Adventures in home working

VMware have just announced ACE, this is how they describe it:

VMware ACE is an enterprise solution for IT desktop managers who want to rapidly provision standardized and secure PC environments throughout the extended enterprise. VMware ACE installs easily, improving the manageability, security and cost-effectiveness of any industry standard PC. VMware ACE enables IT desktop managers to apply enterprise IT policies to a virtual machine containing an operating system, enterprise applications, and data to create an isolated PC environment known as an “assured computing environment”. VMware assured computing environments are self-policing, protect enterprise data, and enable safe access to enterprise resources.

I like the idea, I have been using VMWare myself for exactly this requirement.  On one of my home servers that sits on my home network I have a Windows XP VM, configured with corporate firewall, AV products, locked down configuration and VPN client.  I use this VM to connect to the company network. 

This has two advantages, The company network is pretty well isolated from my home network and I am well isolated from it, (since its pretty big and represents a fairly large threat).  I would prefer to be able to just fire up a Windows Terminal Server session over the internet when I need to get into work, but until that’s possible this solution works fine.

VMWare are taking the same concept, making it slicker and putting some controls in place that in my implementation depend on my self discipline

Or so says a really interesting presentation posted here http://www.37signals.com/blogprez/ but blogging for me means much more to me than that.  It’s about being able to craft for an external audiance, a view onto what I am doing, what I think is important, and why I think its important.  Even though my blog is essentially for an external audiance, I often find myself posting articles to help me shape my ideas, or as reminders of things that I want to work on in the future.  Its suprising the extent to which my blog has become a sort of personal reference library. 

I have never sustained a Journal before, but my blog is now probably the longest lived personal productivity tool, and personal development initiative I have ever used, so their must be something to its more than easy publishing.

Microsoft Researchers have an answer for this old, slightly twisted riddle. They’ve put together a nifty interface that will find all the data on your PC that you need, be it email, documents, tablet notes or spreadsheets. You can find all the data that people have sent to you, all the Web pages you’ve ever seen, and all the attachments you’ve ever forgotten to save. Its called Stuff I’ve seen and you can read about it here.

It’s an important concept in Personal Knowledge Management.  I personally have been using X1 for about 6 months and also use Lookout to search my RSS feeds.  I find the two incredibly useful and routinely find things now that I would never have tried to even find before.  The level of re-use I am now achieving is significantly greater. 

I figure these tools probably save me an hour a week, that’s a very impressive ROI, and X1/Lookout don’t do everything that Microsoft are promising.

There is a downside though, I suspect that these capabilities will only work best when the products your use to create, manipulate, views and store the data all come from Microsoft. 

Not suprisingly the Open Source community are not ignoring this requirement with products like Chandler and Haystack offering a simillar long term vision.

One of the interesting twists to this debate is whether its possible to seperate Work and Home when it comes to data, when you think it through, people you know, places you go, your calendar what you read all have personal and business aspects.  This is a topic that I have started to discuss under the heading of Consumerization, where work and home mix.

ISTJ Serious, quiet, earn success by concentration and thoroughness. Practical, orderly, matter of fact, logical, realistic, and dependable. Take responsibility.

ISFJ Quiet, friendly, responsible and conscientious. Work devotedly to meet their obligations. Thorough, painstaking, accurate. Loyal considerate.

INFJ Succeed by perseverance, originality, and desire to do whatever is needed, wanted. Quietly forceful; concerned for others. Respected for their firm principles.

INTJ Usually have original minds and great drive for their own ideas and purposes. Sceptical, critical, independent, determined, often stubborn. (Thats me)

ISTP Cool onlookers – quiet, reserved, and analytical. Usually interested in impersonal principles, how and why mechanical things work. Flashes of original humour.

ISFP Retiring, quietly friendly, sensitive, kind, modest about their abilities. Shun disagreements. Often relaxed about getting things done.

INFP Care about learning, ideas, language, and independent projects of their own. Tend to undertake too much, then somehow get it done. Friendly but often absorbed.

INTP Quiet, reserved, impersonal. Enjoy theoretical or scientific subjects. Usually interested mainly in ideas, little liking for parties or small talk. Sharply defined interests.

ESTP matter-of-fact, do not worry or hurry, enjoy whatever comes along. May be a bit blunt or insensitive. Best with real things that can be taken apart or put together.

ESFP outgoing, easygoing, accepting, friendly; make things more fun for others by their enjoyment. Like sports, making things. Find remembering facts easier than mastering theories.

ENFP Warmly enthusiastic, high-spirited, ingenious, imaginative. Able to do almost anything that interests them. Quick with a solution and to help with a problem.

ENTP Quick ingenious, good at many things. May argue either side of a question for fun. Resourceful in solving challenging problems but may neglect routine assignment.

ESTJ Practical, realistic, matter-of-fact, with a natural head for business or mechanics. Not interested in subjects they see no use for. Like to organize and run activities.

ESFJ Warm hearted, talkative, popular, conscientious, born co-operators. Need harmony. Work best with encouragement. Little interest in abstract thinking or technical subjects.

ENFJ Responsive and responsible. Generally feel real concern for what others think or want. Sociable, popular. Sensitive to praise and criticism.

ENTJ Hearty, frank, decisive leaders. Usually good in anything that requires reasoning and intelligent talk. May sometimes be more positive than their experience in an area warrants

I have managed a lot of IT Infrastructure projects in my time, and a couple of smaller programmes.  I have also keenly observed the management of several large programmes as a Chief Architect.  This article is written from this perspective.

