October 12, 2011 at 4:34 am
I'm wondering how other DBA team leads use their time.
I recently got a new manager, and had one of many, many meetings with him. We were discussing resource planning. I'm the team lead, and we started with projects the team is working on, how we spend our time, etc.
I had a spreadsheet which showed how I spent my time, and it came to around 50 hours a week. (more like 60 if I'm on call - our on-call system is very immature).
My week looks something like this:
Recurring Management Meetings 8
Instructions, policy, documentation
and fixing things done wrong because of
lack of documentation 5
General Team Management
(assign tasks, follow up, etc.) 8
Additional Random Meetings 4
Prep and action items
for non-project meetings 4
Email 4
Project Work 20
My boss felt I was wasting a lot of time so he removed all the preparation time, email time and documentation time and reduced the team management time to 2 hours a week.
(I only have 3 DBAs)
How does everyone else manage their time? What do your schedules look like? I realize every environment is different, but I'm curious and wondering if I'm crazy.
Amanda
October 12, 2011 at 3:29 pm
Amanda Bates-348384 (10/12/2011)
I'm wondering how other DBA team leads use their time.
When I do it, it resembles something about headless poultry, however, I'll attempt to assist... 😀
Recurring Management Meetings 8
I'll second that. Is this upper management or your management? If 1/5 of your week is spent in your staff's business, that's just too much. Either you have DBAs in desperate need of training or you're too hands on. If this is upper management, let your boss handle this stuff, it's at his level. If it's peers in other departments, you need to streamline the process.
Instructions, policy, documentation and fixing things done wrong because of lack of documentation 5
If I document anywhere besides my code I consider it a blessing in downtime. Now, fixing things because of lack of documentation you'd have to be more explicit about. If it's naming conventions, let it go. If it's "Don't use cursors" that shouldn't occur more than once.
General Team Management (assign tasks, follow up, etc.) 8
O.o Maybe during the initial scrum setup week. Why is 1/5 of your time in task assignment and resolution discussion? Setup a morning 15 minute meeting if this is a significant concern.
Additional Random Meetings 4
Hate those.
Prep and action items for non-project meetings 4
This is between you and your boss. What meetings are you being sucked into that you don't need to be in?
Email 4
That's it? You're not leveraging this tool well enough I think, thus half the other time problems. I probably spend 12 hours a week on email, doing ALL the meetings/management/etc unless it absolutely needs a face to face.
Project Work 20
Sounds right.
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October 13, 2011 at 5:03 pm
Just to be incredibally real.
The day goes by :
get up
go to work
Get back home (hopefully the same day).
They've hired 2 analysts where I consult and they try to manage my time and user expectations where I'm 85/15 SSRS / DBA. Management was hoping they would do a <much> better job than what I did. My answer was always I'm working on X right now. Might be done by next friday at best (knowing it would be good enough for them to leave me alone for 1 week, but that it would blow to the middle of the week after that).
After 2 weeks with this new setup, not a single project's been estimated nor delivered as first expected by the analysts (I've been working there 18 months fulltime, they are brand new so my estimates are actually pretty darn close... but they felt I was overbloating them). The end result is 100% satisfaction of end users... not so much for management ;-).
The upside is that I'm not the one who has to go explain that to the managers.
Bottom line is that a DBA's job is insurrance to protect the servers & cie. The list of problems is both too long to list and unpredictable.
That being said. If you start logging everything you do daily and dilligently you'll be able to guesstimate fairly accurately how many hours you need for urgencies and misc stuff... leaving you with y hours to do projects.
Of course that is just an average. But over months it should hold pretty steady. On top of that it's easy to say I was expecting to be done today but those 8 servers blew up and I lost 3 days worth of time for that project. So I should be able to deliver by the end of next week if all goes back to normal.
Nodoby can really argue with that.
October 13, 2011 at 7:55 pm
Amanda Bates-348384 (10/12/2011)
I'm wondering how other DBA team leads use their time.I recently got a new manager, and had one of many, many meetings with him. We were discussing resource planning. I'm the team lead, and we started with projects the team is working on, how we spend our time, etc.
I had a spreadsheet which showed how I spent my time, and it came to around 50 hours a week. (more like 60 if I'm on call - our on-call system is very immature).
My week looks something like this:
Recurring Management Meetings 8
Instructions, policy, documentation
and fixing things done wrong because of
lack of documentation 5
General Team Management
(assign tasks, follow up, etc.) 8
Additional Random Meetings 4
Prep and action items
for non-project meetings 4
Email 4
Project Work 20
My boss felt I was wasting a lot of time so he removed all the preparation time, email time and documentation time and reduced the team management time to 2 hours a week.
(I only have 3 DBAs)
How does everyone else manage their time? What do your schedules look like? I realize every environment is different, but I'm curious and wondering if I'm crazy.
