Marriage!

It's certainly been a busy previous six months. Not only the company take over but I got married last week.

The amount of work required for a wedding reminds me of one of those projects with an unmissible deadline except in this case the deadline really is unmissible!! Once a date is set, that's it. Full steam ahead until the big day and wow, what a day. For me, the big day was June 29th and it was too hot. Mind you, we had some lovely photos taken down by the river and then off for the honeymoon in Paris.

Now that I'm back at home things feel like they are calming down but I'm sure the next major piece of work isn't far away.... why do I have the feeling that my wife wants to have most of the rooms redecorated......!

Anyway, here is to you Krys.

Software is not a panacea - Part 2

In the previous article I raised the fictional scenario of a company wanting to automate a timesheet submission process. In this article I'd like to touch on some of the project processes that would be used by the majority of companies.

Generally, most companies will start off with the sensible process of evaluating existing software packages, looking at what's out there and maybe even seeing what other companies use. After a period of time a sensible company will come to the conclusion that there is no one piece of software that fits their requirements and so their requirements must change as well as some processes. This is a key point as every company likes to think that they are unique and so around that uniqueness certain process have appeared so when it comes to upgrade or computerise those processes they are reluctant to change them.

However, back here in the real world most companies will do one of three things, they will

1. Abandon the idea
2. Buy the commercial package closet to their requirements and get it customised
3. Hire a developer to write a bespoke piece of software

Of the above three options the first is the best and safest but at this point many companies make another fundamental mistake. They never document the issues found or the reason for the project to be abandoned. This means that often someone else will reopen the project 6 to 12 months later, reinvestigate options and then select option 2 or 3.

Option 2 is an interesting one, surely there can't be much wrong with making some customisations could there?
Well, it depends. If the software is designed to allow those customisations then go ahead. However, may companies will want to alter certain business logic (e.g. maybe three people would have to approve a timesheet and the system, by design, only allows a maximum of two.
Quite often a company will purchase development skills and get the codebase changed to support what they require. This causes a problem when upgrades are required or if a security hole is discovered as often the customised verison will break when patches for the mainline system are applied if it's even possible to apply them at all.
Now the company ends up in a situation where they like and want the features in the next version but are tied to an old version due to the customisations, often they will have to face the choice of staying with the customised version, migrating to the new version or paying out to get the customisations in the new version.

Option 3 opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities for problems and complications to occur but I'll save that one for another blog

Software is not a panacea - Part 1

There have been many times where I've come across situations where people have this mistaken belief that software will fix all their ills. Surely, anyone with a few years experience know that software is merely a tool designed to fix a problem the way the programmer/designer intended it to be fixed and not the way that you expect it to be fixed.

There is often a huge disparity in the way a company wants a problem to be fixed compared to the way the software actually fixes it and this leaves the company with three options, namely:
a. Change the processes to fit the software.
or
b. Change the software to fit the process.
or
c. Write their own software.

Let's take the classical scenario of a time recording and billing application. Let's say that company X records time on paper sheets which then get passed to finance to generate the bills and send out to the clients. Let's say that the company bills on 15 minute intervals based on a client code.

Obviously, the above scenario is crying out for some sort of automation, the amount of time and money that can be saved with an online tool means it's worth investing in the hardware and IT departments time to get such a system installed.

In the next article I'll take a closer look at the process many companies follow for such a project.

Gameforge supports theft

Up until a few days ago I played ogame. This is a browser based online game where thousounds of people interact to steal and trade resources. It was the sort of game that you could spend 10-20 minutes on throughout the course of a day and provided a welcome respite from work.
My finacee also played it for similar reasons. She played for almost a year and I did for 2 and a half years.

That is, until the other day. Because I was helping out my financee (which is within the rules) and because she was on the same IP address (also within the rules) when the resources arrived (against the rules) we both got banned until 2036. Now, I'm not disputing the ban. We both violated one small part of the terms and conditions. The penalities for that are a permanent ban which seems a little draconian but that's how it is.

So, Ban in place I decided to ask for my money back as I've got 8 months left to run on the account only to be told to go away.

So, bewary of online games especially of places like gameforge who will happily take your money and then ban you for an infraction.

This to me is theft - a bought for service is not being provided, they won't transfer the subscription to another account and they won't refund me.

So, thanks to Gameforge I'll not be trusting any MMO ever again.

Company Takeover

The company where I work has just been taken over by a much larger organisation. I'm not going to say where I work for now as enough has been plastered over the technical press but I'll have a few things to say on the matter much later on.

It's an interesting time for both good and bad reasons. Obviously the economic problems have hit both companies hard so the usual bans on travel and overtime have come into force. This presents a problem for us IT Department types who have been given a lot of work to do around the integration and are going to have to take time off in lieu for it. At the end of the year I think they will have many staff out as they will have leave that they will have to take. Hell, they will probably buy it off us!!

The current plan is to re-ip all the devices as the company that has taken us over use the same IP range as we do and this is right on the back of recently relocating them all to new data centres do yet more out of hours work and then fixing things that break.

The Chinese have a curse "May you live in interesting times" and for the next few months those times sure will be interesting....

Busy Project Time (2).........

So, It's January 2009 and not much has changed, it's still busy project time. Unsurprisingly the server migration which absolutely, totally HAD to be completed by the end of December 2008 wasn't. How the project manager expected 79 servers and a lot of filer data to be moved in less than three months was beyond me but as with so many projects here the project managers are under the thumb from higher ups to deliver so often the way they do this is to pass on only good news to the higher ups whilst pressurising the staff to do the job no matter the cost...

Still, as the company is being taken over there is hope that this will change. Time will tell. With a little luck I'll be back blogging my normal nonsense very soon.

Busy Project Time.........

Just when you think it's all going to be quiet and maybe it will be a good time to get those niggling little tasks out of the way and to be able to sit down and write some decent blog articles someone comes up with the idea of decommissioning a server room to save on power. So now I'm involved in a project that requires the relocation of about 4TB of data to another filer, including updating and moving the servers that use the filer data....

Yes, it's going to be a busy few months.

And a project manager just asked me if I needed any help installing IIS...... Sometimes I'd rather be doing anything else than working in IT.