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cazh1: on Business, Information, and Technology
Thoughts and observations on the intersection of technology and business; searching for better understanding of what's relevant, where's the value, and (always) what's the goal ...
For starters, I give major props to Jeff Atwood's series on building a PC, because the step-by-step assembly notes, and the overriding "calm down, it's like Legos!" tone ... all very comforting. I tend to be a "ready, fire, aim" kinda guy on my home technology projects, so a little common sense around the electrical equipment is always good.
I won't replicate all of his build-in-process steps or pictures, just the highlights. One thing you will need is a decent work space - don't try to build this on the floor of your den/home office.
The only tools I needed were a Phillips screwdriver and a little knife - lotsa packages to open!
Check Out The Case
I was amazed by the heft of the P182 - it felt like a loaded PC, not an empty shell. Can't wait to hoist it around when it's full of components ...
Some extra work: a nice note from the manufacturer reported a chance that the fans misbehaved at low speeds. This was a defect they couldn't catch until after assembly, so they threw three extra fans into the box, just in case. I didn't want to mess with it later, so I swapped out two of the three - one was too difficult to get at, I'll just take my chances. Plus, now I have three spares (more junk for the closet).
Before you start adding components to the motherboard, dig out the back panel and "dry fit" the motherboard and back panel into the case. This wasn't entirely plug and go, I had to fiddle around with the various tabs and knockouts to get it to come together. Take the motherboard back out, now we've got some tabletop work to do.
Building Up the Motherboard
The memory sticks were bigger than I anticipated - and yes, I double checked, it's physically impossible to put them in backwards
Slip the processor into the slot on the motherboard per the directions - very simple stuff.
The processor (CPU) is dwarfed by the cooling fan (Standard CPU Fan) that comes with it ... but that's not a real cooling system ...
... I was genuinely flabbergasted by the size of the IFX-14 CPU cooler (Main Heatsink). The picture below sizes it all up, next to some real world objects you may be more familiar with. In retrospect, I'm not entirely sure I needed the aftermarket CPU cooling system, but I appreciate the heat problem inherent in these types of machines, so I'll just play along.
Click on the picture for a full-size image!
Consider going through the entire heat sink installation "dry" - it involves sticky pads, screws and posts, and thermal paste (!). The instructions are capable, but not entirely idiot proof. The dry run is important, because we've now come to ...
OOPS #1 - The IFX-14 CPU cooler also comes with the IFX-10 backside motherboard cooler (Backboard Heatsink) - nice additional cooling, I suppose, but as I went through the dry fit to check how things line up in the case ... erp, nope, the IFX-10 sticks out too far. Some geeky desktop jewelry, I suppose, but the big tower fit just fine, so the IFx-10 is out, and on we go.
Another gotcha - attaching the fan. Slightly tricky, and the installation illustrations (which had been excellent to this point) left me with a puzzle. I finally figured it out, so here's a pic to show exactly how to thread those wires (fan clips) through the holes. I've also called out the proper orientation of the anti-vibe strips - also, not called out well in the installation instructions.
Click on the picture for a full-size image!
Two bits of hindsight, for your benefit:
Now that you've got the fan attached - take it back off. You'll see why in a minute.
Some system fans have a speed sensor for control - and the motherboard may have a specific power connector for that fan. Find it before you screw everything in place - might be hidden underneath Gigantor-sink.
Back to the Case
The power supply fit is tighter than tight - aided by the anti-vibration strips inside the cage, I am sure. For this step, you will need to take both sides of the case off.
Leave all of the power cables trailing out the nearest side of the case. As we install components, we'll want to be crafty in how we thread the cables, to keep the interior as nice and clean (and maintainable, and expandable) as possible.
Finally - in goes the motherboard. It's easiest to get in there with the case lying in it's side, but now I've got multiple power cables hanging out back there, so I'll just have to make do.
The case came with a bag full of a wide variety of screws, and no pictures in the documentation - but the bag-within-a-bag, labled MB Only, was helpful. Put as many mounting screws in as you can reach - that heatsink gets in the way of one or two.
