forth.  Here's the deal.  In a modern business venture there's a whack of tech.  You have:

• General desktop environments (which, thankfully, are usually Windows 10)
• business software (accounting, productivity, email, collaboration, supply chain, etc.)
• the industry specific stuff (in my case at the moment this is a mixture of CAD/CAM software and communication software with manufacturing based machines).
• Web presence and marketing
• Every other thing with a power switch.

I look at the service catalog for what I support and I kinda want to weep.  Not because I don't want to support my coworkers.  Not because I don't think all this stuff should be cared for.  Nah.  It's mostly 'cause I can't know it all.  I have to say, "I don't know, but I'll get back to you". And I know that disappoints my customers.  Academically, I know that it is impossible to have an intimate knowledge of every facet of technology.  I spend a whack of my day learning new stuff as it crosses my desk.  And that's good.  Sometimes I think the expectation is too high.  "What do you mean you haven't seen this before?" seems to be the implied reaction when I can't immediately fix an issue.

I really miss the the interaction I had with my previous coworker, Ryan Brook. Most of the time our work didn't overlap but we'd be able to bounce ideas off of each other when we were stuck and (his term) rubber duck solutions.  It was also pretty great because we covered so many spheres of technology that our skills wer complementary.  I had that at EMC with my team lead, Matt LeBlanc as well.  When we ran into a problem we'd sort it out. Our skills were complementary and fanned in nicely. Working with peers made all of us better because we could leverage the strengths each brought to the table.

Alas, that is not the case in my current environment.

Since it's not a thing, how can an IT guy, all alone in a complex environment, cope?

I find it terribly useful to break up my day.  I spend the first half of my day addressing issues from the "help desk".  Essentially, any request made to IT is addressed before lunch.  Not resolved.  Addressed.  You're gonna get a whack of requests that you can't solve but you need to be visible and on the floor with your coworkers.  Pop in, give them a status of the issues they have open.  Work on that driver issue.  Reproduce issues that are in your queue.  The second half of your day:  Strategic initiatives.  Work on that website redesign.  Stand up a new server for some new software that needs to be deployed.  

That said, flexibility is key.  You're going to be addressing user issues in the PM and stategic issues in the AM.  You don't want to be seen as unavailable for either so live by the mantra that no plan survives contact with the enemy (1).

You can't know everything.  Take time to listen to your coworkers.  Understand their issue and understand what they're experiencing.  Ask them, "What have you tried so far?"  If you don't know, don't make it up.  Ask for time to review the issue and do some research.  Set their expectations.  And if you commit to a deadline then you need to meet it.  Even if you don't have the answer, meet the deadline.  Resolution deadlines aren't as important as communication deadlines.  Make sure your coworkers know why their issue isn't being addressed.  Keep the ticket updated so that they can view the status themselves, but stop by and let them know.

Your coworkers may expect you to know everything but they'll accept that you don't if you're transparent and keep them informed.

Rob

(1) I play war games.  In this context "enemy" isn't really an enemy.  They're competing priorities.  Coworkers are not the enemy.  They're the reason we have a job.  If technology was easy we wouldn't be needed.  But our coworkers can throw a monkey in the wrench as far as plans go.