Don't be held hostage by the BOfH

The Bastard Operator from Hell stories (http://www.theregister.co.uk/odds/bofh/) have delighted IT personnel since the early 1990's with their comic view of the power of systems administrators and their place in corporate America. For those not familiar, the basic premise is that of a renegade system administrator who makes mischief on systems and users as he pleases. The real world version is unfortunately not as amusing as the comic.

Years ago I worked at a company held hostage by such an individual. As systems crashed at random intervals, enough peculiarities came to light to make it apparent that this individual took some strange delight at causing disasters that he could then "rescue" as a way of self-promotion. Sadly in that organization it worked for a long time, mostly out of fear. After all, this BOfH was of course the only one who understood how much of the network was configured, the only one who knew various passwords, and other assorted bits of knowledge. Past attempts to involve others had only increased the number of "surprises" which further increased the dependence.

This issue is particularly relevant right now as tough economic times cause companies to scale back. Cutbacks, in the form of business activities, training, or personnel, can cause key knowledge to consolidate into a few essential personnel. This introduces tremendous organizational risk can be harmful to both the staff and the company as a whole in the following ways:

1) Makes it impossible for those individuals to take sick days or vacation, increasing the potential for burnout.
2) Puts the company at the mercy of those individuals in accomplishing work.
3) Breeds animosity through the creation of a "two-tier" team where some are "in the know" and others are not.
4) Creates a priority mismatch where the agenda of a few can trump the priorities of the team and company.
5) Contributes to organizational churn as resources are directed toward firefighting.


The best way to manage this is simple: take strides to counter it and build a culture that encourages openness rather than firefighting and heroics. Build in knowledge sharing as personnel evaluation criteria. Assess the resource needs of your teams in order to ensure adequate staffing and tools. And don't be a victim of the BOfH.