Power supply to the motherboard - two cables! You'll be able to hide most of these cables under the motherboard - snake them up through the available openings.
OOPS #2 - This is where I had to (temporarily) remove the fan. The CPU power supply (cable #2 for the motherboard) "conveniently" plugs in right below the heat sink fan. I got it all to fit, but man, I'm really starting to rethink this whole aftermarket CPU cooler idea. Note that this is no slouch against the performance of the device; it was rated best by Tom's Hardware - but it definitely is a tight fit.
Click on the picture for a full-size image!
They're at the Post!
Why yes, I _am_ following Atwood, step by step. Trying hard not to duplicate his pictures, but augmenting his play by play with mine. Here's the final turn for today ...
Install the video card. I'm keeping it simple, with a single GeForce 8600 GTS - supports dual monitors, which I dig, but I am not the hard core gamer.
Power it up, and see if it starts.
Ok, full disclosure here - I unboxed the flat screen, threw on the keyboard, hit the power switch, and ... nothing. Crestfallen, I reviewed everything, checked the manuals, and still nothing. Actually, I got an LED on the motherboard, but no video card fan, no POST. I wondered if the power-on LEDS are showing anything - so I had to find those. Opened the front door of the case and saw ... the power switch. Yup, there is a case power switch along with the one on the back of the power supply. I think one of the on-line tutorials I read had pointed this out already, but I spaced it out. Immediate success followed ...
... and here I type. I'm done for now, that was probably 2-3 hours of effort, elongated by my play-by-play blogging. Still, in retrospect, not too difficult.
posted by James P. MacLennan at 10:28 PM
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Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Home Development Workstation - Part 1
Home Development Workstation - Part 1
Why
I think that every techie should go through the experience of building up a desktop workstation from the ground level. Maybe it's because I date back to the days of the PC XT, when computer support duties regularly had us tearing down cases, changing jumper settings and plugging in individual chips for memory expansions. Mainstream p0wnership of the desktop's guts may also be a dying art form (notwithstanding) - in the days of ubiquitous WiFi, shrinking notebooks, Blackberries and iPods. Cloud computing may liberate us from access to information, but I'm interested in creating and maintaining how that information will be connected, managed, and accessed. In other words - I want to write, not just use, software!
Specifically I have a long list of development projects I've been planning (ie. dreaming about and procrastinating), dealing with a wide range of technologies (semantic web, mash-ups, mobile, social networks, SEO, etc.). I also want to take a much deeper dive into platforms other than Windows; it's clear that Linux, FOSS, and Apple need to be contemplated as part of any organization's environment. And, since I prefer the comfort of hands-on experience when talking about technology solutions for business issues, I figured it was about time to jump in.
So this will be the story of two things - homebrewing a workstation in the 21st century, and the switch from Windows to Linux. Should be fun ...
Prior Art
Of course, step one for most technology projects seems to be find something close, and work it over to meet your needs (techno-jazz, riffing on prior art). It's not difficult to locate how-to content for building a PC by mail order, and my spec is based on two excellent examples. Tom's Hardware (TH) is by far the best resource for drilling into details of the components. TH also has an (apparently) annual series on building a PC from scratch using current state-of-the-art components. In addition, I've borrowed heavily from a Coding Horror (CH) series from last summer - Atwood's detailed notes and photos during the build will give me a lot of guidance when doing the actual assembly (yes, I even aped his photo style - sincere flattery, Mr. Atwood!).
As I began to surf and spec the various components, I noticed a trend with these and other "build your own" mavens. The articles are always geared towards the gaming enthusiast, trying to squeeze the quietest performance and the highest power for the least amount of dollars. I remain at a loss to explain why anyone needs two $600 graphics cards, and all the fans required to keep the whole thing from melting down. Most of the changes I made to the specs from my modelmachines dealt with this; a dual-monitor development workstation is an absolute must, but I wanted multiple windows of Eclipse and Firefox running - not Civ and Doom. (although I nearly changed my mind on the video stuff when I saw this sample of user interface ideas in the works for coming version Ubuntu.)
