Two Ears, One Mouth, Humble Pie and Root Cause

For my sins I help out with the Computers and IT at a few of the local National Schools in North Wexford and I recently got a panicked call from the secretary saying the that all printing had stopped working.

As I was in the area I called out at lunchtime. When I arrived I was told that a guy had been installing a broadband connection the previous day and had done something to stop the main printer working. I quickly established that the new broadband connection wasn’t linked to the network and assured her that this had nothing to do with the problem. I then discovered that the printer had lost it’s network address and working with the printer supplier, reallocated the printer address and the printer started to churn out the queued print jobs.

I thought, great, it’s all working and was about to head out the door when the secretary stopped me and asked what was the cause of the problem. I quickly checked with the printer supplier and explained that we didn’t know, but it was all working now. The secretary then quietly but forcefully insisted the problem was caused by the broadband installer  as the last time somebody worked on the broadband the printer also stopped working and that we needed to find out or it would happen again.

Reluctantly I investigated further and low and behold discovered that the broadband installer had indeed disconnected one of the servers and not only was this the cause of the printer problem, but was also causing the backup to fail among other things.

Tail between my legs I headed back into the office to explain to the secretary that she was quite right and it was the installer that had caused the problem and it would have caused a lot more problems if we had not found the Root Cause of the problem.

While this was a relatively minor incident in a small school, if the same approach was taken in a larger organisation, there could have been much more serious consequences. No matter how small the problem is, it’s critical that you find out what caused the problem and put systems in place to insure it doesn’t happen again. Not just because it’s Good Practice but because it will save your business a lot of time effort and most of all money.

A wise man once told me that We have two ears and one mouth and they were designed to be used in those proportions. If I had listened to the secretary in the first place I could have saved everyone a lot of time and effort.