As others have said this isn't principly about tools, but about finding a simple and effective ways to extract and record the processes.
Don't get hung up on formal process notations unless you are planning to turn them into software / workflows.
I have done some of my most effective work with pen & paper / flipcharts. For documenting more formally Visio / Smartdraw or other simple diagramming software will do.
Techniques: soft systems for the big picture, use cases to identify processes and actors, activity diagrams with swimlanes for the actual processe.
Agree that somone outside of the process should be lead the documantation as they can ask the dumb questions.
Don't try and document all proceses - use a riak assesment ot identify key processes.
As for keeoping the documentation up to date -how often do the processes change? If they do change as part of a project ensure the project is responsible for updating the documenation
Once models are signed off make sure they are available to those who need them. If the only person who knows which folder they are in goes under a bus you have the same problem!
We might turn around a fix for a major 'show stopper' bug in 48 hours, that would depend in the comparative risk of putting a quick fix live as as against living with the bug.
Generally a priority 1 bug would get turned around in 1 to 2 weeks assuming;
developer resource available to look at it
it was fairly straight forward to diagnose & fix
didn't require business analysis input
testing resource available to test it.
So if the bug is causing your customers significant pain then 48 hours may not be unreasonable assuming it is possible to identify and code the fix in that timescale.
I used to but, now crashes on me regularly - something about trying to turn on the infra red in the background.
It had great promise but didn't quite deliver - never worked for me as a music player - sound quality is awful & hissy. But th 4GB of space, synchronization with Outlook plus wi-fi are great. A Lifedrive 2 with the bugs ironed out would have been perfect.
I have had about 4 different Palms plus one Handspring over the years, while all had their flaws, they were much better than the one iPaq I tried (3715? - I can't understand how these can me sold as multimedia devices with so little storage? Same applies to the TX.
Not sure where I will go next though for a PDA - I don't want a bulky 'smartphone' - not really interested in a blackberry, iPHone or Treo. But the TX looks underspecified. Perhaps I'll have to try an iPAQ again.
Shame - Palm produced some great products but no longer seem to meet my needs.
I was going to download it, I was even going to pay.
However, the site requires you to enter your name, address, email address, and if I remember correctly also your phone number. Because of this, I looked for a privacy policy but couldn't find one. Therefore no sale.
Exactly my response - by the end of this Radiohead - or rather their marketing agent - will have personal data including mobile number for millions of people.. What are they going to do with it?
As for UK strong laws - true, but the Information Commissioner http://www.ico.gov.uk/ recommends that every site collecting data should have a published privacy policy. Why did Radiohead choose to ignore that?
I also found the site unreliable - I'll get a copy by 'other means'
the "contributions" of an anonymous person on wikipedia these days, no matter how good they are, are instantly reverted by any number of so-called "anti-vandalism" bots and tools.
I edit anonymously and my edits mostly seem to stay - so I don;t think you are correct.
Perhaps this just happens for IP addresses identified as vandals?
Findings of the study aren't really surprising, I suspect most anonymous edits are people who know something about the subject they are editing. I did register once but changed email adress and couldn't recover my password.
Like the other poster I don't believe that you left central London due to the congestion charge.
"Of course, the charge is now £8, so that's a mere £208pa for nothing now"
that would be less than one weeks rent on a one bed flat in Fitzrovia,
if you can afford to (and want to ) live in central London the CC isn't going to make you move out.
"One Christmas, about 6 years ago, I walked up my street in the early evening to see just 3 lighted flat windows in the 200+ meteres between Oxford St and my flat."
er the CC wasn't in place 6 years ago - so perhaps there is another reason for the 'depopulation' - if it is happening at all
"If YOU lived in London you'd know that areas like Fitzrovia and Pimlico are now so depopulated that restaurants and corner shops are closing."
Bwahaha! I was in Charlotte Street last night, and couldn't manage to get a table in the first two restaurants I went to, and ended up in a packed Zizzi's - and that's on a rainy Tuesday evening. Keep taking the medication mate. Fitzrovia depopulated, oh that's awesome, it really is.