Deets
I'll spare you the details of the mixing and matching - I'll just give you my shopping list, with some callouts for the important components. Note that I did the "good shopper" bit (TH was good for research, and cNet did a decent job of letting me see the competition), and went to a couple different sources for all these parts. I checked prices at Newegg and Amazon for most of the stuff, but had to search hard for some of the components. Note that all prices are just snapshots from when I placed the orders; I started and stopped this project a week or so ago, and when I came back to some of my shopping carts, availability of some components changed considerably. Suggestion: carve out a long afternoon to research the components, price shop, and make the purchase - all in one sitting.
Case
Antec P182 Gun Metal Black Computer Case
N82E16811129025
Newegg.com
$ 139.99
Other cases might be better for the game enthusiast looking for ultimate quiet; this is just super functional and flexible
I freely admit to not being a motherboard expert. I stuck as close to the examples from TH and CH (ca. 2007), but had to evaluate "state of the art" (ca. 2008) . As such, this component proved the toughest to locate - shows how fast technology changes
Processor
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz LGA 775 Processor
Newegg.com
219.99
I typically go for the second-best processor available. The difference between the 6600 and the current king of the hill was hundreds of dollars; since I'm balancing performance with price, it was an easy decision. Note that I didn't even consider an AMD processor - no logical technical reason, just that I've been an Intel guy all my life ... it's a comfort zone thing
CPU Cooling
Thermalright IFX-14 CPU Cooler
xoxide.com
79.99
Scythe SY1225SL12M
Newegg.com
8.99
Never knew CPU cooling was such a science - another excellent Tom's Hardware write-up
Video Card
Scythe SY1225SL12M
N82E16814130084
Newegg.com
119.99
Another component that took a long time to research. I gotta have dual monitor support, but I didn't need the two-card, super-high-tech video processing that the TH and CH machines would deliver. (This step was a bit more difficult because I'd recently seen Ironman (hhh))
Hard Drives
Western Digital Caviar SE WD5000AAJS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
N82E16822136178
Newegg.com
89.99
Western Digital Raptor WD740ADFDRTL 74GB 10000 RPM SATA 1.5Gb/s Hard Drive
N82E16822136220
Newegg.com
149.99
I considered dual drives and mirroring for both the system disk (Raptor) and data disk (Caviar), but decided to (maybe) add that later. It's so amazingly cheap ...
Coding Horror raves about the Raptor as the boot drive (OS plus common programs). I hope to spoil myself on boot times / startup, since my Windows notebook takes eons ...
(2x) Sony NEC Optiarc 20X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe Black SATA Model AD-7191S
N82E16827118004
Newegg.com
55.98
Taking note of a comment from TH. The optical drives are so inexpensive (I remember when a floppy drive cost me 25 bux!) that I picked up two, to speed up my media projects
Display
Dell SP2208WFP 22 inch Widescreen Flat Panel Display with Webcam
Dell.com
314.00
I didn't do a ton of comparative shopping when picking up the display. I had $100 Dell gift card - a nice "discount" that I couldn't pass up
Total:
$ 1,581.97
Had to insert a picture of the delivered components - it just felt like the right thing to do. It was kinda like Christmas! (props to Atwood for the idea)
posted by James P. MacLennan at 10:59 PM
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Friday, May 09, 2008
The Right Web2.0 Tool for the Audience (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook)
The Right Web2.0 Tool for the Audience (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook)
The volume of Twitter posts popping up in my feed reader is ticking upward, a phenomenon I find interesting because of something I noted recently on LinkedIn. A few weeks ago, a new feature appeared, enabling me to report what I'm working on - Twitter for the office crowd. Always willing to try some flair, I jumped on the bandwagon, and set up a recurring ToDo for updating my LI-net on the day's focus.
meta-tweet
That lasted less than two weeks - some clear (and discouraging) trends had emerged:
Few people in my network were using this feature, and actively noting what we were doing - and it was primarily folks that I know are active bloggers, engaged in the practice of Web 2.0 (and they, too, have trailed off in their LI-tweets)
For the "regular" folks in my network, it was the one activity (daily or twice daily updates) that generated the most inbound comments. I got multiple e-mails, noting that I must be manufacturing additional hours each day.
