Get with the program -- mentor your staff Retraining your mainframers to fit the client/server environment is a tough challenge to say the least. Put these programs in place to ease the transition

October  1997

What are the key factors in transitioning your legacy systems staff to the client/server distributed computing model? In order to avoid morale problems and conflicts -- both personal and technical -- you must have a specific plan of action. We outline some important programs you should implement before taking the plunge. (1,400 words)

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ne of the most important ingredients and biggest challenges in transitioning to client/server distributed computing is motivating the mainframe professionals to adopt and adapt to the client/server environment. They need to be involved in the planning and implementation of your new distributed computing environment while maintaining reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) in the legacy environment. This is easier said than done as they are still focusing all their time and energy on the latter. Doing this right is extremely time consuming and demanding on everyone. But dealing with this issue instead of sweeping it under the data center raised floor will be one of the key factors ultimately leading to a very reliable, available, and serviceable heterogeneous computing environment.

There are several reasons why this is so important. Mainframe staff are trained and disciplined in supporting a controlled and managed environment. This is reason enough; but there are more that we're outlining below. Always remember -- and we've said this for the past seven years -- it's easier to teach mainframe staff a new technology than it is to teach client/server technical staff discipline. To successfully transition to a client/server-based distributed computing business system, mainframe disciplines need to be adopted into your new paradigm. We've also said that you need to streamline and remove the bureaucracy from those disciplines. But talk is cheap. Unfortunately, people often don't have the time to take this stuff seriously.

One key factor in favor of retraining and transitioning mainframe staffers versus hiring replacement talent is the fact that they know the business. Another critical factor is to sustain morale. If you separate the new and the legacy you're inviting big morale problems along with:

• Finger-pointing
• Duplication of efforts
• Poor or no communication
• Resource constraints

The programs
It takes everyone working together to make this transition successful. You must provide these folks with the opportunity to learn. The ones with the initiative and drive will take advantage of these programs. The ones that won't will have nothing to complain about as long as they were provided the chance. It is imperative that you use training programs to break the mindset barriers between the legacy and newer distributed environments. You may want to consider the following programs:

• Get-acquainted with the hardware
  The problem is in most shops these mainframers are not taking this Unix or NT stuff seriously -- at least not in terms of these OSes replacing the companies' bread and butter mission-critical systems. They're OK with this technology for the desktop or non-mission critical systems that are currently in the legacy environment. They should be embracing it but are not. They talk like they do and make occasional half-hearted attempts at it, but their minds equate mission critical with mainframe and mainframe with mission critical -- nothing else will do. It's not their fault -- remember they've been surrounded by Big Blue iron for decades now.

  A program should consist of a half-day classroom session to understand and familiarize themselves with the hardware (this is the CPU board, memory, disk, etc.). The second half of the class should be hands-on in the data center (their own habitat) in which teams of three to five students would take apart new servers and then put them back together again. This promotes the fact that a production system is a production system regardless of the box.

• Professional technical training
  Pick a minimum set of classes for a particular organization. For data center personnel pick no more than three courses. Make sure you include classes on systems administration and shell programming. Provide this minimal set to all data center employees. If you start excluding people you will start having morale problems, and that's something you don't have the time for. This includes computer operations.

• Automate/streamline bureaucratic processes
  Shell programming is included in the equation because you just don't send people to training without having them involved in real projects. Shell script writing and editing are essential skills for Unix systems management and development so that your senior technical staff members can learn to apply their years of experience maintaining and performance-tuning mainframes to Unix-based systems. You should also require several other essential courses, including C++ programming, advanced systems administration, operating systems internals, etc.

  Look at all the manual processes you have in place today. Put your Unix system administrators and mainframe system programmers on projects together to create shell scripts to eliminate as much of the bureaucracy as possible. We recommend locating them physically together if at all possible. They should be having tea time together.

• Train the trainer
  Have your lead MVS systems programmer be the first person to go through your training programs. Once he or she completes the program, the rest of your mainframers will follow suit. They have to be convinced that you are committed to the programs. To make sure the programs are the right ones for retraining mainframers for Unix, there's no one better than your best and most respected systems programmer to help you along the right track and lead the others down the path of distributed computing. It is essential that this person display initiative and drive.

• Brown bag lunchtime seminars
  This newly trained individual could also hold weekly lunchtime sessions on different topics. Each topic should have homework assignments that are to be done on staff member's own time. Establish a special lab containing servers where students could complete their assignments, which would vary from reconfiguring hardware to modifying the operating system.

• Books
  Provide them with a list of books to read on their own time. Pick the top two or three books on networking, database administration, system administration, and so on. Maintain a current book list.

• Vendor sponsored events on technology trends in the marketplace
  Things are moving faster than ever. Use your hardware or software vendor to share those trends with your organization on a monthly basis. Legacy types have been doing the same things for 10, 20, 30 years. Many of them are just plain scared of the unknown, so they back off. Your vendor has system or field engineers that would love to come brag about their latest widget and gadget. Make this mandatory for your staff and keep track of who attends the sessions.

• Metrics
  There needs to be management commitment and oversight. Track the students' performance. Include the students' progress through the retraining courses each month in your status report to management. So, if an employee has a performance problem -- as determined through other Human Resources-sanctioned evaluations -- you could easily see if the cause was insufficient training or not. This employee could run to HR and complain of insufficient training programs as the organization is transitioning to client/server. As long as you track all assignments, programs completed, homework, books read, etc. there won't be anything to discuss with HR.

• Job descriptions
  Establish one generic job description for each function which includes all technologies. Do not separate your organization by technology -- please.

Resources

• Full listing of Unix Enterprise columns in SunWorld http://www.sun.com/sunworldonline/common/swol-backissues-columns.html#unix

About the author
Harris Kern (harris.kern@sunworld.com) is Sun's Open Systems Migration Consultant for NAAFO Market Development. Randy Johnson (randy.johnson@sunworld.com) owns R&H Associates, a full-time rightsizing consultancy in Boulder Creek, CA. R&H Associates helps people worldwide in implementing and supporting client/server infrastructures based on their proven methodologies. © 1997 Harris Kern and Randy Johnson. All rights reserved.

Harris Kern and Randy Johnson are authors of Rightsizing The New Enterprise: The Proof, Not the Hype and coauthors of Managing The New Enterprise: The Proof, Not the Hype, and Networking The New Enterprise: The Proof, Not the Hype. You can buy these at Amazon.com Books. Select the hyperlinks to learn more about each and Amazon.com.

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