Can you help me with summarizing this chapter? I just need around 350 words and all I need is to grasp its main points and the summary does not have to be particularly polished. Thank you!

Chapter Climbing Out of the Hole page intentionalhy left blank Some system administration teams are struggling. They re down in a hole try- ng to climb out. If this sounds like your team, this chapter will help you. If this your eam, you'll still find a lot of useful information about doesn't sound like how successful teams stay successful There are two things we sae at all succcssfull sites that you won't see at sits things right and everything else falls into place These two things are pretty much the same for all organizations-and we eally mean ail. We visitsies aound the world: big and small, for-profit and non- profit, well funded and nearly broke. Some are so large they have thousands of system administratons (SAs, others are so tiny that they have a part-time informa tion technology (TD person who visitsonly onoe a week. Nomatterwhat, these two attributes are found at the successful sites and are missing at the ones that struggle. Most of this book is fairly aspirational: It prowides the best way to design, build, and run IT services and infrastructure. The feedback that we gtonlire and at conferences is usually along the lines of "Sounds great, but how can I do any of that if we 're stuggling with what we have?" If we don't help you fix those problems first, the rest of the book isn' t so useful. This chapter should help you gain the time you need soyou can do the other things in this book So what are these two things? The first is that successful SA teams have a way to track and o rganie their work in progress WIP) WIP is roquests from customens plus all the other tasks you need, want, or have to do, whether planned or unplanned. Successful ams through of nequest-tracking system and a plan for how WIP flows ?L Struggling organizations don't, and reques& frequently get lost or forgotten The second thing is that succ ssful SA teams have eliminated the two biggest time sinkholes that all IT teams face. A time sinkhole is an issue that consuTes 1. We uxr tk bom customers rather than axrs. We find thi bringo about apositive ati shiIT a scrvict indasay, suppoeting dhe reeds of pcopk and the busin 4 Chaper1 Climbing Out of the Hole large amounts of time and causes a domino effect of other problems. Eliminatinga time, but becauxe it also s a game-changer not just because it saves for collectin?requests, organiz ng them, tracking them, and seeing them through to completion. Nearly every orga- nization does it differently, but the point is that they have a system and they stick organizations have some s prevents other trouble In IT, those time sinkholes are operating system (OS) installation and the soft- ware deployment process.Struggling wams inwariably are doing those two things manually. This approach not only unnecessarily saps their time but also creates new problems. Some problems are due to mistakes and variations between how different people do the same process. Some problems ane due to how the same person does it while feeling refreshed on Monday versus tired on Friday afae moorn Any struggling SA team can begin their tumaround by adopting better to describe requests from customers plus all the other tasks you need, want, or have to do, whether planned r requests as well as tasks that aro outages and alerts from of projects,emergency requests, and incidents such as Struggling organizations are unorganized at best and disorganized at worst Requests get lost or forgotten Customers have no way of knowing the status of their nequests, so they spend a lot of time asking SAs, "ls it done yet?"-or, even worse, they don't ask and assume incompetence. When the leam is overloaded with too much WIP they go into panic mode and deal with the loudest complairers WIP Some teams have been in this overloaded state Track and control WIP: Install some kind of helpdesk automation software, equest-tracking system, ticket queue,or Kanban board. . Automate OS installation: Start every machine in the same state by automat- ing the installation and configuration of the OS and applications .Adopt CI/CD for software pushes: The process of pushing new softw are re leases into production should be automated by using DevOpsconceptssuch instead of the most i for so long they don't know there is any other way Whatever strategy is employed to organize WIP, it must have the charac- eristic that quick equests get a fast sesponse, longer requests get atention, and and delivery Obviously not all eaders of this book are membfuggling organizations, but emerguncies guet the immediate attention and resouraes required to resolve them A typical quick request is a customerwho needs a passw ordeet Perorming a password reset takes very litle SA time, and not doing it blocks all other work for the customer, a customer can'tdo anything if he or she can't log in If you were o do all WIP in the onder in which it arrives, the passwond eset might nor happen or days. That is unreasonable. Therefore we need a mechanism for such requests if you are, take care of those two things first. Everything else will become easier The remainder of this chapter is a quick-start guide for achieving those two goals They ane covened mo in depth later in the book, but consider this chapter a way to crawl out of the hole to be treated with higher priority. The two most popular strategies for managing WIP are ticket systems and Kanban boards. Either is better than not having any system. If you are having dif ficulty deciding, default to a simple ticket system. You will have an easier time getting people to adopt it because it is the moe common solution. Later you can This guy's walking down the street when he falls in a hole. The walls are so A doctor passes by and the guy shouts up, "Hey! Can you help me out? The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole, and moves on. add a Kanban board for project-oriented work Then a priest comes along and the guy shouts up, "Father, I'm down in this hoke. Canyou help me out?" The priestwrites out a prayer, throws itdown 1.1.1 Ticket Systems Then a friend walks by "Hey, Joe, it's me. Can you help me out?" And the A ticket system permits customers to submit requests electronically. The request is stored in a database where it can be prioritized, assigned, and tracked. As the is worked on, the ticket is updated with notes and information. The system also records communication between the customer and the SA as the request is friend Our guy says, "Are you stupid? Now we're both down hee The friend says, "Yeah, but I've been down here before and I know the -Leo McGarry, The Wet Wing, "Noel," Season 2, Episode 10