You are in: > Home > Systems Administration

Users

Users, your colleagues and workmates that use computers and networks to perform their tasks contribute directly to the difficulty (or ease) of your task as a Systems Administrator. Some of the characteristics of people that can contribute to a systems administration job include:

How many users are there?
Two hundred users are more difficult to help than two users and also require completely different practices. With two, or even ten/twenty, users it is possible to become well known to them and really get to know their requirements. With two hundred, or in some cases two thousand users, this is simply not possible.

The level of the user's expertise.
This is a combination of the user's actual expertise and their perceived expertise. A user who thinks they know a lot (but doesn't really) can often be more trouble than a user who knows nothing and admits it.

What are the users trying to do?
If the users are scientists doing research on ground breaking network technology you will be performing completely different tasks than if your users are all doing word processing and spreadsheets.

Are they responsible or irresponsible?
Do the users follow the rules or do they make their own? Do the users like to play with the machines? Being the Systems Administrator in a computing department at a University, where the users are computing students who want to play and see how far they can go is completely different from working in a government department, where the users hate computing and only use them when necessary.

Who do the users know?
A user, who has a 15-year-old, computer nerd son can often be the cause of problems since the son will tell the parent all sorts of things about computers and what can be done. Very few people have an appreciation of the constraints placed on a Systems Administrator and the computers under their control. Looking after a home PC is completely different to managing a collection of computers at a place of work.

Problem with this page? Let us know
© Lee Stretton 2005 |