Last night, I wanted to play my wife a single track from a Lily Allen album. It was pertinent to what we had been watching on TV. I could have found the CD, fired up the CD Player and Receiver and played it, but I thought I'd save time and use technology. So, I fired up my Linksys DMA2200, it's a solid-state Windows Media Extender that sits in the living room linked up to the TV and went on to completely fail to play the track I wanted. This is exactly why technology so often fails in the home and why people will continue to be content to use a radio or their old CD player rather then modern equivalents that offer so much more.
So, I powered up the DMA2200, but then realised my PC upstairs was off. The DMA2200 needed to communicate with my PC to access the files so I had to go and boot it up (5mins wait). Then the DMA2200 connected and the main interface showed up (another 2-3mins wait). I navigated to the music part (sluggishly, but this is normal). It told me I had no playlists, and then refused to navigate to the albums themselves (10mins fiddling trying to sort it out). It's not done this before. I checked the connection, I navigated (sluggishly again) to the videos section, they played just fine (10mins watching some home videos). Back to the music, nothing, nada, no luck. Rebooted, tried again, nothing. More than half an hour after starting, I gave up.
It's played music just fine before, now it seems to be refusing to do so. I have no idea why and I'm relatively technical. I bought a solid state device to save electricity not use more. It can't play ripped DVDs like Windows Media Centre on my PC can, instead you have to wrap the actual film file in a proprietory format to make it play (I found that out via an internet search). It responds sluggishly and takes a reasonable expert to set up. What I find really annoying is that it's not even the first generation of this kind of equipment, I had a Kiss 1500 for a few years and got used to the eccentricities of that one (it only played files of less than 1Gb, but at least it would play files from a server) so I expected the next generation to be able to deliver what the customer wanted, but no, not a bit of it.
This is symptomatic of home-based technology and it's time the suppliers sorted things out. How many wireless routers have a way of enabling people to set up a secure wireless LAN without having previous knowledge of how to do it? How many devices actually support all the formats that we really need? How many interface with each other seamlessly and effortlessly? Probably none. Interestingly, the digital TV set-top-box systems from Sky or Virgin Media are probably the only modern-day computerised device that actually work properly in the home that can be used by non-technophiles. If only more systems emulated the digital TV set-top-box system perhaps more devices would get mass market penetration, but they need an interface that just works and provids all that the customer needed at a touch of a button first.
In the meantime, perhaps I'll go back to the CD-player, it's just so much quicker...
Tuesday 28 April 2009
Monday 27 April 2009
Change is not scary
How robust is your change control process? How many incidents are as a result of change? When a significant change goes in to live do you worry about what's going to happen? A robust change process is often seen as a business blocker, but when implemented correctly, it will provide a return on investment.
Since my team implemented a robust change process and actually got buy-in from all affected parties, the volume of incidents associated with releases and significant system changes has all but gone to zero. The ITIL based process is the underlying reason why we've seen this step-change, but just as important is that it's a process that meets the business need and is seen by all to enhance the chances of success so adoption became a no-brainer. Recently, we even managed to get a 3rd party to use the process and they had one of their most successful version upgrades ever.
Often change processes stumble around the need for a change advisory board (CAB) which typically runs once a week or some set time period. This is never timely and most people find incredibly dull and therefore don't attend. A non-working CAB will always kill any attempt to maintain a successful change process so there is no CAB, instead all changes are signed off electronically with the Change Manager maintaining a forward schedule of change and making intelligent scheduling decisions. All the required documentation and information is associated with the change ticket and is therefore available for review by the relevant stakeholders. Workflow and the Change Manager ensures the ticket is only available for sign-off once it's ready and only those who are interested in the change are notified making review and sign-off as fast as possible.
By removing the CAB obstacle, stakeholders outside IT are willing participants knowing that they will only be involved when it is pertinent and their opinion really means something; "No" really does mean "No". Negotiation is obviously possible, but the only way the workflow will allow a change to go ahead is when all checks and sign-offs are completed.
Two to three incidents per release used to be the norm, but in the last 6 months, the norm has shrunk to no incidents per release, having an incident post release is quite odd now and it's reduced our incident workload considerably meaning we can put further time in to the quality of releases.
I thoroughly recommend a change process, but to make it work, make sure you have a strong change manager who is a great communicator and who lives and breaths successful change.
Since my team implemented a robust change process and actually got buy-in from all affected parties, the volume of incidents associated with releases and significant system changes has all but gone to zero. The ITIL based process is the underlying reason why we've seen this step-change, but just as important is that it's a process that meets the business need and is seen by all to enhance the chances of success so adoption became a no-brainer. Recently, we even managed to get a 3rd party to use the process and they had one of their most successful version upgrades ever.
Often change processes stumble around the need for a change advisory board (CAB) which typically runs once a week or some set time period. This is never timely and most people find incredibly dull and therefore don't attend. A non-working CAB will always kill any attempt to maintain a successful change process so there is no CAB, instead all changes are signed off electronically with the Change Manager maintaining a forward schedule of change and making intelligent scheduling decisions. All the required documentation and information is associated with the change ticket and is therefore available for review by the relevant stakeholders. Workflow and the Change Manager ensures the ticket is only available for sign-off once it's ready and only those who are interested in the change are notified making review and sign-off as fast as possible.
By removing the CAB obstacle, stakeholders outside IT are willing participants knowing that they will only be involved when it is pertinent and their opinion really means something; "No" really does mean "No". Negotiation is obviously possible, but the only way the workflow will allow a change to go ahead is when all checks and sign-offs are completed.
Two to three incidents per release used to be the norm, but in the last 6 months, the norm has shrunk to no incidents per release, having an incident post release is quite odd now and it's reduced our incident workload considerably meaning we can put further time in to the quality of releases.
I thoroughly recommend a change process, but to make it work, make sure you have a strong change manager who is a great communicator and who lives and breaths successful change.
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