About two weeks ago I've started training a new Apps DBA (my replacement actually). However exciting, this mission (as I was warned) is very time consuming, it's not only the time spent on explaining what does a 'system' mean and the more specific niches of the system he will have to manage, but I also, as the new guy makes progress, have to show him how to deal with day to day issues, how to apply a document to the system and how to deal with annoying developers.
Again, as in the first part of Looking At The Mirror, I find myself recalling my own training a couple of years ago and, as reminded by a friend, I remember being pretty sure there's no way I'll be able to really do something productive like my predecessor did, I thought I might be able to bring the system up at most. Well, as it is with those things, I was able to do a bit more than that. One day you just realize you're able to handle the system on your own and even more than just 'handle'.
By the way, talking about bringing up systems, today the new guy brought up two development environments on his own, I had to explain some things I've skipped before as he went along but eventually the environments were alive and kicking.
And that's another thing worth mentioning. When you know what you know, everything looks trivial. It's only when you have to transfer your knowledge to someone else that you realize how much experience you've accumulated and how tricky this all system thing is.
The bottom line is that there's really no way of transferring all you know, you can pass part of this in documents you've written, you can give oral explanations and tips, but eventually experience is the best teacher and being thrown into the deep cold water of a system crash(which will probably happen the next time I'm on vocation( - Voodoo part)) is sometimes better than weeks of explanations.
I'm pretty curious to see how the new guy handles the real stuff. For instance, if everything goes on as planned, this week he will watch while I upgrade an EBS database to 10g and in the next upgrading phase I expect him to do it on his own (well, maybe with SOME help).
Things are definitely going to get interesting... for both of us.
1 comment:
Documentation, documentation, documentation. There is no better time, then training time, to write documentation. You might ask yourself why... well, very is: For the new guy, this is all new and difficult (even the trivial things), so when he documents stuff, it is explained as it should, down to the last detail. Every document written afterwards, will contain hidden knowledge which will not be clear for a newbie.
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