Indeed I work in Fitzrovia - hadn't noticed any depopulation - bars and restaurants are always busy.
I live in London but haven't paid the congestion charge once as I use the tube to go to central London.
I think the under 25 crowd doesn't care that much, you wouldn't notice the difference on an Ipod, but on a nice home system you do.
I think you are right, MP3 is fine for the tube but at home I want a decent Hi-Fi system not some 'dock' - why would I want to push MP3 though my amplifier & speakers.
Report here on CD shops closing in the UK http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6707255.stm as one shop owner says "People over 35 are still buying CDs, but no-one under 35 is,". Sadly I think CDs may become a niche market in the same way vinyl has.
Archos I mentioned, for example, was entirely too big to carry in a pocket.
Well times change - I carry my 20GB Archos gmini player in my pocket easily - much smaller than the comparable iPods. Interface isn't perfect but size wins out from my PoV
How come people rarely mention sound quality when talking about MP3 players?
Pricewise when ever I have looked at MP3 players iPods have seemed pricey compared to most of the competition, though I think they have come down a bit. However Apple do seem to have abandoned large capacity music only players. I have no desire to play videos and prefer a smaller player with a small screen.
No doubt th Ipod is a decent device an Apple were the first to make MP3 mass market, but I do think the iPod domination is as much down to marketing as the superiority of the product.
We deployed citrix to 600+ desktops across 10 locations in the UK, with mixed results.
Sure it gave us a degree of flexibilty we didn't have before - I can now work in any office. But performance has been variable. Citrix needs more bandwidth that it claims, and some fairly beefy servers at the backend. It is no good for any graphics heavy applications. Incorrectly deployed Citrix will drive users up the wall. We are reviewing our tech strategy and suspect we won't stick with Citrix because it has such a bad reputation with the business.
Reads more like a current UK based most popular rather than a most influential; myspace & youtube are enjoying their 15 minutes but whether they will have long term impact remains to be seen.
What was significant about Napster was the P2P software not its website.
Hotmail should be in the list for pioneering web based email.
Much as I hate to say it eBay would be nothing if Paypal hadn't created an secure system for small online payments.
The BBC is one of my most visited sites and certainly the best news site, but not sure it has been influential.
Salon? Good but just another on-line magazine Wired News http://www.wired.com/ was probably more influential before it went corporate.
Finally multimap.com pioneered on line mapping at - least in the UK.
How exactly do the recording features & FM radio on my iRiver make it less of an MP3 player? You say if you wanted a radio you would buy a radio, what if you want a radio & an MP3 player would you carry 2 devices? Adding complementary features adds to the value of a product - throwing features in for their own sake doesn't.
I think that people buy iPods mainly because they aren't aware of the competition and they think they are cool because Apples multi-million dollar advertising campagn has been very effective. Does believing advertising mean people are stupid? Not sure but certainly shows a lack of independent thought.
Where I work (UK Govt) we used to get 6 monthly performance related payments. Largest I got was about 900 - about 4% of 6months pay.
We are now moving to an annual performance related bonus of up to 10%, though no one really expects to get that.
I'd say pay some proportion of salary (assuming they are all on roughtly the same)in cash.
"This does not mean that the PDA is dead though. Lots of people want a tiny phone and a separate PDA with large screen..... "
Exactly, my (siemens) phone is less than half the size of my (Handspring) PDA and slips easily into my pocket. I don't want to take something the size of a Treo with me when I go out to pub / gig / meal. However I do want something with a reasonable screen size when using my PDA for reading documents, planning my week, etc.
I suspect one day I will end up with a combined PDA/Phone for daytime, plus a compact mobile for evenings / weekends. But only when prices come down significantly.
The unconnected PDA has probably passed its heyday but I think it will be around for a long time to come.
My organisation is currently moving from client server to thin client (Citrix). We have a fairly similar set up to you; 800 desktops mostly using MS Office & Groupwise with in-house applications accessing an Oracle dB.
One difference is that we are doing it by going to an ASP rather than in-house.
