When it comes to working in higher education there are a couple of things that are constant and that includes August being the time that most schools start their fall semester. While campuses are preparing for their classrooms to be activated again, let’s take some time to look at what us technology managers should be doing.
Button up the work.
In higher education there is this saying, classes start when classes start. There is not really an option to delay the start of classes. This means us technology managers need to make sure the AV equipment is ready to go. We should not be waiting until August to make sure the equipment is working but we should use this time to do one last check of our rooms. Are the cables neat? Are the buttons labeled correctly? Was all the installation equipment and trash cleaned up? Has all the patches and updates been applied? Is all your equipment information documented in the proper knowledgebase? These are the last minute items that normally get overlooked but is now the time to make sure they are done.
Recovery Plan!
If we take one thing away from the Crowdstrike incident, it is to make sure we have a recovery plan in place. We work in the technology field and there will be failure of that technology. It is our job to make sure when those failures happen that it doesn’t not cause major disruption to the education of our students. Our recovery plan should cover the following three aspects.
The first aspect is the quick response to get a class going again. This type of response might not mean a technology response. The goal here is to get the class going again which might mean not solving the issue with the equipment. This type of response should be within the first 15 mins as anything over 15 mins is taking too much time away from the learning of the students. When a classroom’s AV equipment is not operating as it should and the issue is not a quick fix, the first thing I always look to do is can the class be moved to another room. Moving a class to another room is not always the best option but it is a quick answer to getting the students learning again. If there is no open classroom then can we get the equipment to the point that the instructor can continue? This type of response might mean the instructor does not have all their tools available to them but they are able to continue. This might mean connecting a cable directly to the room’s display. This might mean bringing in a rolling cart with equipment on it. This might even mean the instructor using whiteboards/chalkboards to continue their lesson.
The second aspect is a quick turn around to get the room back operational. This type of response is for after getting a class up and running within the 15 mins. This is the time that we take a look at our spare equipment. Can we swap out a device to get the room back to normal operation? Do we have the code/software to load onto new equipment? How quickly is the RMA on a failed device? These are the questions we should be answering during this stage. This stage will be longer than the 15 min response but should be where we can get the room operating again within a 24 hours period. We will have to work around the room’s schedule to get in there and make the changes that are needed but that is where a lot of pre-planning comes into place. The time we spend in the room should be short.
The third aspect is a long view look at what caused the incident and how we can proactively try to prevent it from happening again. This aspect should be done once the room is back up and running as it should. This phase I like to call the debrief phase of your recovery plan. If you do not have a debrief within your recovery plan then you are missing an important aspect of your recovery plan. The debrief should be with your team and it’s where you all look at what happened, what went wrong, what went well, and how we can do better. These are the questions I like to ask during my debrief meetings. This does not mean you need to ask them or are limited to only these.
- Were we successful in solving the incident?
- Could we have avoided this incident?
- Were our communication
- Timely?
- Clear?
- Concise?
- Did we need outside help?
- What is the likelihood of this incident returning?
- Does documentation need to be created for this?
In conclusion
As we transition from project/installation/upgrade to break/fix it is a good time to make sure we have everything in order to support the education of our students. The more information we have here the better we can support the needs of our users if something does happen.