Plan Ahead
A system administrator that took all the previous advice to heart
and did their best to follow it would be a fantastic system
administrator — for a day. Eventually, the environment will change,
and one day our fantastic administrator would be caught flat-footed.
The reason? Our fantastic administrator failed to plan ahead.
Certainly no one can predict the future with 100% accuracy.
However, with a bit of awareness it is easy to read the signs of many
changes:
An offhand mention of a new project gearing up during that
boring weekly staff meeting is a sure sign that you will likely need
to support new users
Talk of an impending acquisition means that you may end up being
responsible for new (and possibly incompatible) systems in one or
more remote locations
Being able to read these signs (and to effectively respond to them)
will make life easier for you and your users.