Amanda
This new boss of yours is what I (and a million others) call a "micro-manager". The next thing coming down the pike will be challenges on your personal integrity unless you find a way to nip this in the bud and, unfortunately, I have no suggestions there that don't qualifiy as at least 1 major HR violation. Document everything correctly because the next thing that will happen is (s)he'll try to throw you under the bus if there is any resistance to the micro-management whatsoever. It's really unfortunate that such people ever become managers because the know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
--Jeff Moden
October 14, 2011 at 2:43 am
Is that why you stopped being a manager and went back to "normal" DBA?
October 14, 2011 at 2:49 am
Working 50 - 60 hours a week must be tough though, how do you find time to do anything else?
October 14, 2011 at 3:31 am
How does everyone else manage their time? What do your schedules look like? I realize every environment is different, but I'm curious and wondering if I'm crazy.
I have a doubt here. Are we talking about PROD DBA or DEV DBA? I find a lot difference in their roles & responsibilities and thus their daily schedules as well.
October 14, 2011 at 3:39 am
The day goes by :
get up
go to work
Get back home (hopefully the same day).
Not everyday... Only on QA deployment, Staging Deployment & Production Deployments. And yes on BUG fixing from QA / Staging / Prodution server. And Yes on Server Upgrades and Patches (maintenance window, night time :doze:).
Oh Yes... Everyday :crying:
October 14, 2011 at 9:02 am
Dev @ +91 973 913 6683 (10/14/2011)
The day goes by :
get up
go to work
Get back home (hopefully the same day).
Not everyday... Only on QA deployment, Staging Deployment & Production Deployments. And yes on BUG fixing from QA / Staging / Prodution server. And Yes on Server Upgrades and Patches (maintenance window, night time :doze:).
Oh Yes... Everyday :crying:
That's why I love BI work 😀
October 15, 2011 at 11:45 am
Ninja's_RGR'us (10/14/2011)
Is [font="Arial Black"]that [/font]why you stopped being a manager and went back to "normal" DBA?
Considering I covered several different topics in my post, is WHAT why?
--Jeff Moden
October 15, 2011 at 12:10 pm
Jeff Moden (10/15/2011)
Ninja's_RGR'us (10/14/2011)
Is [font="Arial Black"]that [/font]why you stopped being a manager and went back to "normal" DBA?Considering I covered several different topics in my post, is WHAT why?
Micro manager being your boss.
October 15, 2011 at 12:23 pm
Late, here, but that does seem like a lot of time on overhead things. I don't know that I think documentation should be cut, but I might try to cut other things.
Your boss shouldn't really run your schedule, but tracking down the things you spend time on and examining them later is a good way to see if you're working efficiently. I don't think you can be totally efficient, nor should you try, but you might find yourself wasting time on things that aren't as important if you stop and re-examine your schedule.
I'd propose you break it down further for a week, think about what you can change or want to change, then propose changes to your boss that make you more effective, not more efficient.
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October 15, 2011 at 10:35 pm
Just my personal opinion... I think that breakdown has already been accomplished and, for a team lead, the admin time for 3 DBA's seems about right to me especially since assignment of tasks frequently requires that "How" questions are frequently asked by the assignees. If you want things done right, you have to be able to spend time answering some questions from those in your charge. Time flies when you're doing such a thing.
--Jeff Moden
October 15, 2011 at 10:47 pm
Ninja's_RGR'us (10/15/2011)
Jeff Moden (10/15/2011)
Ninja's_RGR'us (10/14/2011)
Is [font="Arial Black"]that [/font]why you stopped being a manager and went back to "normal" DBA?Considering I covered several different topics in my post, is WHAT why?
Micro manager being your boss.
No... that's what causes me to change jobs now. 😉 The reason I gave up being a manager was because I wouldn't force my teams to do back-to-back "all night death marches" for weeks on end because of the inability of the upper levels of management to ask my opinion before they promised some ridiculous schedule to their bosses. I also didn't care for being told at 4PM that at 8AM the next day that I needed to produce a detailed project plan for a 6 month project and then being told at 9AM that my time estimates weren't "good enough" and THEN, after I asked what would be "good enough", being told they weren't going to tell me when they actually needed it.
I may have to go back to being a "working manager" just so I don't have to put up with micro-managers. 😀
--Jeff Moden
October 16, 2011 at 3:57 am
Amanda Bates-348384 (10/12/2011)
Recurring Management Meetings 8Additional Random Meetings 4
Amanda
FWIW Those poorly managed meetings are one of the reasons I left my Database manager role to go back to being a normal DBA. I found more than half of my week was being taken by poorly ran meeting where people werent being decisive, making inadvisable decisions and basically rambling on.
With those, the regular recruitment agency calls, software sales reps and the HR overhead there is very little time left for the technical stuff. I would say your week is quite well balanced to be honest. Log what you do for a couple of weeks and show them.
That said, I've read a book called "the monkey manager" where monkeys are problems. Dont keep taking your staffs monkeys (or your managers for that matter) or you wont have time for your own :-D. Direct people to solve their own problems rather than saying 'I'll think about it" or "I'll look at it".
Most companies let IT staff down by forcing people who want to progress down a management career rather than a technical one. Not everyone can do or wants to do people management. There are a lot of poor managers out there who were promoted simply because they are good at their job.
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