Asset Management

I was going to write something about the presidential debate, but one sentence sums it up...  Obama got Mitt-slapped.

Moving on to asset management.  I've found asset management to be something that must be kept up with on a daily basis, otherwise it becomes such a giant headache that it's impossible to deal with.  Right now, I'm in that position.  We use SysAid, which is some pretty good software that is sitting on old hardware and I'm pretty sure the raid-array has gone bad.  But I don't know anything about Windows Server 2003, so I haven't built a new SysAid Server.  But that's neither here nor there.

The point I was trying to make was that SysAid could handle all the assets we have, and handle it well.  The only problem is that I'm behind the power curve, and I'm not technically responsible for asset management.  I've got enough jobs on my plate without trying to fix the asset management system as well.  Now, where do you start with some colossal mess?  The answer to that question is anywhere.  Just start it.  

It's a long, drawn out project that simply requires man hours to fix, and there is no such thing as man hours in the IT world.  It's all just work.  I'm sure our location is like many, in that there is no such thing as downtime.  There is always something new and impressive to do, and it needs to be done yesterday. 

So asset management falls to the back of the bus.  But why do you want to do asset management anyways if you haven't been doing it before?  My answer is to track problem equipment some place other than the brain of an IT person.  The brain of an IT person has enough junk running through it on a daily basis that filling it with ridiculousness and old problems just isn't worth the effort.  Computers are good at solving problems and remembering things, so make it a habit to get the computer to remember the problem, not the person. 

With proper asset management, you have a way to track all that broken junk and identify the problem pieces of equipment and get them out of service.  There's no need to keep repairing the same piece of equipment over and over and over again.  Sure, IT is generally salaried, but time is better spent doing things other than repairing the same stupid register.  Get rid of it.  Lost business and revenue because that one piece of equipment is in the shop every week for a year is more than the piece of equipment is generally worth.

But how do you convince people the problem is really with that piece of equipment and lost time/effort amounted to enough work to warrant replacement?  Simple: asset management produces a paper trail.  And if you can show how often a piece of expensive equipment is broke, and how long it takes to fix, then you've won half the battle of getting the device replaced.  Use the tools you have at hand, and create a paper trail with asset management.

The 80/20 rule

The 80/20 Rule

Ever hear of the 80/20 rule?  It's a scary little statement with horrendously profound work and life implications.  But what is it, and what can it do for me?

My company is in a growth phase.  Every time I turn around, we've got some major project or other going.  Store opening at one location, rebranding at another, rolling out project X off at another.  With a five person IT staff, it makes for very busy days.  I work a lot with VeriFone equipment, and have recently become responsible for building new point of sale systems.  Developing the primary configuration doesn't take all that long.  I can get a Sapphire and V950 ready for a store in just a couple of hours.  From there, I almost feel like I'm 80% done.  But then I have to do the individual, line item by line item configurations that make everything work, have the fuel sell at the right grade and the right price, and store the data in the right location.  And that feels like it's only 20% of the work, but takes 80% of the time.

Hence, the idea of the 80/20 rule.  The rule is pretty simple....  the first 80% of anything you do will take 20% of your time...  the last 20% of anything you do will take 80% of your time.  In other words, getting to where we "believe" we are 80% done is a point where we are nowhere near done.  So what should we do then?  Well, if you have an idea and can get it 80% complete, roll it out and try to sell it.  Or deploy it.  Or do whatever you normally do with your projects.  Getting to 100% is a long, almost impossible task.  Getting something to 80% doesn't seem to take any time at all, and it begins a place where you can start profiting from the time expenditure. 

Video game companies make a lot to do about publishing a game "when it's done".  Well, guess what game company: it's never done.  The game is finally complete when you quit supporting the product and quit releasing patches.  Because that's all a patch is: something you forgot to fix or thought would be nice to add, but you didn't do before you sold it.  So the "when it's done" mythology is basically a call to "we're pissing around and don't feel like working 90 hours a week every week".  Either that, or they haven't got the foggiest what they are going to do and are convinced that technology and computers are the future.  Protip: Technology is a tool and a framework for the future...  it is not the future.   The future is just today with a few more bells and whistles.

Thinking comparatively towards the future, I now carry a Motorola Droid that serves as a flash light, camera, scheduler, notification system, and a phone (among other things).  Given 30 years, that new device might also be able to replicate the tools I carry.  I still carry the basic device, but what the device does and how I use it tell me whether this is the past, present, or future. 

Once again, thinking towards the future and at the past, previous to the Droid (or Blackberry), I might carry several different devices to handle each and every single different thing listed.  An iPad might serve similar purpose and merge/remove the need to carry a laptop, but it's not there yet.  Could all the devices I carry one day merge into one?  Possibly...  but it better have a much bigger or easier to use keyboard.  Complex passwords suck on phone screens.  

Followers and Leaders

After a few crazy weeks, the momentum is gone.  But momentum is something we can create.  Momentum and feelings are followers.  The feeling of accomplishment and moving forward happens just so long as we continue doing what we had been doing previously. 