Without fail, whenever you mention SAP, data warehousing, or any other specific technology, every product sales rep or consulting firm in your network will call that day and offer a$$istance.
I remain a fan of LinkedIn and social networks in general, but my personal jury is still out with Twitter. I think I want it to succeed, but I'm not sure exactly what it can succeed at. The ideas and innovationsarestillcomingin - one of them is sure to make sense to the wider audience, right? In the mean time, I just don't see it catching on in the mainstream enterprise business environment.
I wonder if the gap is generational, or just a different target audience? Much like the difference between Facebook and LinkedIn - is it GenX vs the Millennials, or is it social network versus professional network? Earlier this week, Bernard Lunn weighed in with his compare and contrast post, and observing that both platforms attempt to add Yet Another Messaging Medium to your current array. Dennis McDonald's reply post backs up the notion that there are different audiences in play here - he also has done a deeper dive in Facebook than I have, so if you want a more qualified and detailed comparison, check out Dennis' work.
Or maybe Hugh MacLeod (gapingvoid) has it pegged ...
insightful
Note that Mr. MacLeod is clearly a Twitter fan - maybe he gets this stuff it better than I ...
posted by James P. MacLennan at 9:55 PM
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Wednesday, May 07, 2008
There ain't much IT in IT Management
There ain't much IT in IT Management
This morning, I caught myself looking back at the last week of meetings, e-mails, and conference calls, and I experienced a minor epiphany. If I published a detailed diary of the ebb & flow of proposals, debates, and commitments from the past few days, I could successfully deflate the management aspirations of 80-90% of the technical folks I know. Contrary to what many might think, there's not much IT in IT Management.
Ok, that's a bit of an overstatement; I couldn't do this job effectively without a solid grounding in the technology under discussion. However, I expect anyone with a similar role (intermediary / facilitator between business and IT) would agree that it goes well beyond compilers, load balancers, and user interfaces. We talk about fundamental business process, not just specific IT projects. When presented with new ideas/approaches, we question some previous decisions while reaffirming others. We use the simple calculus of cost-benefit to make the call between multiple options; the magic is in defining the problem clearly, identifying the costs accurately, and enumerating the benefits fairly & impassionately. (Revenues will increase or costs will decrease, and you'll see it on the bottom line by the end of Month X).
For every organization I've worked with, those conversations are never black-and-white, always shades of gray. Here's a scattered sampling from the week ...
Where are the resource constraints?: For Project Stepstone, we used to think IT was the constraining factor, but now that we have a reasonably detailed plan, it's clear that (operations / finance / sales [pick one]) is overcommitted. How can we line up the top five projects and force rank them? Alternatively - do you have similar Level of Effort (LOE) estimates for these other projects and functional areas? Or are you estimating conservatively / being too pessimistic?
What's this really worth?: Are you going to justify Project Bedlam on hard benefits or soft benefits? And when I say hard benefits I mean you will see a material impact to your bottom line, in the current fiscal year. Can't think of any? Let's work through some examples ...
Agile vs. Waterfall: You want to talk about the "home run" Project Aaron, but I think your best bet is a flurry of singles and doubles. Let's be practical - we need to deliver Project Carew, Project Ripken, and Project Gwynn just to manufacture some time in your day, so you can effectively work on The Big Bam.
How will we know when we're done? What does success look like?: Sometimes it's a struggle to drill past the one-liner, "worthy goal" statements and get to specifics. Integrating our processes is like motherhood and apple pie, but give me a target like increase revenue with key customers by 5%, slash time-to-market for new products by 30%, or drive down inventories with increased forecast accuracy: these are concrete deliverables we can use to drive a tactical plan.
When can we start?: Project Criswell has a detailed plan with tasks, resource assignments, & effort estimates. We have a full cost picture, including capital and expense. We have walked through the change management issues (ie. who specifically will be impacted by this project). We've dotted the I's and crossed the T's - what will it take to get a "go"?
