This is a sad tale about a swimming pool, a planning fallacy, and the Dunning-Kruger effect. It should be titled: My Bloated DIY Ego: How I Overestimated my Ability to Build a Swimming Pool and Underestimated Everything Else.
How is my sad tale pertinent to managing a data center and all of the critical IT infrastructure it contains? Trust me, it’s related to Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) Software Services and I will get there. But first, even though it hurts my pride, I need to rewind to spring 2023 when I envisioned a backyard oasis, which unfortunately turned into a year-long construction zone.
Overestimating abilities and underestimating time, cost, and risk
Like many others, I wanted to add a swimming pool to my property. While I enjoy the satisfaction of digging, I wasn’t keen on excavating a gigantic hole. So, I opted for a pre-made, light steel pool around which I would build a wooden deck. This seemed like a great solution, as I prefer working with wood. Or so I thought.
I felt confident I could complete the project during my summer holidays. Giddy with the confidence of the unsuspecting, I was convinced three weeks would do it. The initial stages went well. I completed low hanging fruits and got a sense of completion. However, after I ticked off the easier items of my to-do list, the work started to get more complex and time consuming. Most projects have conditions and requirements to ensure a successful implementation or deployment. In the case of my swimming pool, a leveled area to place it on was the first condition. And I missed it because the harsh truth is that I don’t know how to build a swimming pool and contain 48 tons of liquid.
After a long 12 weeks, I had set up the swimming pool and built most of the wooden terrace but it was by no means done as the Danish winter approached. With being back to work and the demands of life taking hold, I didn’t complete it before freezing temperatures, rain, and snow caused warped wood, sunk fundament, and a swimming pool that was anything but level. I had to face reality: my project was over budget, not on time, and lacked the value I had anticipated.
Drowning in bad decisions
Since starting my project, I’ve learned about the Dunning-Kruger effect at a DEI training program in Schneider. It’s a cognitive bias in which people overestimate their own abilities in a specific area. I thought it was hilarious, because as I was taking the online study, I was looking out my window, taken back at this real-life example, created at my own expense.
These biases can be incredibly useful to know and understand, especially in a fast-paced world full of quick decisions and calls to action for achieving organizational goals.
While reading the list of biases on Wikipedia, a second one caught my eye. I had fallen into the trap of severely underestimated the time, cost, and risks of my project. This was listed as the Planning Fallacy, described by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in 1979 in their “Intuitive Prediction – Biases and Corrective Procedures.”
I was drowning in bad decisions.
Software Services provides trained professionals
Similar to taking on a big home improvement, managing a data center and distributed IT and the critical infrastructure therein is not something to take lightly. As part of the Schneider Electric EcoStruxure IT software team, I have worked with countless, incredibly skilled customers who know their distributed IT and data centers inside out. But almost always, they cannot remove themselves from the day-to-day operations of managing the critical IT infrastructure. So, when we introduce software as one of the most comprehensive tools to help them in their daily operations, for them it’s still a project they need to undertake. And that’s where our Software Services team comes in to help. We provide the carpenters of DCIM software: the trained professionals who do this every day and continuously work to improve processes and tools.
My main objective is for our customers to be satisfied and this means that I insist and push the teams to provide timely low cost and high value deliverables. We want to ensure that our knowledgeable customers understand and learn the software, effortlessly adapting and using it to its fullest potential while removing any concerns it may bring.
My pool was a luxury – DCIM isn’t
You may still think you don’t need our EcoStruxure IT Software Services team. I get it. I thought I could handle everything myself too. I also assumed I’d be enjoying a pool the same summer I started building it. And, in the beginning of the process, I won a sense of self-gratification but it was short-lived, especially when I had to shift my priorities away from the pool project and onto other important aspects of day-to-day life.
When the project was about half done, I knew, with some humility, that my pool would not be complete without substantial sacrifices and tradeoffs. At that point, I wished I had asked for help when I started and hired a local company to do the assembly and carpentry required. The cost of those services now seemed minimal compared to the time I had spent on it and the time I would still have to spend on it. It only gets worse when I consider the materials that were wasted and the amount of work I had to redo multiple times. I felt like I was “drowning” in my own pool. But I also recognize that my pool was a luxury, whereas adapting DCIM is not. DCIM is a critical and fundamental part of running a resilient, secure and sustainable IT Infrastructure.
Don’t go at it alone when EcoStruxure IT Software Services is here
I have shared my sad tale because I wish for IT professionals not to make the same mistake and assume they can do everything themselves especially when they don’t have to go it alone. The EcoStruxure IT Software Services team is here to help. You could avoid additional expense, wasted time, and even unsafe situations by joining forces with Schneider Electric, not to mention avoiding a bruised ego.
After all, a leaky pool is one thing – downtime in your critical IT infrastructure is a problem on a whole other scale.
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