Problem detection is everyone's duty

When a train rolls by, the guys on shovels and brooms, track gangs, crews on the ground, crews on other trains, clerks, station-masters, everyone stops and watches the train and waves to the crew on board. Lazy? Hell no.

It is every railroad employee's duty to give a train a visual inspection as it rolls by. They look for overheating bearings, dragging equipment, loose loads, open doors, joyriders... It is their job to stop working and watch. It is expected. And it is teamwork.

Problem detection is everyone's duty. A mumbled "not my job" is unacceptable. Those who can fix things should. Those who can't, should tell someone who can. And once we get our act together, we track them formally with Problem Management so none get lost. Everyone should be rewarded for finding or better yet fixing problems. And punished for ignoring them.


communicating the value of problem avoidance to the business

Obviously it's reflected in uptime and performance so you can piggyback on what are classic IM / Event metrics, but in a mature environment where proper problem management and the systems are inherently stable and incidents under control, it becomes quite interesting communicating to the service owners and other parts of the business just how much value you have contributed by pro-actively stopping the event / incident from happening in the first place i.e. problem management unless you do it on a case by case basis which never rolls up nicely for the PHB :^)

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