Office hours: What are they and why are they important

Holding office hours can help your Puppet implementation team and your organization’s Puppet subject matter experts (SMEs).

Why should you have office hours?

There is often resistance to implementing Puppet automation. There are internal battles, conflicting directives, and fear about automation. When you try to move forward, progress is slow, with endless meetings to get buy-in and approval.

How can Puppet be scary? When you think of Sesame Street or The Muppets, puppets are cute. However, Puppet is tied to the word automation, and automation is scary to a lot of people. Automation immediately makes some people think, “I’m going to be automated out of a job. I’m losing control over what I’m supposed to manage. How can I be responsible for keeping my system up?” When people don’t know what’s going to happen next, they’re in the dark, and scary scenarios run through their heads.

Office hours turns on the light

Office hours open the door to everyone within the organization, demystifying Puppet and the ongoing automation efforts by Puppet SMEs. Schedule a recurring meeting (physical or virtual). Invite everyone to attend to ask Puppet SMEs questions, discuss problems and concerns, and ask about automation plans. If everyone is empowered to come to discuss things with the SMEs, it should help to calm people’s fears. Best case, there is a flood of new questions out of curiosity that come in. But what if no one comes?

No one is coming!

That can happen. Keep trying. You can change office hours to a new time, or change the frequency of office hours. Don’t close the door by ending them, you don’t want to go back into darkness. The key is to stay available and open to questions, and always have an SME available during office hours. (The SME can always continue to work while in a conference room or on a bridge until someone shows up.)