blog.RedRockResearch.com

Do you like designing on whiteboards?  I do.   Colorful markers against a clean, white surface inspire all kinds of creativity and fun.

Recently David Crossett of Ready Receipts gave me a great tip.  He told me that instead of going to your local OfficeBOX superstore and paying $200 for a 4×8 whiteboard, just hit HomeDepot instead and get a $12 piece of showerboard.  It works just as good and if you need a smaller size they will cut it for you on site for no additional charge!  At that price, you can line your walls with thinking space.  Power to the Consumer–thanks David!

Mike J. Berry
www.RedRockResearch.com

I’ve heard people make references to Geoffrey A. Moore’s Crossing the CHASM book for several years now but had’t read it until this past week. 

Moore’s book is a must-read for any IT company trying to launch a new product.  Although the concepts in the book are not novel (so admit’s Moore) the book brings a vocabulary and metaphoric dictionary to the readers allowing marketing groups, investors, and techies alike to communicate about the playing field in a proactive manner.

Moore discusses the importance of delivering continuous innovation, instead if discontinuous innovation.  Our new innovations need to help people do what they are already doing better, and not force them to abruptly change something that kinda works for something that they are not sure about that may possibly work better.

Moore introduces the Technology Adoption LifeCycle, complete with five categories of market segments.  He discusses how to market in succession to each group:

1. Innovators
2. Early Adopters
3. Early Majority
4. Late Majority
5. Laggards 

Finally, Moore introduces some business concepts you may have heard of by now, like the bowling alley, the tornado, and the fault line.

If you haven’t heard of these, then you need to get reading!

Mike J. Berry
www.RedRockResearch.com

I’m publishing my first book next month.  It’s about software quality management.

Quality management, that is, in the sense of improving software processes and production support methods, not about ‘how to test software.’

I include overviews of the four formal quality models: CMMI, Six Sigma, and ISO 90003, and ITIL.  I outline how to create a quality system within an organization and I discuss common fixtures it should have.

I talk about checklists, measurements, purpose, accountability, and continuous improvement.

So now I want your help.  Tell me what else I should include in a book about managing quality in an IT/Software Development/Production Support environment.

Also, suggest some titles.  Thanks in advance!

Mike J. Berry
www.RedRockResearch.com
 

Recently, while attending the ‘09 Agile Roots conference in Salt Lake City, UT, Alistair Cockburn–the keynote speaker–referenced Miyamoto Musashi’s 16th-century book called The Book of Five Rings. 

I like Asian philosophy (and swords and such) so I picked up the book and read it.  The book was written in 1643 by an undefeated Japanese samurai master who was so effective he was rumoured to have spent the latter part of his career entering sword-fights purposely without a weapon.  Although meant as a battlefield manual, the book has gained popularity as a handbook for conducting business in the 21st century.

The book was translated into English by Thomas Cleary at some point and the edition I read was published in 2005.   Improperly named “The Book of Five Rings,” the book is actually a compilation of five scrolls.

The Earth Scroll: Musashi talks about how a straight path levels the contours of the Earth and how various occupations provide life-improving principles.  He talks about observing patterns and learning from them.  Certainly a great primer for any business trying to get across the chasm.

The Water Scroll: Here Musashi talks about how water conforms to the shape of its container.  He suggests a separation of one’s inward mind against it’s outward posture, maintaining that one’s control over one’s mind must not be relinquished to outward circumstances.  He translates these philosophies into about 80 pages of sword fighting techniques.  An interesting modern parallel is found in Jim Collins book, Good to Great, where he talks about how the most successful companies are able to say ‘No’ and not be influenced by immediate but non-strategic opportunities.

The Fire Scroll: As with any book written by a 16th century samurai master, you’d expect a core discussion on combat strategy.   The fire scroll is full of combat strategies, positioning, and pre-emptive theory.  Very interesting.  Did anyone notice how Apple’s announcement of the latest iPhone came about 1 day after the Palm Pre phone was officially launched–killing it’s market blitz?  No coincidence there.

The Wind Scroll: The wind scroll contains a directive to study and be aware of your opponents techniques.  Translated into business speak, this means one should always study ones competitors.  Be aware of new offerings, partnerships, markets, etc. that they persue.  Emphasis is placed on observing rhythms and strategically harmonizing, or dis-harmonizing with them as appropriate.

Finally, The Emptiness Scroll:  This scroll discusses the value of escaping personal biases.  Emphasis is placed on not lingering on past situations and being able to adjust quickly to new scenarios. 

Overall I found this book ‘enlightening’ to read.  If you like metaphors and inferences, or sword-fighting, then you will enjoy this book. 