There has been little or no "classic IT" in any of these conversations. No mention of program requirements, data flows, system throughput, database tuning, etc. There is strong business focus, but just as much effort is expended simply in making sure estamos en la misma jugada - we're all on the same page.
This is a consistent modus operandi in all of the companies I've worked with; I don't think it's unique to any company in the more traditional industries, although I would assume high-tech or consulting firms might approach things differently. And, I'm fairly confident that this is why many died-in-the-wool technical folks have little interest in upper management. It's all about semantics, gray areas, and wading through varying levels of understanding to find those nuggets of truth that everyone can line up behind. Its not about winning arguments - it's all about bringing groups of people to the same place as quickly as possible, but doing it without forced acquiescence. Compromise and collaboration will do wonders for commitment when the project hits a rough patch.
This process drives most people in IT nuts - and its not just those with aspirations to upper management. There are plenty of IT groups in corporate America, just chomping at the bit to get something accomplished, to get under way and start delivering real benefits. All of this debating and restating and reformatting appears as an overdeveloped sense of conservatism and an unwillingness to make change. Just make the decision and get out of my way - I'd be done already if you'd just pull the trigger ...
As far as I'm concerned, however, this is where the real fun of IT is. Understanding - really understanding - the problem and the path to the solution is great; helping other people come to that same understanding is really a kick. Catching that glint in their eye when they've taken ownership - they know they're driving a project that delivers big-time benefits - I dig it. It's like the toughest programming problems - the brilliant architecture hinges on one critical hack, and I'm the one who discovers the solution.
posted by James P. MacLennan at 10:11 PM
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Saturday, May 03, 2008
iTunes Upgrade Freeze Resolved - and an Enterprise KM Observation
iTunes Upgrade Freeze Resolved - and an Enterprise KM Observation
As many of you know, one downside of a career in IT is that we get pressed into [unpaid] service as tech support for the family's troubles with technology. My college-bound daughter has purchased her MacBook, and will soon find out (to her dismay) I have little hands-on experience with that platform. However, for many years both of my daughters have tethered their iPod to the family Windows desktop - I've done or thing or two over there. Fortunately (unfortunately?), I only get the call when the problems are significant, and the last big problems were no exception (two weekends down the drain ...).
They had successfully filled the hard disk to 98% capacity, and performance had slowed to a crawl. I had to chip away at the cruft left behind by months of downloads, ripping, and 'net surfing (BTW - can anybody explain why iTunes insists on making so many hidden copies of these songs?). The Internet is a wonderful thing - I got my crash course in the state-of-the-art for rescue disks and other file recovery utilities and processes - interesting stuff, but that turned out to be the easy part. The time-consuming problems came when I had to reinstall, and then upgrade, iTunes. After applying the latest version (7.6), I started it up - and nothing. No familiar library lists, no album covers - no music.
Being the techie type, I opened up Task Manager and saw all the right services running, but nothing appeared on the screen, So, a-Googling I went, and (consistent with previous experience), I saw I was not alone. I found threadedconversations, troubleshooters in forums, even a number of decentwrite-ups on Apple's site. Again, I learned an awful lot about stuff I didn't know before - the vagaries of registering DLLs (sccbase.dll slbrccsp.dll sccsccp.dll slbcsp.dll slbiop.dll and, of course, wmasf.dll & wmidx.dll), artifacts like iTunesAddIn.CalendarHelper, and useful utilities like Dependency Walker.
Still, after hours of struggle - nothing; color me frustrated, especially because the helpful folks on the other end of my browser didn't seem to have a consistent solution either. Then at dinner, my oldest daughter mentioned that she's seen this non-starter problem before. "I just plug in my iPod and the problem goes away". No - it couldn't be that easy ...
... but it was. Restart the PC with a freshly installed upgrade - nothing on the screen, but I can see iTuneshelper.exe and iPodService.exe running. So I plug in the iPod and voilà, the crisis is over. Too simple, and I'm not sure if this is the solution that will fix things for everyone, but I want to capture this knowledge here as a favor to the next beleaguered dad who follows in my footsteps (hence all the tech stuff in the paragraphs above - Google search bait).