Drivers for the thin client solution were; * simplified support, we are a national body with 10 regional offices. Each had its own server so any upgrades meant visits to every office. (hence I'm still using Word 6!). Moving to ASP also means a 'saving' of about 10 jobs in our in-house team.
* getting longer life out of our ageing Dell Pentium II Win95 PCs. Intention is to fit a thin client card in each PC. As the PCs wear out they will be replaced with thin client terminals.
* restructuring of costs by moving to an ASP, i.e. monthly fee rather than up front capital & licence costs.
Moving will cost more than doing nothing. but doing nothing wasn't an option. The business want lastest version of MS Office. Upgrading based on a in-house client server solution would be more expensive then thin client (ASP or no ASP). Or at least thats what the accountants & consultants tell us!
So yes moving to thin client can save money. The big problem with it though is performance & usability. Running system via Citrix can be slow and frustrationg whn you are used to the 'instant' response of local applications. I'd suggest running a trial first to see how your users & your network cope.
BTW suggesting installing full Windows XP on every PC is just plain daft.
...scanner company iPilot, which makes a pocket-size barcode scanner that can upload universal product codes (UPCs) onto a computer. With a simple software script, anyone can upload those UPCs into Amazon and get product information on those specific items.
Sounds like it would meet your requirement though posts elsewhere suggest it is vapourware.
Handspring have been running down their PDA business for a while and concentrating on the Treo phone/pda. I suspect that is what Palm are after as I don't think they have realy broken into that market yet.
Personnally I have a Handspring (Neo) which I'm happy with but even before this news I thought my next upgrade wouldn't be a Handspring as they haven't updated their PDA range for a while.
Still pretty good business for the founders, set up one business, Palm make it successful then sell it. Then set up another business Handspring doing the same thing then sell it to the same people.
'Police in the UK are to push for powers to store logs of all UK Internet traffic for up to five years, it was said today at the launch of the National High Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU).'
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,s2085700,00.htm l
RIM by Alexander Besher is a good read. As one amazon.co.uk reviewer put it 'he intertwines Gibson cyberspace with Eastern mysticism'
Haven't read either of the sequels Mir & Chi
I've set a number of reviews to Amazon in the uk - it does seem to be easier to get positive reviews published but there are lots of negative reviews up there.
I don't suppose Amazons review checkers get paid a whole lot and it probably makes their life a bit more interesting to arbtrarily reject the odd review.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't get hung up on formal process notations unless you are planning to turn them into software / workflows.
I have done some of my most effective work with pen & paper / flipcharts. For documenting more formally Visio / Smartdraw or other simple diagramming software will do.
Techniques: soft systems for the big picture, use cases to identify processes and actors, activity diagrams with swimlanes for the actual processe.
Agree that somone outside of the process should be lead the documantation as they can ask the dumb questions.
Don't try and document all proceses - use a riak assesment ot identify key processes.
As for keeoping the documentation up to date -how often do the processes change? If they do change as part of a project ensure the project is responsible for updating the documenation
Once models are signed off make sure they are available to those who need them. If the only person who knows which folder they are in goes under a bus you have the same problem!
Good Luck!
Generally a priority 1 bug would get turned around in 1 to 2 weeks assuming;
developer resource available to look at it
it was fairly straight forward to diagnose & fix
didn't require business analysis input
testing resource available to test it.
So if the bug is causing your customers significant pain then 48 hours may not be unreasonable assuming it is possible to identify and code the fix in that timescale.
I used to but, now crashes on me regularly - something about trying to turn on the infra red in the background.
It had great promise but didn't quite deliver - never worked for me as a music player - sound quality is awful & hissy. But th 4GB of space, synchronization with Outlook plus wi-fi are great. A Lifedrive 2 with the bugs ironed out would have been perfect.
I have had about 4 different Palms plus one Handspring over the years, while all had their flaws, they were much better than the one iPaq I tried (3715? - I can't understand how these can me sold as multimedia devices with so little storage? Same applies to the TX.
