Thank you for the kind words.

Perhaps I should have mentioned one of my own failings, that I fear may be a
problem for auditors, security people, and perhaps others as well: their
immediate task is or can be to find something wrong, some objection, some
reason why a thing cannot be done. Someone pulled this on me recently, only
half in jest, rattling off a list of requirements for documentation of
procedures before they could support our little effort, with backup
contacts, and backup contacts for the backup contacts. I responded by
noticing how specific their requirements were, and requesting that their
requirement for documentation be documented so that I could meet it...

But there is a sense in which this critical way of thinking is necessary for
a well run system. The ftp job I mentioned now is a dependency in our
scheduler for our backup schedule, primarily so we can start the backup ASAP
after this last job runs. From another, more hostile perspective, these
could have been treating as competing rather than coordinated or
complementary requirements. Of course, we then had to add monitor jobs to
make sure that these ftp jobs have started running by one time and have
successfully finished running by another time. But the cooperative spirit is
what must be expressed, not saying "no", rather saying, "yes, and, here is
what else we require in order to do that properly...".

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael L Gueterman [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Thursday, December 31, 1998 12:37 PM
> To:   'Stigers, Greg [And]'; [log in to unmask]
> Subject:      RE: [HP3000-L] audit issue
>
> <snip>
>   This is exactly the problem with most of the larger companies that I've
> been involved with (not to say that it can't happen in smaller shops too
> :)
> People lose sight of the fact that they all work for the *same* company,
> and
> are there for the benefit of said company.  Things tend to degrade into
> departmental 'turf wars' where everyone comes out losing something.
        <snip>