An Observation: Knowledge Management (KM) in the Enterprise
The ultimate solution was straightforward and simple, and I'm surprised that Apple's upgrade instructions do not indicate any need to plug in the iPod to get things going. I don't know if the plugging-in step is required - plenty of hits from my Google searches, but I didn't get the sense that 80% of iPod users were having this problem.
I also noted that in all of these results / conversations, it's rare to see a final, definitive solution captured. The write-ups are helpful for narrowing in, but I suspect after hours of struggling with iPod and PC, folks are just relieved to be done with it, and don't think to come back to close the knowledge-capture loop by documenting the ultimate solution.
This phenomenon happens in the enterprise as well, especially when working on stressful internal projects or hot bug fixes for extended periods of time. You're so sick of the problem that you don't want to re-hash the process by capturing the detailed step-by-step in a nice, clear document. When you're working on a product your company offers for sale, it makes sense to capture this knowledge - you can expect many users will call in with similar experiences. On the other hand, seeing well-constructed root-cause documentation for internal development or processes is rare.
Mitigation: For the tech going through the problem-solving process, a very effective approach is to keep a log of the things that you're trying, and each dark alley you go down. This will make it easier at the end to go back, clean it up a bit, and put it in the knowledge base as a final document. The other way to drive this knowledge-capture behavior is to simply to require proof of full documentation before something is pushed into production. This is overhead and "bureaucracy" that most techies dislike, but it should drive better quality over the long term.
posted by James P. MacLennan at 5:35 PM
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Thursday, May 01, 2008
RSS: Underappreciated Web 2.0 in the Enterprise
RSS: Underappreciated Web 2.0 in the Enterprise
We added RSS capabilities to our internal PMO systems this past month, and traffic & content is already building up to become a valuable resource. Some have [correctly] noted that this increased visibility puts a bit more pressure on project managers and team members, to keep updating project blogs with pertinent information. This "time shifting" of communication should develop into the most effective way to let the rest of IT know what is happening in all areas.
There are some very interesting threads and conversations going on ... for example:
One Supply Chain systems team informs us of process improvements in product development - nothing to do with IT, but interesting nonetheless
Another team is putting together ideas that will take some significant IT costs out - that's a very active thread
The SAP application team is debating with the Basis team on the merits of a Unicode upgrade - and onlookers from Supply Chain Planning and Data Warehousing are noting dependencies on Unicode in their platforms
These spontaneous, organic, and very impactful "conversations", between people still experimenting with a new technology, show me real potential for spontaneous innovation and idea sharing. More evidence of the value of [judicious] experimentation with new technology - no silver bullet, but just enough spark to start a few fires.
Interested in learning more about RSS? There's lots of good reading out on the Internet ...
Voyage is an imaginative RSS-feader which displays the latest news in the "gravity area". Interesting navigation - I don't think this is practical for internal use, but it sure looks good!
Newsmap translates news feeds and frequeny to a variable bar graph approach.
Universe DayLife is, well, spacey. Translates the universe of news and connections to stars ...
posted by James P. MacLennan at 7:48 PM
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Tuesday, April 22, 2008
No Silver Bullet for Group Collaboration over Distance?
No Silver Bullet for Group Collaboration over Distance?
Lots of organizations have to deal with the challenge of implementing standard work and best practices over physical distances. With sales offices, distribution centers, and manufacturing locations scattered across the country, what's the best way to get people who know their stuff to collaborate on process improvement - and then take that knowledge back to their home office?
While wrestling with this challenge, one executive I know preemptively ruled out videoconferencing. It's a common suggestion, but the general feeling was that it's just not useful, has never proven itself in practice.
I happened to agree with the idea that videoconferencing wouldn't help in this situation. The team was talking about productivity improvements for an assembly process - workstation layout and hands-on participation was required to effectively work out the wasted movements. However, when defending the No Webcams position to some gadget freaks around the table, we came up with a/the fundamental flaw with remote video: it lacks spontaneity.
