There was a blacksmith who was known far and wide for his fine work. He grew older, and decided to take on an apprentice.
The apprentice learned quickly and the blacksmith was very impressed. But after a year, the apprentice asked for better tools.
“Master, if only I had better tools, I could learn faster and do much better work.” Said the apprentice. “Could I take a few days and fashion some from the extra metal in our shop?”
The blacksmith grew inwardly angry. How dare he ask such a question! He was just an apprentice and clearly forgetting his place! But before talking to him, he calmed himself and thought of a more rational reason.
“My apprentice, your work is too valuable for me to spare one minute of it.” Said the blacksmith. “We work with the tools we have.”
But the apprentice was too foolish to listen to his teacher. He was ashamed of the items he was making for the people of the town, and he was frustrated that it took so long to make them. So he stayed up late for several weeks and secretly created new tools from scrap. Some of them were of a design never seen.
The blacksmith, unaware of the secret, grew very proud of the speed and artistry of the apprentice. Surely he was the finest teacher in the town to have a student of such progress!
But one day he opened the cabinet where the apprentice hid his secret tools. When he discovered them, he was very ashamed. “My apprentice, you were right. My shop is old and in need of better equipment.”
So the blacksmith and his apprentice took a few days and fashioned new tools. When they reopened the people of the town could not believe the quality of the products and the speed at which the blacksmith finished them. Soon people came from far away to employ his craftsmanship.
Ironworking professionals take pride in the fact that they only need some metal and a fire to get to work. The idea is that they make their own tools, and it makes them more self-sufficient and creatively excellent.
In Infotech, there is a similar spirit. The technology infrastructure we build is used by everyone, including the people who run the system for others.
Too often, technologists forget that the people who use software and hardware in serving end users are themselves users of the software. Their ability to serve is directly dependent on the system itself.
The ability of a support person to refund a purchase, or reset a password, or check on the status of an order, or run a nightly process has a direct impact on the end user.
Make sure that support staff, operations, sysadmins, dbas, network engineers, and developers have the tools they need to serve others. If you see their needs taking a backseat to the perceived needs of an end user, it would be wise to stop everything until everyone realizes exactly what’s happening there.
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