Mike J. Berry
www.RedRockResearch.com

Want to visit ground-zero for data security?  Experts from SANS, MITRE, SAFECode, EMC, Juniper, Microsoft, Nokia, SAP, Symantec, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s National Cyber Security Division last week presented a listing of The Top 25 Most Dangerous (Information Security) Programming Errors.  Expect to see future government and big-money RFP’s mandate these items be addressed.

Mike J. Berry
www.RedRockResearch.com

Have you been challenged with performing a high-risk task like upgrading a prominent server, for example?

Here’s an execution plan template that you can use to guide you.

I. Executive Summary
Brief overview of intended event.

II. Review of Discovery
Details of what efforts were made to research what is listed in the following sections.  Meetings, Vendor consultations,  OnLine Resources, and Conventional Wisdom can be included.

III. Pre-Upgrade Procedures
Steps identified to be taken before the event.

IV. Upgrade Procedures
Steps identified to be taken during the event.

V. Post-Upgrade Procedures
Steps identified to be taken after the event.

VI. Test Plan
Verification procedures to confirm the event was a success.  This section should define the success criteria.

VII. Rollback Plan
In case the worst happens, what to do.

IIX. Situational Awareness Plan
After-the-event steps to validate the success of the event with the system’s business users.  This would include a two-way communication between your group and the business users, announcing the success, and providing contact information for them to contact you in case there is still a problem.

IX. Risk-Management plan
A plan listing risks associated with the steps above and recommendations as to how to lower those risks.

X. Schedule
If the event spans many hours or days, you may want to draft a schedule for the benefit of all involved.  Include on the schedule the ‘rollback point,’ which would be the latest time a rollback could be successfully performed.  Your success criteria whould have to be met by this point to avoid a rollback.

Be sure the Execution Plan is in a checklist format, not a bullet-list format.  Require participants in the event to ’check’ completed checklist items and sign-off sections they are responsible for. 

For critical areas of high-risk, (ie: setting up replication), for example, you may want to require two individuals to perform the checklist steps and sign their names when that section is complete.   

If you like, add a ‘lessons learned’ section to be completed later, and keep a copy of the execution plan for historical purposes. 

Mike J. Berry
www.RedRockResearch.com

NewsCHIME.com, the ‘News from everywhere, every 10 minutes’ website has officially passed the 100+ repeat visitor mark!  This site was launched in May of ‘08 with no advertising at all, and now enjoys more than 100 repeat visitors, and over 1000 unique visits per month. 

I classify a ‘repeat visitor’ as somebody who has come back four or more times.   The number four is kind of arbitrary, but I think somebody who comes back only once or twice is not really a captive audience participant.  They are more link a potential customer peering into the store window.

NewsCHIME.com was created to bring headline news to people who, like me, love to read the news.   We love it so much, in fact, that that’s all we want to see on the site–news headlines and nothing else. 

Have a BlackBerry and a few spare minutes between (or during) your meetings?  Go to NewsCHIME.com and check out what’s happing across the world!

Need to do research for education, work, or personal interest?  You can search for headlines topics from the past 18 months or so on the search page.  

This works great if you are expected to know about something newsworthy in a short amount of time.

For example, a search for ‘Obama’ or ‘McCain’ and a quick headline perusal will give you a one-sentence summary of everything noteworthy these candidates have done for the past 18 months.  10 minutes on NewsCHIME and you be more infomed about the upcoming presidential election than more than 300 million other people.

Need research project material on the mortgage meltdown, type ‘mortgage’ and you’ll see the unfortunate play-by-play.

Be sure to take note of what you will NOT see at NewsCHIME.com.  You will not see lots of useless links to various websites that have nothing to do with your topic.  You will not see pictures of dancing people,  and you will not see ads from GM, Chevy or eHarmony. 

I almost forgot to mention, NewsCHIME has free news alerts!  That’s right, Free!  Sign up and select which search criteria you want, and as those terms are named in news events you’ll be the first one to know about them. 

So, impress your friends, impress your boss, impress you teacher.  The faster you can get at information, the more beneficial your decisions will become.  Enjoy.

Mike J. Berry
www.RedRockResearch.com

The value of information…

Here’s a fun site if you are a news junkie.  www.NewsChime.com is a simple site that grabs news headlines from major news sites and lists them in an easy-to-peruse text-only format. 

I’ve got the site on my PDA which makes reading news articles perfect for that boring meeting or that inconvenient 10-minute wait you hadn’t planned on.

An interesting feature on www.NewsChime.com is the ability to search for keywords in past news headlines.  Want to know what has been newsworthy about Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama?  Housing Crisis?  Gas Prices?  You can easily search for past headline keywords with this feature.

www.NewsChime.com also allows you to get news alerts sent to your phone or email.  I have news alerts sent to my phone about mortgage prices, home-loans, home-lending, and foreclosure because we talk a lot about this at work.  It’s been fun to be the first one at the office to know the latest.

www.NewsChime.com is a free service.  Enjoy.