Historically, videoconferencing was set up in specific rooms that had to be reserved in advance. For higher quality connections, equipment is expensive, and the expense had to be pre-approved. Advances in digital cameras brought devices mounted on desktops, but this tied you to that specific location. Today's nifty notebooks have built-in cameras, but these can be tough to use with a group of people (crowding around).
Yes it's possible to use videoconferencing, but the physical limitations tend to quickly dim the excitement of all but the most diehard tech fans. In practice, local process improvement teams would just walk over to the workstation in question, skull out the best way to do something, and take a break for some coffee by the time we had the webcam hooked up ...
Lack of spontaneity is probably why the vast majority of PowerPoints are delivered with printed decks, and not overhead projectors. It's still more time efficient to quickly print off a few copies than it is to chase down a projector, lug it and your notebook computer into a conference room, get everything hooked together, and try to remember how to switch to the external monitor. (Hmmm, good thing they added all those cool slide transition effects ...)
Truth is, having paper copies isn't all that bad. Some folks like to take notes on their handouts and file them away for future reference. The medium of communication has its own utility, a sort of residual value that most people understand how to use. The same is true for fancy collaborative technology like videoconferencing. The magic is in the actual conversation, but that can get lost in the struggle to get the technology working before you can actually use it.
Does this mean that collaboration technology is doomed to failure? Of course not - knowledge capture and reuse, and differences in physical location and time zones, are still problems for organizations that rely on the "old way of doing things". You just need to pick your tools judiciously, and build up to the fancy stuff over time.
Wiki's will not work if people don't already have an interest / desire / skill / method for creating documentation. Wikis solve distribution and access problems, but they don't make people suddenly want to write.
Blogs will not work if people don't already have the need to communicate while competing for people's attention. Blogs solve time and distance chanllenges and facilitate simple Q&A, but they don't automagically endow authors with reader empathy.
Collaboration Spaces will not work if people don't already have the need to share documents and edit them within a group. Collaboration Spaces solve version control and tracking hassles, but they don't help groups create impactful documents where none existed before.
We needed to see productivity improvements in component assembly within 60 days, so flying a couple of key people around the country was a small price to pay for the quality of work that we got. We took a small step forward - getting process experts to a different location, to put faces to names, and empathize over common challenges, experience the satisfaction of defining a workable solution - and experience the joy of business travel. Maybe next time we could look into videoconferencing, because interpersonal relationships and understanding of the power of shared best practice has already been established.
posted by James P. MacLennan at 10:59 PM
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Sunday, April 20, 2008
Desperately Needed Features for eMail Clients/Servers
Desperately Needed Features for eMail Clients/Servers
Via Knowledge Jolt, here's an article from KM world with some interesting statistics about folks engaged in enterprise search - but it was a tangential quote from the author that caught my eye. When asking corporate knowledge workers about using public Internet search engines, she found that ...
... although only 2 percent [of corporate searchers] said they used the company intranet, 13 percent stated that they were looking for internal company information. That's puzzling.
Not puzzling to me! They're looking in their e-mail inbox!
It's a common hassle of IT departments - mailbox management (and the lack thereof). Everyone's inbox seems to have thousands of documents, gigabytes of information, and zero organization or structure. There are a couple of interlocking problems here:
Backup: IT is typically expected to cover everything - and after a few years, a few thousand e-mail accounts, and a few gigabytes apiece, well that's an awful lot of tape. More to the point - your backup window gets smaller and smaller, as you watch tape after tape load up with what you know are incredibly redundant inboxes.
Upgrades: Heaven forbid you try to convert from one mail server to another, or go through a major upgrade. The migration process will go on forever, because you have to convert all of that ... stuff.
Document Retention Policies: Something new from last year - the idea that a company must be able to produce any e-mail / electronic document requested by a court. Please, no eMails (IANAL) - I'm not up on all the details here, I just know this is one of the reasons why we can't simply delete all eMails older than six months.
To solve problems 1) or 2), IT departments will attempt to impose a size limit of a few gigabytes. This will be met with a few typical reactions ...