Not sure where I will go next though for a PDA - I don't want a bulky 'smartphone' - not really interested in a blackberry, iPHone or Treo. But the TX looks underspecified. Perhaps I'll have to try an iPAQ again.
Shame - Palm produced some great products but no longer seem to meet my needs.
Exactly my response - by the end of this Radiohead - or rather their marketing agent - will have personal data including mobile number for millions of people.. What are they going to do with it?
As for UK strong laws - true, but the Information Commissioner http://www.ico.gov.uk/ recommends that every site collecting data should have a published privacy policy. Why did Radiohead choose to ignore that?
I also found the site unreliable - I'll get a copy by 'other means'
I edit anonymously and my edits mostly seem to stay - so I don;t think you are correct.
Perhaps this just happens for IP addresses identified as vandals?
Findings of the study aren't really surprising, I suspect most anonymous edits are people who know something about the subject they are editing. I did register once but changed email adress and couldn't recover my password.
"Of course, the charge is now £8, so that's a mere £208pa for nothing now"
that would be less than one weeks rent on a one bed flat in Fitzrovia, if you can afford to (and want to ) live in central London the CC isn't going to make you move out.
"One Christmas, about 6 years ago, I walked up my street in the early evening to see just 3 lighted flat windows in the 200+ meteres between Oxford St and my flat."
er the CC wasn't in place 6 years ago - so perhaps there is another reason for the 'depopulation' - if it is happening at all
I think you are right, MP3 is fine for the tube but at home I want a decent Hi-Fi system not some 'dock' - why would I want to push MP3 though my amplifier & speakers.
Report here on CD shops closing in the UK http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6707255.stm as one shop owner says "People over 35 are still buying CDs, but no-one under 35 is,". Sadly I think CDs may become a niche market in the same way vinyl has.
Archos I mentioned, for example, was entirely too big to carry in a pocket.
Well times change - I carry my 20GB Archos gmini player in my pocket easily - much smaller than the comparable iPods. Interface isn't perfect but size wins out from my PoV
How come people rarely mention sound quality when talking about MP3 players?
Pricewise when ever I have looked at MP3 players iPods have seemed pricey compared to most of the competition, though I think they have come down a bit. However Apple do seem to have abandoned large capacity music only players. I have no desire to play videos and prefer a smaller player with a small screen.
No doubt th Ipod is a decent device an Apple were the first to make MP3 mass market, but I do think the iPod domination is as much down to marketing as the superiority of the product.
Oh - and iTunes on the PC sucks!
Sure it gave us a degree of flexibilty we didn't have before - I can now work in any office. But performance has been variable. Citrix needs more bandwidth that it claims, and some fairly beefy servers at the backend. It is no good for any graphics heavy applications. Incorrectly deployed Citrix will drive users up the wall. We are reviewing our tech strategy and suspect we won't stick with Citrix because it has such a bad reputation with the business.
Deploy with care!
Reads more like a current UK based most popular rather than a most influential; myspace & youtube are enjoying their 15 minutes but whether they will have long term impact remains to be seen.
What was significant about Napster was the P2P software not its website.
Hotmail should be in the list for pioneering web based email.
Much as I hate to say it eBay would be nothing if Paypal hadn't created an secure system for small online payments.
The BBC is one of my most visited sites and certainly the best news site, but not sure it has been influential.
Salon? Good but just another on-line magazine Wired News http://www.wired.com/ was probably more influential before it went corporate.
Finally multimap.com pioneered on line mapping at - least in the UK.
"Something that crashes Eudora "
Has never crashed my Eudora and as GDS doesn't search Eudora mail it doesn't help.
I downloaded GDS when it came out, had it on my machine for about a week then uninstalled it as it didn't seem to offer any functionality I needed.
How exactly do the recording features & FM radio on my iRiver make it less of an MP3 player? You say if you wanted a radio you would buy a radio, what if you want a radio & an MP3 player would you carry 2 devices? Adding complementary features adds to the value of a product - throwing features in for their own sake doesn't.
