Archive for July, 2009
Simple, complex and difficult
As a discipline IT systems lifecycle can be characterised as simple, complex and difficult. Simple to explain. Complex to commission and maintain because the systems it monitors and controls are increasingly complex and dynamic. Difficult to do because IT system lifecycle management is much more than a set of process and tools. It involves many [...]
Analysis Paralysis
Posted by Mark in General, Plain Old Blog on July 27, 2009
This is something to which I have been a victim in the past (and, if I am honest, occasionally I still fall prey to now); analysis paralysis, the inability to do because we feel uncertain about which of several alternative courses of action to take.
Apollo 11 mission’s 40th Anniversary: One large step for open source code…
Posted by Mark in Plain Old Blog on July 22, 2009
Want to look at code management ‘old school’? Look no further. To commemorate this event the Command Module code (Comanche054) and Lunar Module code (Luminary099) have been transcribed from scanned images to run on yaAGC (an open source AGC emulator) by the Virtual AGC and AGS project. via Google Code Blog: Apollo 11 mission’s 40th [...]
Tool selection: beware the ideal case
When selecting tools, for any purpose, beware the ideal case. When a product is demonstrated, online or directly, the presentation has, generally, been carefully worked out in advance to present to tool in the most favourable light possible. The tool will perform optimally and the use case will appear flawless. Sadly, real life is never [...]
Be careful what you wish for…
Posted by Mark in ITSLM, Plain Old Blog on July 12, 2009
Selecting metrics is difficult. It is difficult because you can end up influencing that which you measure. People tend, not unreasonably, to do whatever presents them in the best light. Measure someone’s performance as the number of widgets they produce, and they produce more widgets, but without a governing quality measure you could reasonably expect [...]
Writing documents that people will read
One common complaint, and one to which I have fallen prey in the past, is that “no one reads the documentation”. This seems to be a particular problem for documents recording process and procedure. In this series we will look at how you can write documents that people will actually read. We will look at [...]
Allowing users to change their own password using svnserve and passwd
Posted by Mark in Subversion on July 7, 2009
One recurring issue users bring up when using Subversion’s own svnserve server and its own internal authentication system (password-db) is that users cannot easily change their own passwords. The problem is that, when using svnserve and the internal password-db, usernames and passwords are held in a plain text file, usually within the conf directory of [...]
Selling Configuration Management
Posted by Mark in Configuration Management on July 3, 2009
A common question from people wanting to introduce configuration management into their organisation is, “How do I sell configuration management?” By this they mean, how do I convince the decision maker in my organisation to invest in configuration management? The short answer should be, “configuration management should sell itself.” After all, if configuration management offers [...]
