ManagementSpeak: This failure revealed a significant gap in our preventive maintenance program — a gap that existed because our approach to assessing and managing risk was not robust or systematic enough.
Translation: By not putting a dime into preventive maintenance I made my numbers look better. I was hoping nothing would fail until after I’d been promoted and it was someone else’s problem.
KJR Club member Whitham Reeve performs preventive maintenance on our vocabularies.
The economy is ugly and will stay ugly for quite awhile to come. The impact on IT will be mixed. Worst of all: The significant and long-lasting pressure to reduce costs will, for many shops, result in the nearly certain deferral of non-discretionary expenses.
If that sounds too much like a consulting mouthful, in PlainSpeak it means putting off preventive maintenance and dodging new releases, even though the consequence will be to spend much more in the future to catch up.
That’s the worst. The best: Superficially attractive ideas that don’t really work thrive during periods of prosperity. Hardship makes them go away.