I think that people buy iPods mainly because they aren't aware of the competition and they think they are cool because Apples multi-million dollar advertising campagn has been very effective. Does believing advertising mean people are stupid? Not sure but certainly shows a lack of independent thought.
and at 800x600 you can't see or scroll to much of the screen. Have they actually tested this with anything? Tried both Firebird 6.1 & IE 6.
Nice idea but they won't be getting any of my money till they produce a useable website.
Where I work (UK Govt) we used to get 6 monthly performance related payments. Largest I got was about 900 - about 4% of 6months pay. We are now moving to an annual performance related bonus of up to 10%, though no one really expects to get that. I'd say pay some proportion of salary (assuming they are all on roughtly the same)in cash.
Exactly, my (siemens) phone is less than half the size of my (Handspring) PDA and slips easily into my pocket. I don't want to take something the size of a Treo with me when I go out to pub / gig / meal. However I do want something with a reasonable screen size when using my PDA for reading documents, planning my week, etc.
I suspect one day I will end up with a combined PDA/Phone for daytime, plus a compact mobile for evenings / weekends. But only when prices come down significantly.
The unconnected PDA has probably passed its heyday but I think it will be around for a long time to come.
You can read nine(!) sample chapters on Joels website
My organisation is currently moving from client server to thin client (Citrix). We have a fairly similar set up to you; 800 desktops mostly using MS Office & Groupwise with in-house applications accessing an Oracle dB.
One difference is that we are doing it by going to an ASP rather than in-house.
Drivers for the thin client solution were;
* simplified support, we are a national body with 10 regional offices. Each had its own server so any upgrades meant visits to every office. (hence I'm still using Word 6!). Moving to ASP also means a 'saving' of about 10 jobs in our in-house team.
* getting longer life out of our ageing Dell Pentium II Win95 PCs. Intention is to fit a thin client card in each PC. As the PCs wear out they will be replaced with thin client terminals.
* restructuring of costs by moving to an ASP, i.e. monthly fee rather than up front capital & licence costs.
Moving will cost more than doing nothing. but doing nothing wasn't an option. The business want lastest version of MS Office. Upgrading based on a in-house client server solution would be more expensive then thin client (ASP or no ASP). Or at least thats what the accountants & consultants tell us!
So yes moving to thin client can save money. The big problem with it though is performance & usability. Running system via Citrix can be slow and frustrationg whn you are used to the 'instant' response of local applications. I'd suggest running a trial first to see how your users & your network cope.
BTW suggesting installing full Windows XP on every PC is just plain daft.
.....patch it, reboot, get back to work
until the 'patch' breaks your system as the W2k SP3 did to mine - could access any internet sites after applying it - pretty secure I suppose.
From the article;
...scanner company iPilot, which makes a pocket-size barcode scanner that can upload universal product codes (UPCs) onto a computer. With a simple software script, anyone can upload those UPCs into Amazon and get product information on those specific items.
Sounds like it would meet your requirement though posts elsewhere suggest it is vapourware.
Handspring have been running down their PDA business for a while and concentrating on the Treo phone/pda. I suspect that is what Palm are after as I don't think they have realy broken into that market yet. Personnally I have a Handspring (Neo) which I'm happy with but even before this news I thought my next upgrade wouldn't be a Handspring as they haven't updated their PDA range for a while. Still pretty good business for the founders, set up one business, Palm make it successful then sell it. Then set up another business Handspring doing the same thing then sell it to the same people.
'Police in the UK are to push for powers to store logs of all UK Internet traffic for up to five years, it was said today at the launch of the National High Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU).'
m l
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,s2085700,00.ht
Its coming......
RIM by Alexander Besher is a good read. As one amazon.co.uk reviewer put it 'he intertwines Gibson cyberspace with Eastern mysticism'
Haven't read either of the sequels Mir & Chi
I've set a number of reviews to Amazon in the uk - it does seem to be easier to get positive reviews published but there are lots of negative reviews up there.
I don't suppose Amazons review checkers get paid a whole lot and it probably makes their life a bit more interesting to arbtrarily reject the odd review.