Feelings act in much the same way.  If you don't like your feelings, tell your feelings to shut up and start acting in a manner that produces the results you want. 

I didn't have any inclination to study this morning.  I've been self-teaching myself the CCENT and CCNA by reading the books to myself and recording it.  From those recordings, I make CDs and listen to them as I drive around town doing my normal work.  Following the path set forth by the book, I skipped from the ICND 1 book to the ICND 2 book for a few chapters.  I've been stuck in chapter 1 of the ICND 2 book for at least two weeks.  Sorry, but VTP trunking is not that exciting, even though VLANs are pretty cool. 

Rather than wait for excitement to return, I did what I keep preaching to myself even though I have a tendency to forget: I charged on.  This morning, I had to motivation to work.  Now, ten pages later I can see the end of the chapter that has me bogged down, and I can see myself making more progress.  I wasn't motivated, but after I worked at and did what I wanted to do, the motivation quickly returned.

Motivation to do a task is a follower, not a leader.  If you want to accomplish something, do the task regardless of how you feel.  If you believe you've made progress, your motivation will sky rocket and your feelings will fall into line, putting you where you want to be. 

This isn't that hard, but as a part of the American culture, we are taught that feelings are leaders and feelings are important.  This is incorrect and needs to be purged from our thinking.  Why else do we have an ADD culture?  It spends its time focusing on things that are followers and highly inconsistent.  For a stable culture, we want to follow a stable leader.  Feelings are an inconsistent leader.

Maybe more on this later.  I have to think about it more. 

Documentation and tangets

Good documentation would describe everything that goes on, but it a small scale IT environment, projects fly in faster than the documentation can be completed.  For a 70 site company, I can think of at least six projects in less than ten seconds that are on the plate.  There are probably more.

Projects pile up faster than they can be documented, and often the final solution isn't something we'd expected.  As such, building a new back office computer becomes an exercise in fighting Windows 7 and fighting documentation that hasn't been updated since Windows 2000, if the documentation exists at all.

In the end, you have to document.  Otherwise, you sit there scratching your head, thinking back to all the memorable moments you've had, trying to figure out what the solution was.  It could be something like the serial port communication speed wasn't correct, or you had the cable plugged in to a slot that no longer works and surprise, whoever moved the cable didn't document.  So you have to document.  It's not a choice.

First step: buy a label maker.  I can hear the questions: what does a label maker have to do with documentation?   Simple answer: go look at any switch in a location, and tell me what all those cables plug in to.  Every single cable.  Now go find the other end.  Have fun.  I'll be waiting here.  Back?  Ok.

I was thinking of a second question when I started writing this, but when I came to finish it (today) that question is completely gone.  I have no idea where I was going with that. 

Cabling is the simplest and easiest way to see results when documenting.  If you have done your job right, you should be able to immediately notice if a cable has come out.  You should also be able to walk a non-technical person through chasing that cable over the phone.  At the moment, I don't have to do that.  All but two of my sites are within 30 minutes drive of each other.  But that's going to change.  It's just a matter of when. 

Second side note...  My first original sentence was "documentation is a necessary evil".  But that's not correct.  Documentation is a discipline and security issue.  You have to be disciplined enough to actually write the documentation.  You have to be secure enough to realize though you performed the steps, it's someone else's equipment.  And that could be half the reason most IT people don't document when they should.  A lack of discipline in an otherwise highly disciplined environment is unacceptable. 

So, after a couple of side notes, I think I've gone somewhere completely different from where I started.  It's a good place, though. 

The other point I was going to make about documentation...  Quit trying to write a "complete" document and turn all your documentation into "living documents".  In other words, hash out whatever steps you can think of for the project and document steps like crazy, but if you forget a section don't sweat.  If the project was worth doing once it'll probably get repeated.

Besides, documentation is only good after 3-4 people have gone through and tried to do what you are trying to do.  Because you know what you are trying to do.  They don't.  

Computers are the future! Computers improve productivity! (no they don't)

Sometimes it's only in knowing a thing very well that we are able to tell when others don't know what they are talking about. Point of fact are two things I hear very frequently from both the technologically inept and the technology professional. Though I do say I hear these things a lot less from professionals.

Computers are the future! Computers improve productivity!

The instant you hear either of these things you should do one of two things: nod your head and smile, because the person doesn't know what they are talking about, or find a way to fire that person.

Let's go with the second premise first, that computers improve productivity. Most people listen to the hype and the marketing pitch, so they go out and buy a computer. The marketing pitch is that sheer ownership of a computer will improve productivity. I know of nothing that simply owning will improve productivity. But this is what initially sold those huge, clunky machines, and still sells them to this day. Don't get me wrong, computers are a lot of fun, but simply owning one does not improve productivity.

What everyone must realize is that a computer is a tool, no different than a hammer.  Hammers are there for a purpose.  You have specific hammers for specific tasks.  You have claw hammers, sledge hammers, tack hammers, rubber mallet style hammers, and who knows how many other types of hammers.  But if you attack a screw with a hammer, problems are going to occur.

