Intuition is a handy thing to have in IT. As a former IT Jack-of-all-trades, I could join an outage call and frequently identify what was wrong more quickly than the experts. As a newbie with DevOps, data science, and other emerging IT fields, I don’t have that advantage anymore. It is uncomfortable.
But, it is exciting.
That does not mean I am entirely bereft of intuition in these new areas. Logic is logic, regardless of subject. However, it is invigorating to discover new, Counterintuitive IT™ facts or assertions. This is the first in an ongoing series of posts where I will share Counterintuitive IT™ examples as I run into them.
Counterintuitive IT™ #1: CABs Don’t Help, They Hinder
Having spent too much time on outage calls, I can appreciate any effort to reduce change induced incidents (CIIs). Avoiding those is especially important in healthcare IT (my present career). At a minimum, we inconvenience our clinicians and/or patients. Worst case, it impacts patient safety.
One popular approach to minimize CIIs is to require all non-standard, non-emergency modifications of production systems go before a change approval board (CAB). Having multiple sets of eyes will ensure you have all your ducks in a row, significantly reducing the likelihood of a problem.