How do you share database administration best practices with others?

1 Identify your audience

Before you share your best practices, you need to know who your audience is and what their needs and expectations are. Different audiences may have different levels of technical expertise, interest, and authority over database administration. For example, you may want to share your best practices with other DBAs in your team, your organization, or your industry. You may also want to share them with developers, managers, or clients who work with your databases. Depending on your audience, you may need to adjust your language, tone, format, and depth of your best practices.

2 Choose your medium

When it comes to sharing your best practices, you must choose the most suitable medium. Depending on the audience, your goal, and your resources, you may opt for different options. For example, you can create and maintain documentation that describes your best practices in detail. This could include standards, policies, procedures, guidelines, checklists, templates, or tutorials. Additionally, you can deliver a presentation that showcases your best practices in a concise and engaging way. This could be a slide deck, webinar, video, or podcast. Finally, you can initiate or join a discussion that invites your audience to ask questions or share opinions on your best practices. This could be a forum, chat, blog, or social media platform. Ultimately, each of these mediums is useful for providing comprehensive and consistent information as well as creating dialogue and interaction with your audience.

3 Provide context and value

No matter the medium you use, it’s essential to provide context and value for your best practices. This involves explaining why your best practices are important, relevant, and useful for your audience. To do this, you should define the problem or challenge that your best practices address, such as performance, security, reliability, scalability, or compliance issues. Additionally, describe the solution or approach that your best practices offer in terms of methods, tools, techniques, or tips you use or recommend. Lastly, demonstrate the results or outcomes that your best practices achieve by providing metrics, benchmarks, case studies, or testimonials that illustrate the impact or improvement of your best practices.

4 Solicit feedback and improvement

Finally, you need to solicit feedback and improvement for your best practices. Ask your audience for reviews on your best practices, such as ratings, comments, surveys, or polls. Invite them to collaborate on your best practices, such as edits, revisions, additions, or integrations. Show appreciation for their input or participation by thanking, crediting, or incentivizing them. This will help ensure that your best practices are always up-to-date and relevant.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?