Oh pity the poor SQL Server DBA team.

Just who’s gonna prove to upper management why the DBA Team needs extra budget for more people, more training, more time for projects like experimenting with cloud databases, more tools or upgraded SQL Server hardware.

But even more important is that upper management will ask WHY is it needed, WHAT benefits will it bring and what have you done with your existing budget (or what have you done for me lately).

While you can say ‘Hey let the DBA manager do that’, perhaps you and the rest of the DBA team should be a bit more proactive in what you can do to help the DBA team manager make the DBA Team look its best in front of upper management and to have solid reasons why the extra budget is needed.

• DBA team members need to have an awareness of company goals and specific DBA team projects that will help attain that goal.
• DBA Team members should know the IT division goals and what the main DBA Team priorities should be.
• Make sure you know your role on the DBA Team and your assigned tasks related to the priority list so projects get completed on time.
• Be ready to support multiple databases such as SQL Server, Cloud based, Oracle, NOSQL, etc. for different business solutions as needed.
• Be more visibility to upper management. Not just the managers. You and the DBA team members need to have an active role in demos of your work to upper management.
• Relentlessly monitor all SQL Sevrers 24×7 to make sure that your internal and external customer experience is not degraded. The entire IT staff and DBA team must work together and get involved.
• Automation projects should be planned to allow efficiency in building SQL servers, setting SQL Server configurations, adding alerts and monitoring tools.