Operational Excellence

Gave a presentation on Operational Excellence at Educause last week, entitled "Square One: A prescription for Operational Excellence". This was a joint presentation in which I collaborated with Robert Howard, CIO of Armstrong Atlantic University.

We had a great turnout with standing room only for much of the presentation. Of course, this focuses on the IT field and really on systems availability, systems administration. However, many of these principles are transferable to any operational service. As I consider the goal of *being* operationally excellent that I have seen many struggle with in the IT field, the following points come to the forefront:

1. It is a people and process problem, rarely technology:

2. No one has 100% uptime, but there is a large gap between industry leaders and laggards, check out this study from 2010 done by the Aberdeen group:

3. It's getting better for those above a certain line of competancy, and it's getting worse for those below that line, check out the same study, updated from 2012:

4. The forces we have to work against to maintain operational excellence are people forces, are persistent and take deliberate and ongoing action to maintain a level of excellence. Check out this force-field diagram of some of the forces working against us:

For those that want the full presentation (with references), here's a link to the .pdf: Operational Excellence Presentation I learned a lot from this exercise and I think sharing it has helped solidify some of the lessons in my mind. As I take on operational responsibilities in the future of my career, I plan to use a prescriptive approach like the one defined in the worksheet we prepared for our session available here: Operational Excellence Worksheet Keep those services running!