If you’re thinking I’m off my rocker asking such an odd question, don’t worry, I haven’t temporarily taken leave of my senses. To assure you that I haven’t taken an odd turn, this is a continuation of a previous post – How Complex is your Backup Environment?

The question of horses and unicorns covers the introduction of artificial design requirements or operational procedures that see something that should be as simple as a horse turned into something as unique, fragile and irreplaceable as a unicorn.

You see, there’s lots of horse handlers out there. Even people who aren’t necessarily trained to look after horses have a good idea of what to do for them. I once had a horse as a kid, and she was relatively easy to look after, particularly since I had a big field to let her roam about in. She practically looked after herself. So if someone turned up tomorrow and asked me to look after their horse for a week, I’d have a fairly good idea of how to look after it, even if I’d never dealt with that sort of horse before.

Give me a unicorn and I’d be in another boat. Literature tells us they’re fragile things. Heck, they’ll only let certain people go anywhere near them, which seriously reduces the scope of the adult population who can care to their needs.

Not only that, it’s easy to find practical advise about handling horses on the internet … of unicorns though it’s a different story: it’s all theoretical stuff. It’s all supposition and old wives tales mixed in with a liberal dosage of imagination. That doesn’t beget practical tips on handling!

If you’re an IT manager, you have to accept that staff will periodically move on. Some companies employ more contractors than permanent staff with the expectation that staff will regularly move on. You want systems to be straight forward so that:

• New staff become productive as soon as possible;
• New staff don’t make serious (or catastrophic) mistakes because someone before them broke the law of least astonishment.

This doesn’t just apply to IT management. As an IT worker, you similarly:

• Don’t want to go into a position where you spend your first three months decoding someone else’s spaghetti system.
• Don’t want to go into a position where you don’t notice someone has violated the law of least astonishment and make a … boo boo.

So you see, it’s all about unicorns and horses. If you go into a job saying that you’ve worked with horses, or at least have passing familiarity with them, then there’s a good chance that regardless of whether you’re presented with a Shetland Pony, an Appaloosa or a monster sized Draught Horse, you’ll be able to muddle through the process. If you’re presented with a fragile unicorn, your chances of muddling through aren’t so good.

Do yourself a favour: make sure your backup system is a horse, not a unicorn.

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