10-15% of your users will far exceed the targeted max inbox size. This is the typical Pareto situation, where the storage needs of a few outweight the needs of the many. Worse yet, this group is typically composed of the Marketing department (huge attachements), everyone in Legal (never delete anything, lots of document scans) and a collection of significant Executives (including the CEO) who get cc'd on everything and have zero time or interest in organizing ephemera.
Invariably, you'll get pushback along the "disk is cheap" line. Last month I bought 750GB of storage at Best Buy for $180 - why can't you throw some cheap disc in the old data center? Unfortunately, those that have time to provide these helpful suggestions typically don't have the interest in hearing about the growing stack of backup tapes.
Bottom line - there's simply no good business case for taking time away from anyone's busy day to organize their desk; they either do it or they don't. Mailbox quotas are IT's way of trying to tell you to get your life in order - and that is pushing rope, completely ineffective unless the person actually wants to change. It doesn't grow revenue, and it doesn't save cost (well, not much).
Now, I don't have any ultimate answers here, but I am trying to lay out the basic premise behind what I think are two very simple ideas that would have a huge impact on the growth of corporate America's eMail-boxes. I gladly invite someone to tell me why these things aren't features of every mail server; of course, I'd rather have someone to tell me how to get this done!
Proposed: Eliminate the Reply All feature: Or, at least make sure the default option is Reply to Sender, and put at least four mouse clicks and/or keystrokes between the casual eMailer and the option to share their wisdom with their cohorts on the To: line. We've all seen annoying threads expanding in our inbox - it must be the default! I say that only partially in jest - I have accidentally hit Reply All a few times - nothing too embarrassing, but it was, a bit too easy to make the mistake.
Proposed: When replying to a e-mail that sports a file attachment, mail clients should delete attachments from the reply by default. It makes little sense to reply to a note and return the original. If you've made changes, you'll be attaching your updated file anyway. I've seen way too many e-mail responses that say, in effect, "I agree". No need to send it back, just tell me you're OK with this. Of course, they'll hit Reply All (see above) because for some reason, I need to be informed that you agree with a copy of the thing I already have a copy of ...
These two options, I believe, would quickly eliminate the majority of useless duplication in corporate eMail servers. My last suggestion, is less about prevention, more about cleaning things up. Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if something like this already exists; I can even imagine how to write it. I just don't have the time ...
Proposed: I want a utility that scans each mail thread in my account, and selects the earliest occurrence of an attachment. Then, the thread is traversed, and all duplicates of that document are replaced with a text reference to the e-mail that contains the original. A simple concept, this would certainly save me a lot of manual effort needed when cleaning out my own inbox.
Any other simple ideas out there for mail management?
Here are some more recent eMail stuff from my blogroll ...
posted by James P. MacLennan at 9:14 PM
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Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Stretching Your User Interface Design Muscles
Stretching Your User Interface Design Muscles
A follow up to my previous post on innovation in user interface design:
If you want to keep up with cutting edge thinking on technology - in a very approachable, effective format - ReadWriteWeb is a must for your feed reader. I'm constantly amazed by the number of solid articles they generate every week. Here's one from a few weeks ago with a series of video examples of imaginative thinking about user input:
Another ReadWriteWeb article, and this one relates well to the Stephen Anderson presentation I linked to before. It talks about user interactions (web forms) that empathize with and engage the person working with the site. Excellent examples of usability "in the wild":
(via Aggregated Intelligence) A very effective way of designing any interaction with data (web form, application dialog box, even a paper report) is by prototyping. I have long favored MS Excel for working out database designs and report layouts; it's very simple way for end users to capture what they want to see, quickly rearranging and adjusting until it is just right. For on-screen dialogs, try PowerPoint; the second link below takes you to a "toolkit" of GUI components that let you work up sample screens / user interactions very quickly, using the comfortable environment of PowerPoint. Another option might be Visio - I've used versions of that package that included shape templates with lots of user interface widgets. Bottom line - it's a lot easier to sketch something out than to have to actually build something "real".
Also from the first article above ... if you don't think there's a difference between corporate IT UI and the consumer Internet - does this ring true for you?
