Category: Technology

[Cloud | On-Premise | Outsourcing | In-Sourcing] and why you will fail!

error-24842_640I was reading this article about UK government in-sourcing all the work they previously outsourced.

This could be a story about any one of a number of failed outsourcing or cloud migration projects I’ve read about over the years. They all follow the same pattern.

  • The company is having an internal problem, that they don’t know how to solve. It could be related to costs, productivity, a paradigm shift in business practices or just an existing internal project that is failing.
  • They decide launch down a path of outsourcing or cloud migration with unrealistic expectations of what they can achieve and no real ideas about what benefits they will get, other than what Gartner told them.
  • When it doesn’t go to plan, they blame the outsourcing company, the cloud provider, the business analysts, Gartner, terrorists etc. Notably, the only thing that doesn’t get linked to the failure is themselves.

You might have heard this saying,

“You can’t outsource a problem!”

Just hoping to push your problems on to someone else is a guaranteed fail. If you can’t clearly articulate what you want and understand the consequences of your choices, how will you ever get a result you are happy with?

Over the years we’ve seen a number of high profile consultancies get kicked off government projects. The replacement consultancy comes in, hires all the same staff that failed last time, then continue on the failure train. I’m not going to mention names, but if you have paid any attention to UK government IT projects over the last decade you will know who and what I mean.

Every time you hear someone complaining about failing projects or problems with a specific model (cloud, on-premise, outsourcing, in-sourcing), it’s worth taking a step back and asking yourself where the problem really is. It’s much easier to blame other people than admit you’re part of the problem! These sayings spring to mind.

“Garbage in, garbage out!”

“A bad workman blames his tools!”

Cheers

Tim…

PS. I’ve never done anything wrong. It’s the rest of the world that is to blame… 🙂

Update: I wasn’t suggesting this is only an issue in public sector projects. It just so happens this rant was sparked by a story about public sector stuff. 🙂

Video: SQL Server Databases on Microsoft Azure

I mentioned in a previous post, the whole look and feel of Microsoft Azure has been rejigged. As a result, I had to do a run through of the SQL Server DBaaS stuff to update the screen shots in and old article on the subject.

Azure : SQL Server Databases on Azure

Since I was doing that, I figured I might as well do a video for my YouTube channel.

Cheers

Tim…

MobaXterm 8.5

MobaXterm 8.5 was released at then end of last year. The download and changelog can be found here.

If you use a Windows desktop and you ever need to SSH a server or use X emulation, you need this bit of software in your life. There is a free version, or you can subscribe to support the development.

Give it a go. You won’t regret it.

Cheers

Tim…

WordPress 4.4.1

WordPress 4.4.1 has been released.

You can see the list of fixes here. Your site will probably auto-update soon if you can’t be bothered to give it a nudge before.

There is also an update to the Twenty Sixteen theme, which you will have to trigger manually, if you are using it of course. 🙂

Happy blogging.

Cheers

Tim…

WordPress 4.4

WordPress 4.4 has landed. As usual, early on you will need to manually initiate the auto-update. I’m guessing in a day or so it will just happen by itself.

I did the update on 5 installations and all went through with no dramas. There will no doubt be a slew of updates over the next few days, which is pretty common after a big release. The auto-update feature means you can take the lazy approach and just let it do its thing. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

 

Microsoft Outlook : When Bad UX Attacks!

I guess there are lots of problems with the User eXperience (UX) of Microsoft Outlook, but the one that kills me is the popup menu in the folders pane.

I’m not sure how other people use this, but for me, the number one thing I do is “Delete All”, closely followed by “Mark All as Read”. I have a bunch or rules that “file” irrelevant crap, which I later scan through and typically delete en masse.

So what’s the problem?

The folder operations are higher up the menu, so I’m constantly doing “Delete Folder”, rather than “Delete All”, which drives me mad. Especially when I don’t notice and all my rules start failing.

Like I said, I don’t know how other people use this stuff, but I would hazard a guess that the clean-up operations are used more frequently than the actual folder maintenance operations. This is one situation when having the most frequently used sections of the menu being promoted to the top would be really handy.

Of course, I could just pay more attention… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Twitter : Is it a valuable community contribution?

During a conversation with Zahid Anwar at OOW15, the question was asked, is Twitter content a valuable contribution to the community?

The following is *my opinion* on the matter. Other opinions are valid.

The sort of tweets I see fall into the following basic categories:

  • Technical Questions and Answers. When these are done well, they are really useful and a quick way to get to the bottom of something. When answers come as links to content, that’s really cool as there is some depth to the answer. An answer in 140 chars is not always so good, and is often missing vital information that usually starts in a flame/caveat war. Though I do think of this as a useful community contribution, I think this sort of thing is better dealt with in a forum. I guess you could maybe Tweet about the question to raise some attention, but that feels a bit like the “URGENT” prefix to a question, which turns many people off. 🙂
  • Notifications. Tweeting about your latest blog post, article or video is part of getting your message out to your followers, but the tweets have little or no value in themselves. It’s just self promotion, which we all do. It’s the things you are promoting that hopefully have value, not the tweets themselves. In this sense, the tweets are not a valuable community contribution.
  • Content Aggregation. Tweeting other people’s content is a good way to introduce your followers to it and “spread a specific message”. I do this when I read something I really like, or if I am trying to help promote someone who I think deserves more attention. I think you have to be careful not to become a “blog aggregator by proxy” and blanket tweet everything you come across, or the value of your tweets drops. It just feels like lazy way to look busy. Just my opinion though. I’m sure there are people out there that love it.
  • Random tweets. These can give you some insight into the individuals that make up the community, which I like, but there is no long term value in these, even if they are fun. 🙂

If you are trying to get on to a community program, like the Oracle ACE Program, *I would* rate twitter contributions quite low. I would focus on stuff where you are providing original content (blogging, whitepapers, books, YouTube etc) or directly helping people, like forums or presenting. Short-form social media is a nice addition, but it’s value is rather limited in my opinion.

Remember, it’s just my opinion, but I’m interested to know your thoughts.

Cheers

Tim…

Update: I think it’s worth clarifying my point some more. I don’t have a problem with any of these types of tweets. I do them all to a greater or lesser extent. The point I’m trying to make (badly), is the content that is pointed to is the “high value” in my opinion. The “pointer” (tweet) is of far less value. If someone came to me and said, “I tweet a lot about other people’s content, can I join your community program (if I had one), I would probably say no and encourage them to produce their own content. That was the context of the conversation that initiated this post. 🙂