Determining and Prioritizing Deployment Constraints

Additional constraints are imposed by the organizational situation and the characteristics of the directory system designers and administrators. If you are one of the system designers or administrators, some of these constraints arise from your personal views. You can rarely alter the organizational situation or people's personal characteristics, but understanding these constraints can help you achieve an optimal design.

Resources

One important set of constraints involves the quantity of resources ”money, time, and people ”available for the directory deployment effort. When you're creating any new service, it is important to know how much money is available to spend , how much time you have for planning and deployment, and how much effort can be applied to the project. In turn , the leader of the directory deployment effort should provide detailed information to the project sponsors about what resources will be needed.

Resource-rich organizations tend to do things on a larger scale; of course, expectations of those working in such an environment are high as well. In contrast, if you work in a resource-poor organization, typically you are held accountable for all expenditures, and you may have to do more work up front to show that your directory service project will pay for itself. No matter what kind of organization you are associated with, your directory deployment project will be expected to show a good return on investment, so it is important to use resources wisely.

Be sure to set realistic goals. For example, it may be OK to spend three months planning before beginning a directory service pilot, but not if a workflow application that the directory must serve is expected to be fully deployed within that same time.

Openness of the Process

Another set of deployment constraints relates to the openness of the directory design and deployment process. If the directory project is officially blessed and well funded by a centralized information services organization, it probably makes sense to have a fairly open process in which you publish and solicit comments on your preliminary directory design.

It is especially helpful to get feedback from administrators of applications, people who manage other databases within your organization, and end users themselves . However, if the directory project is being conducted in secret on time borrowed from other projects, the design process should be closed. Although in some organizations a secret "skunk works" project of this sort may not be tolerated, in others it is an acceptable approach that can be used to make progress in the face of organizational opposition or indifference.

Skills of the Directory System Designers

We use the term system designer to refer to a person who designs and plans for the deployment of information systems. When you're planning your directory service, the most important system designers whose needs must be considered are those who design and plan the deployment of the directory service itself. Information systems professionals with many years of experience assigned full-time to a directory project are more likely to succeed with a "from scratch" approach than people who are asked to work on a directory project in their spare time. Also some organizations and individuals have a tendency to look for turnkey solutions that require less design and experimentation. Alternatively, some people are inclined to learn everything there is to know about the problem and design a solution from start to finish. Understanding the skills and experience of your team will help you set realistic goals.

Skills and Needs of System Administrators

Consider the skills and needs of the people who will maintain your directory service and associated applications after they are deployed. A system administrator is someone responsible for the care and maintenance of a production service. Most system administrators prefer to eliminate or at least automate boring, repetitive tasks . In large organizations, system administrators typically spend much of their time and effort managing organizational data ”an area in which your directory service might be able to help make their job easier. By talking to a group of system administrators, you can generate many good ideas for directory management tools, application management aids, and process improvements.

The most important system administrators whose needs must be considered are those charged with running the directory service. The characteristics of the system administrators impose a set of deployment constraints that may affect your approach; ask for and listen to all of their input.

The Political Climate

Geographical boundaries and organizational structure often lead to differences in thinking among groups. Political climate is an important but often misunderstood aspect of an organization's environment. Because political differences often arise as a result of poor communication between groups, they tend to be more pronounced in large, mature, or hierarchically managed organizations.

Tip

You will probably find it difficult to paint an accurate picture of the political climate within your own organization. The best approach is to ask some experienced employees from a variety of organizational units for their own views and look for common themes and complaints. You will still need to sort out fact from fiction , of course.

Political disagreements are usually centered on how to use resources (people, money, time), the direction of the organization as a whole, or philosophical differences between managers. These disagreements may hurt your directory service deployment efforts if you are caught in the middle. If you have been asked to succeed in designing and deploying a fully functional directory service even though several other groups have failed in the past, a short time to market may be an important requirement. Showing some early, useful results will help gain support for continuing work on the directory service.

You may also find that you need to spend considerable time and resources to defuse political conflicts with other parts of your organization. As a directory expert, part of your job is to sell everyone on the benefits of a general-purpose, standards-based directory service. Remember that good communication is the best weapon you have to help reduce the impact of political conflicts.

For example, if at some point during your directory deployment effort you are blocked because of a lack of cooperation from another group, you may be able to defuse the situation by gaining the support of the other group's management. An effective way to gain support is to prepare a presentation on the benefits of the directory deployment and then sell Management on the idea. It is important not to let your project lose too much momentum or collapse because of political conflicts.

Prioritizing Your Deployment Constraints

As with the application and user needs discussed earlier, list all the deployment constraints you can think of and then assign priorities to each one. Because many deployment constraints come out of organizational or personal characteristics, it is important to be as objective as possible and make sure that the most important constraints overall are near the top of your list. Keep in mind that no matter what you do, you will probably not satisfy everyone. For example, it may be more important to make the director of the Personnel department happy than to make yourself happy.