Over the past twelve months, Brad Cline, VP of Business Applications, and Rachel Morrill, Senior Director, Marketing, have sat down with IT practitioners across SolarWinds to discuss the tools, processes, and principles that shape their experience as tech professionals.
Their stories remind us that IT isn’t just about tools—it’s about people finding smarter ways to work, solving problems under pressure, and guiding organizations toward resilience. This IT Pro Day, let’s revisit some of the most impactful conversations from the past year.
The KPI Commandments: Metrics That Matter
A conversation with Senior IT Managers Jonathan Kenneally (JK) and RJ Steadman taught us that performance metrics should drive real improvement instead of painting a pretty picture. Kenneally described the trial-and-error process of establishing meaningful KPIs for his shift-left support model. At first, the team “sandbagged” by aiming low, but over time, they refined targets against capacity. “We originally set out a goal of just 60% of tickets… Over time, we figured out what was coming in and what we could handle.” Eventually, 80% became the sustainable benchmark.
Steadman, meanwhile, underscored the importance of segmenting metrics instead of relying on aggregate figures that hide problems. “Just because you’re at 99.9% doesn’t mean the metric is valid for every segment.” Both agreed that KPIs must align with broader business outcomes. As RJ put it: “Any performance indicator could become a vanity metric if it’s not scoped to business needs.” The takeaway: KPIs should expose the “ugly spots” and highlight where teams can improve, not simply celebrate what’s already working.
“In the end,” writes Brad, “KPIs can be used to tell any story you want, but if you aren’t using them to shine a light under the couch, you’re missing the point.” Read the blog here.
Meeting Users Where They Are With Your ITSM Portal
Senior IT Manager Noel Barbee reminded us that ITSM isn’t just about process, it’s about people. In his conversation with Brad, he outlined four strategies for optimizing the ITSM portal in your organization:
- Evaluate incoming issues and shift left where possible
- Meet your users where they are
- Maintain a robust knowledge base
- Create a framework to measure what matters
Analyzing ticket data, Noel’s team identified self-service opportunities such as password resets, which alone accounted for a quarter of requests. “Providing users with the ability to reset their passwords themselves not only alleviates the workload for my team but also empowers users to resolve their problems quickly.”
Barbee also stressed the importance of meeting users in their flow of work, pointing to the SolarWinds Virtual Tech Bar inside Microsoft Teams: “Rather than developing a separate solution that requires users to go elsewhere, your IT service should meet them in the platforms they’re comfortable with.” Behind the scenes, his team invested heavily in a knowledge base that grows and stays fresh through review cycles and dedicated ownership. The result? Faster resolution, higher satisfaction, and fewer bottlenecks. Read the full blog here.
How a Shift-Left Model Brings Order to IT Environments
Howard Williams Jr., Observability Manager, made the case for shift-left as both an efficiency strategy and a talent pipeline. On the efficiency side, Williams described the challenge of overloaded senior engineers juggling tickets and strategic projects. A shift-left approach assigns simpler issues to tier-one staff guided by runbooks, freeing experts to focus on architecture and innovation. The effect was immediate: “Tickets were averaging 30 to 45 days with the network team… Now we have KPIs that aim for closure within a couple of hours.”
On the talent side, Williams sees shift-left as a way to nurture junior engineers: “Instead of hiring six senior engineers, we can employ six junior engineers… They are learning about Software-Defined Networking, containerization, and networking within environments like Azure.” Over time, these newcomers progress toward higher-tier roles, creating clear career pathways and even working to ease the IT industry’s talent shortage. Read the full article here.
Recognizing and Fixing a Poor Incident Response Framework
Software Engineering Manager Moustafa Aboelnaga offered Rachel Morrill a candid look at the pitfalls of incident response. He began by describing key characteristics of a dysfunctional framework:
- Disconnected channels
- Communication redundancy
- Inadequate monitoring
For Moustafa, fragmented comms and passive monitoring meant incidents were often reported by stakeholders rather than detected proactively. “It was passive monitoring, where 90% of our incidents were reported by our stakeholders rather than us.” By introducing critical user journey monitoring in SolarWinds Observability and integrating multiple tools into SolarWinds Service Desk, Moustafa’s team accelerated detection and remediation. Custom dashboards provided transparency into ongoing incidents, while StatusPage improved stakeholder communication.
The payoff was dramatic: a 90% improvement in mean time to detection and a 70% reduction in mean time to resolution. Looking ahead, Moustafa sees AI-enabled intelligent alert grouping as the next frontier. “It’s like having real-time machine learning… The intelligent alert grouping is an AI model that combines all of these elements into one incident.” Read the full piece here.
Observability Tools Every Technical Writer Should Be Using
Erica Thomas, who leads the InfoDev team, showed us that observability isn’t just for IT Ops—it has transformative potential for documentation teams, too. Her group faced delays and errors when troubleshooting custom PowerShell scripts and managing file uploads. By integrating error logs into SolarWinds Observability, she cut through guesswork: “I can log into Observability and see all logs from before, during, and after the error, instead of relying on someone to notice and report it manually.”
Similarly, moving from manual FTP uploads to monitored processes reduced risk and gave the team confidence. One incident of accidental file deletion underscored the stakes—without log visibility, recovery would have been impossible. Erica’s team also began using transaction monitoring to detect 404 errors before customers found them, flipping documentation from reactive to proactive. Her vision for the future includes full automation pipelines and APM integration to track user interactions with docs just like application flows. As Erica put it: “When you have the right solutions in place to give you holistic insight, the third- and fourth-degree uses for these tools are almost limitless.” Read the full article here.
Celebrating the Teams Behind the Tools
From building smarter KPIs to nurturing junior engineers, from refining ITSM portals to transforming incident response, the work of IT pros is about pushing boundaries while keeping the lights on. On this IT Pro Day, join us in celebrating the people who make it all possible—always looking ahead, always learning, and always driving the industry forward.
