AJ Piscitelli, PMP
Project Manager | ERP Solutions Provider | Cloud Architect
As we enter December, most of us are adapting to scaled-down gatherings and mostly online gift shopping. It’s also a good time to go over things to make sure you’re all set for the holidays and be ready to go for the new year. These are a few of the checks that I do around this time, which may be useful for you as well.
Try to line everything up now
I often take a few weeks off during the holidays, so I’m quite used to getting everything ready before I walk out the door on my vacation. I, like most people, don’t want to be disturbed during the holidays and want to use the time to relax and enjoy my family.
So, I spend the first two weeks of December preparing for my time off. I make sure that my resources have everything they need to be able to finish their work. I line up several reserve tasks that are lower priority, that my resources can work on if they get stuck. I make sure that all of my routine outside contacts know that I’ll be gone, that way they aren’t expecting a quick reply.
Even if you don’t take any time off around the holidays, I encourage you to line up things too. A lot of your co-workers and outside contacts will be off. This means that you might have to wait until after the holidays for your request. Also, getting everything ready ahead of time will allow you to focus more on your family during the holidays than work.
Check up on your backups
Backups are so important that I tend to mention them several times, mostly because I’ve seen the aftermath without them. It’s a good time to check your backups to make sure that they are completing successfully, and the backups are valid.
The validity is an important topic. If you haven’t done it recently, take some time to restore your backups to make sure that they work. If you don’t know that your backups are valid, then your data is at risk.
Re-evaluate what is being backed up
When was the last time that you edited your backup jobs? Have you added any servers or virtual machines since then? This is another area where I like to check at least twice a year. I like to take a look at my backup jobs and see all of the areas that are being captured. Ideally, the jobs are setup to automatically add new machines, or shared folders. But sometimes things get missed. Take a look to see if you have any machines or shares that might not be in your backup jobs.
Check subscriptions renewing in 2021
It seems that we have subscriptions for everything now: anti-virus & firewall, domains & DNS, network management & monitoring, and all kinds of different software packages. Take a look through your list and see all of the items that are going to renew in the first half of 2021. Do you still need these products? Maybe you don’t need to renew that old domain, or you aren’t using AutoCAD as much as you used to (I fall into this one). Now’s a good time to clean house and save some money!
For those subscriptions that you do need to keep, is everything in order? Do you need to adjust the size of the product that you are using because you’ve had an increase or decrease in the number of users? Has the associated credit card expired or been compromised? A little work now might save you some major problems down the road.
Check your budgets
Depending on how your company operates, you may have a budget for your department. How far over or below are you on budget? Do you need to adjust next years budget to account for the changes? Did you put off some purchases because of COVID that you still need? You may want to check with your accounting department to see if it makes sense to make those procurements now before the end of the year, or they may ask for you to hold off until the beginning of next year. Either way, it’s a good thing to check.
Wrap up
These are just a few small items that I try and tackle before the end of the year. I’m curious if there are any other items that you try to wrap up this time of year. Let me know in the comments below.