See, with tools it's all about using the right tool.   We use cabinets from Royston.  They make good cabinets.  But you need the right tools to go through the knockouts to run all the wires.  I've tried knocking out knockouts with the wrong tool, and it takes forever.  The last time I tried the wrong tool it took me an hour to go through one cabinet.  Then I got mad and got the right tool.  FYI, the right tool is a rubber mallet and chisel.  With the right tool. going through cabinets is a snap  After some frustration with flexible conduit (which is great for electricity, and absolutely horrible for data communications) I knocked out holes through ten cabinets in less than ten minutes.  The right tool gets the job done quickly and efficiently.  The wrong tool doesn't get the job done. 

So...

To reiterate: computers are tools.  If put to proper use, they help.  If not, they do no good.  Remember this next time you hire a computer person.

Fresh thoughts on old ideas

On my vacation, I've spent a lot of time thinking about various things.  Reading through One Bullet Away by Nathaniel Fick led me to think about my time in the Marine Corps.  More importantly, I was thinking about how to translate the success experienced in the Corps to the civilian world.   I've ran into numerous Marines who could do almost anything in the Marines, but never could find any success outside in the rest of the world.  I think I figured out why.

Everything started out simple in the Marines.  We would go run in the warmth and heat at a slow pace.  Those first runs were easy, with little effort required to finish.  They weren't meat grinders.  Slowly but surely, we'd run farther and farther in worse and worse situations.  First, the pace and distance picked up.  Shoes and shorts were replaced with combat boots and utility uniforms.  Packs were added.  From there, things just got ridiculous.  We had MOPP runs in full gas protection suits, flak runs, resupply runs, and who knows what else.  The point was simple, though.  Slow, incremental change that built success upon success taught that anything was possible. 

But there was a second lesson.  Ridiculous situations happened everywhere in the Corps.  I remember sleeping out in pouring rain near after doing a training exercise.  No matter the situation, we trained.  We trained in the rain, sun, cold, wind, and anything else you could possibly imagine.  No matter what, we trained.

In the end, it paid off.  During my three tours in Iraq, I saw every horrendous situation there could be.  Freezing rain, ridiculous heat, and sandstorms were generally par for the course.  I even saw snow one February morning in Kuwait, though the ground cover was gone by mid-morning.  Through it all, we trekked on, never stopping, and never relenting.  It was an endless, aggressive march towards our goal; a predatory attack on whatever happened to be in front of us at the time.  Crush, kill, and destroy whatever got in the way.  And it worked.  It worked wonders.

But those principals are generally lost once one leaves the Marine Corps.  It's hard to maintain that rugged discipline and adherence when no one is watching, and have the people you deal with don't care.  The sights of the world are much more interesting and distracting.  It's much easier to watch the nights' football game and root for your favorite team than it is to go out and do hard things by yourself. 

I've tried to explain this principal to my wife, but I'm nowhere near as elegant or well-spoken as I need to be.  The lies and meanders of TV are an interesting waste of time, but they are just that: a waste of time.  Back in the Corps, we didn't care what was on TV.  We had a mission to accomplish, and nothing was going to get in our way.  No rain, no sleet, no Haji invaders.  There was nothing that was going to stand between a Marine and his goal.  Nothing at all.

As another example, try watching the first episode of Band of Brothers.  The obstacle presented in that show is a very similar example.  They went after a hill they call Currahe.  It was three miles up, and three miles down Currahe.  At the beginning of episode, they ran up in shoes.  Shoes paved way to boots.  Boots paved way to boots immediately after eating a full dinner.  Boots became packs.  Packs became a run that was nothing.  By the end, the strength to endure had been created through steadily increasing difficulty.  Through some fairly decent film making, you could tell how horrible the run was.  Just watching the episode makes me want to go run up a mountain and conquer the world.  But the 1st Airborne didn't just run up a mountain.  They walked up the mountain.  Then they jogged up the mountain.  And then they jogged a little faster, and a little harder. 

Now translate that into the civilian world.  Tuesday, I went running with my wife.  It was slightly misting, but otherwise not a bad day.  It was in the mid 80s, so the weather was good.  But it was misting and it could have been a reason to not go running.  But we went anyways.  We could have stayed home, but we didn't.  That one day set the tone for the entire rest of the week.  We've been out and running every single day since then.  The only day we will miss will be Friday, and that is because an unexpected blessing to go to SeaWorld.  Instead of worrying about her weight loss journey this week, my wife has posted net calorie losses every single day.  It may not be the two pounds per week she wants, but it will still be a loss.  And a loss on vacation is not something you often run into from the drive by crowds.

The point is simple.  If you want something, start working on it now.  But don't try full sprint for three miles just because that's what you want the final goal to be.  Work your way towards your goal.  Every single day.  Without fail.  Rearrange your life to accomplish your goal.  When "I can" replaces "I wish I could" then you've made a fairly decent jump.