Mike J. Berry
www.RedRockResearch.com

In a conversation with a friend once, they jokingly described their inability to play racquetball against other seasoned players as ”They are playing racquetball, while I am just hitting a ball around the room.”

I’ll borrow that reference and apply it to Software Production Support.

Is your Software Production Support group ”playing racquetball,” or are they “just hitting a ball around the room?”

From a distance they can appear like the same activities.  On closer inspection however, one is much more organized, elegant, patterned, and proactive–while the other is only reactive. 

Finding the order from all the choas separates the effective from the ineffective.

There are three particular areas your Software Production Support team should be focus on.  These three areas are:

1. Maintaining Systems
2. Managing Customer Expectations
3. Become a Quick-Reaction Force

1. Maintaining Systems:

Think of your production servers like a fleet of cars.  In a fleet plan, the company sends every car to get an oil change after x number of miles, a tire rotation after y number of miles, and a general tune-up, fluid change, etc. after z number of miles.  This pattern repeats itself for the life of the car that is serviced by the fleet manager.

How often are your server hard drives defragmented?  How often are the transaction-logs backed up?  How often are the indexes reindexed, and the statistics updated?

How often are memory settings adjusted for performance? Latest patches applied? How often are your servers checked to see if there any impending disk space issues? 

To maximize system performance, create a “fleet plan” for your servers which checks all of these items at regular intervals.

2. Managing Customer Expectations:

If a server fails, do you know which systems depend on it? If a database goes corrupt, do you know which applications need it, and which corresponding business units will be impacted when that happens? 

Do you have a way to communicate to those groups immediately?

Create a dependency map for your products.  A dependency map illustrates which servers host which databases, and then which databases are used by which applications, and finally the names, numbers, and email groups of the business users that are affected by that server/database failure.  This will enable your team to proactively manage your customers expectations.  You can notify them before they have to notify you.

3. Become a Quick-Reaction Force:

The SWAT team, the FireStation, and the Ambulance services all have something in common: they are ready to take action at a moment’s notice.

They have the information they need available to them, and additional services available with a simple call.

Do your products have support information organized and readily available?  Do you have the names and numbers of your account representative for each third-party product or tool you support?  Do you have the product-support phone numbers and your support plan credentials readily available?

Do you know who knows what about each application in your enterprise?  Who programmed it originally?  Who has supported it lately?  Which business units use it?  Where is the source code located?

Keeping information about each system updated in a central location should also be part of your “fleet plan.”

Another effective tool for a Quick-Response group is a monitoring system.  Something that indicates the overall attitude of each of your production servers?  Disk Space available? Will the system reply to a ping?  Is SQL Agent running? Is that required Windows Service up and running?  Monitoring tools like Nagios can do this for you.

 Another great idea is to keep a lessons-learned log for each component you support.  Track problems, fixes to problems, assumptions to be confirmed, and ways to test if the component is functioning properly. 

All of these pieces in place will make your production support much more effective.

So, think about it…is your Software Production Support team playing racquetball, or are they just hitting a ball around a room?

Mike J. Berry
www.RedRockResearch.com

Decades ago I had a friend tell me this question was posed to their High School class. I never found out what the class concluded.

Over the years I have thought often about the answer to this question.

My earlier conclusion was that professionalism meant a separation of work and personal life.  This is something that I think the older generation is better at.  The younger generation seems more transparent about personal matters in the workplace. 

As the years go by, however, my experience doesn’t support this conclusion as a definition of professionalism.  I find many professionals are actually quite personable.

This has caused me to re-evaluate the answer to this question.

I think the answer I would give now is that professionalism means ownership.  It means responsibility and accountability for producing the appropriate results.

I walked into a CostCo last week looking for a large household item.  I found a smiling attentive employee with whom I asked where I might find the item I was looking for.  He said “I’m new here,” and shrugged his shoulders.

There was this moment of pregnant miscommunication.

No doubt he was unable to help me due to his present unfamiliarity with the store layout, but as a customer I felt neglected.

I thought to myself, “Well, are you going to get someone for me who knows where this item is?” And then I realized I had, perhaps, misaligned expectations for customer service from a new employee at a wholesale warehouse selling everything from car tires to margarine.

Then the light bulb went on—a more professional employee would have “owned” my problem.  They would have found someone who did know where my item was and would have walked with me until my problem was solved. 

Suddenly I realized I had the answer to my decades-old question: Professionalism means ownership.   Ownership of issues.  Ownership of assignments.  Ownership of tasks.

My thanks go out to the anonymous clueless employee.  After several decades, I finally have my answer.

How would you answer this question?

Mike J. Berry
www.RedRockResearch.com