Table Of ContentTaming Information Technology
Series in Human-Technology Interaction
Series Editor
Alex Kirlik, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Beckman
Institute
Adaptive Perspectives on Human-Technology Interaction: Methods and Models for
Cognitive Engineering and Human-Computer Interaction
Edited by Alex Kirlik
Computers, Phones, and the Internet: Domesticating Information Technology
Edited by Robert Kraut, Malcolm Brynin, and Sara Kiesler
Attention: From Theory to Practice
Edited by Arthur F. Kramer, Douglas Wiegmann, and Alex Kirlik
Neuroergonomics: The Brain at Work
Edited by Raja Parasuraman and Matthew Rizzo
Information Foraging Theory: Adaptive Interaction with Information
Peter Pirolli
Human-Tech: Ethical and Scientifi c Foundations
Kim Vicente
Edited by Alex Kirlik
Being There Together: Social Interaction in Virtual Environments
Ralph Schroeder
Exposing the Magic of Design: A Practitioner’s Guide to the Methods and Theory
of Synthesis
Jon Kolko
Cross-Cultural Technology Design: Creating Culture-Sensitive Technology for Local
Users
Huatong Sun
Taming Information Technology: Lessons from Studies of System Administrators
Eser Kandogan, Paul P. Maglio, Eben M. Haber, and John Bailey
Taming Information
Technology
Lessons from Studies of System Administrators
ESER KANDOGAN
PAUL P. MAGLIO
EBEN M. HABER
JOHN BAILEY
1
1
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Copyright © 2012 by Eser Kandogan, Paul P. Maglio, Eben M. Haber, and John Bailey
Published in the United States of America by
Oxford University Press
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United States of America
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Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
in the UK and in certain other countries
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Taming information technology : lessons from studies of system
administrators/Eser Kandogan . . . [et al.].
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–537412–4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Information resources management.
2. Information technology—Management. I. Kandogan, Eser.
T58.64.T34 2012
004.068—dc23
2011053404
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Prologue: Why We Wrote This Book ix
1. Motivations and Methods 1
2. People and Collaboration 19
3. Technologies and Complexity 51
4. Practices and Innovation 87
5. Tools and Automation 129
6. Organizations and Information 159
7. Communities and Trust 197
8. Findings and Lessons 229
Epilogue: Where are They Now? 247
References 263
Author Index 277
Subject Index 283
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Acknowledgments
This book has been 10 years in the making, so there are a lot of people
to thank. Because we may not remember them all, apologies to everyone
we missed.
First, we thank our participants, the sysadmins and others who let us
in to watch their activities and to talk about their jobs. Though we can-
not name them, we are certainly indebted to them. We hope they fi nd
this book useful. It is for them, after all.
Second, we thank those who worked with us to collect and analyze
data and to explore our conclusions through implementation, including
Rob Barrett, Chris Campbell, Mike Chavoustie, Allen Cypher, Andrew
Eberbach, Stephen Farrell, Peter Khooshabeh, Trevor Montgomery, Adam
November, Madhu Prabaker, Joe Ryan, Suchi Saria, Leila Takayama, Josh
Woods, Anna Zacchi, and Haixia Zhao.
Third, we thank those who supported the work over the years,
including our managers, our funders, and others: Kathryn Britton, Jarir
Chaar, Josephine Cheng, Steve Cousins, Mark Dean, Alan Ganek, Laura
Haas, Anant Jhingran, Jeff Kephart, Robert Morris, Stefan Nusser, Dan
Russell, Dan Shiff man, Barton Smith, Alfred Spector, Jim Spohrer, Ric
Telford, Steve White, and Michelle Zhou.
Fourth, we thank those who read and gave comments on early
drafts of this book and its parts, including Laura Anderson, Jim Barlow,
vii
viii Acknowledgments
Rob Barrett, Terry Bleizeff er, Jeanette Blomberg, Melissa Cefkin, Susan
Dray, Steve Greenspan, Laura Haas, Tom Limoncelli, Tom Moran, B. J.
Scheid, and Ashish Sharma.
Fifth, we thank Oxford University Press, particularly Catharine
Carlin and Joan Bossert, our editors, Jennifer Milton, who shepherded
us through the production process, and Alex Kirlik, editor of the
Human-Technology Interaction series, whose encouragement and subtle
help over the last four years made this work possible.
Sixth, parts of chapters 2 and 3 were previously published in
“Collaboration in System Administration” by Eben Haber, Eser Kandogan,
and Paul Maglio in ACM Queue, volume 8, issue 12, December, 2010
(copyright the Association for Computing Machinery). It is reprinted
here with permission.
Finally, we thank our families, who patiently supported us while we
were not fi nishing this for so long. Thank you Elif and Eren Kandogan;
Teenie Matlock; Sheri and Talia Byrne-Haber; Julie, Olivia, and Anika
Bailey.
Prologue: Why We Wrote This Book
On a fall day in 2001, an executive took the stage in the auditorium at
the Almaden Research Center to tell us about a bold new IBM initiative
called autonomic computing. It was about how computer systems would
soon be able to manage themselves using many of the same principles
that an animal’s autonomic nervous system uses to manage its bodily
processes, whether breathing, beating, or repairing. It was a fascinating
vision, and it was important because information technology (IT) cus-
tomers were spending more money managing systems than they were
spending buying the systems in the fi rst place—and self-managing sys-
tems were expected to have lower total cost of ownership. This would
be a win for IBM, with better diff erentiated technology, and it would be
a win for customers, with lower costs in the long run.
As laid out at the time, autonomic computing aimed to make IT
more self-managing, particularly, self-confi guring, self-healing, self-
optimizing, and self-protecting (see Kephart & Chess, 2003). It aimed
to replace much of what was usually done by the people who man-
aged IT systems with automation. So it was only natural when someone
stood up at that presentation and asked, “Do you know what the people
who manage systems actually spend their time doing?” The answer sur-
prised us: no. IBM did not really know, and there was no literature on it
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