Some initial observations:

1. IT Infrastructure Projects generally fail from at least one perspective and often more
2. IT Infrastructure projects look superficially simple
3. The programmes have been overly influenced by the personality and skills of the Programme Director

The following are a set of Article Titles that I intend to write over the next year or so; they give you a good idea of the issues I think are important:

1. What does he do? The importance of top down Journal keeping to programme communication, coordination and team spirit
2. The need for a balanced management team instead of Super Men
3. Management information is a team resource
4. The customer is not the same as the client
5. Objectives and Requirements, why they are different and both important
6. The importance of programme maturity reviews
7. Conceptual integrity and how easy it is to loose it
8. The lost art of estimating – take different perspectives
9. How to plan a programme, top down meets bottom up and debates
10. Why has my green programme suddenly gone red, (see next topic)
11. How to milestone a programme
12. Avoiding death by meetings
13. The importance of “assumed responsibility” to successful scope management
14. The importance of “eating your own dog food” and “daily builds”
15. Achieving autonomous – coordinated – motivated teams
16. Making the most of a co-located team
17. Mitigating the risks of a virtual team
18. Risks, Issues and Change a collective responsibility
19. Key programme documents and processes
20. Dangerous metrics and incentives
21. Understanding the relationship between DCO,TCO and TVO
22. The “red team”, or what to do when it all goes wrong

When I was at school I tested 137 in the IQ test.  I generally dismissed it but I have since done a few personality tests and found them to be very accurate, others have also reliably predicted my personality type, so I must be very easy to read.  That got me thinking that there may be something useful to gain from understanding a persons IQ. 

When I did the test it was also very clear where I scored high and where I scored low.  In fact there were two areas: I did not concentrate on a few of the questions very well, so misread them and I was hopeless at questions that relied on a memory of words and phrases. 

Anyway I have done two test recently one was 135 and the other 140.  So the school test of 137 was a pretty good mean!

People who know me tell me that personality tests are very accurate for me.  One of the most common tests is the Myers Briggs test which you can do here.  Using this test I am an INTJ.  Which is described variously as the Mastermind, Scientist, Innovator, and Free-thinker, which actually sum me up pretty well.  You can learn more from the links above, however if you want a summary then these quotes are pretty good:

INTJs are strong individualists who seek new angles or novel ways of looking at things. They enjoy coming to new understandings. They are insightful and mentally quick; however, this mental quickness may not always be outwardly apparent to others since they keep a great deal to themselves. They are very determined people who trust their vision of the possibilities, regardless of what others think. They may even be considered the most independent of all of the sixteen personality types. INTJs are at their best in quietly and firmly developing their ideas, theories, and principles.

as is this:

Masterminds will adopt ideas only if they are useful, which is to say if they work efficiently toward accomplishing the Mastermind’s well-defined goals. Natural leaders, Masterminds are not at all eager to take command of projects or groups, preferring to stay in the background until others demonstrate their inability to lead. Once in charge, however …

and finally this:

To the Mastermind, organizational structure and operational procedures are never arbitrary, never set in concrete, but are quite malleable and can be changed, improved, streamlined. In their drive for efficient action, Masterminds are the most open-minded of all the types. No idea is too far-fetched to be entertained-if it is useful. Masterminds are natural brainstormers, always open to new concepts and, in fact, aggressively seeking them

That’s me then, so if you employ me you know what you are getting!

As readers of my blog will know I have been working from home since late January.  In February my company and I decided that home working was probably for me and that I we should make the switch permanent.  It’s been a low process to get official designation as a home worker, but that did finally arrive on the 19^th of August.  I wanted to share with you the story of getting a business line and broadband installed.

1. I get an email from Ms C in HR with two forms, one completed by HR and one that I need to complete
2. I correct an error on Form A filled in by Ms C
3. Form A is a request for quotation from BT and justification which needs to be sent to Mr X in Internal IT.  Form B is another justification which needs to be sent to my manager along with the Quote and then needs to be sent to Mr X
4. I send Form A to Mr X
5. I then receive a phone call from Mr Y from BT asking me what I need so that they can install it.  I have already provided all this information once on Form A.
6. We agree a date for installation; I am impressed the process was quick and simple!
7. 10 minutes later I receive another phone call from Mr Y telling me that he has made a mistake; apparently he is only meant to provide a quote and not schedule an installation.  
8. I then receive an email from Mr Z asking me to fill in form A and send it to Mr X.  I reply saying I have already sent Form A to Mr X.
9. My Z replies apologising and says he will ask BT for a quote for “ADSL single 550 plug and go”
10. I reply to Mr Z that this does not meet my requirement, which I specified on Form A, for a router, not a USB modem and for a 1mb rather than 512mb.
11. Mr Z replies saying he will ask BT to Quote for that.
12. A nice lady from BT rings me and asks me the same questions I answered on form A again, and says she will quote for a Router and ADSL 1000.
13. The quote never arrives but I get an email saying that Mr X will only approve “ADSL single 550 plug and go”, which puts me back to step 10.  Why bother going through steps 11 and 12! 
14. I reply again that this does not meet the requirement, and ask who I need to speak to to resolve this issue. 
15. Once I get the quote I then need to send it to my manager for approval and then forward that approval, the quote and “Form A” AGAIN to Mr X and Mr A.  I will also need a booking code which my manager will provide.
16. These will then be forwarded to our Customer Order Fulfilment team who will raise an order on BT
17. Then Mr Y will probably ring me back so I can get back to step 4.

What’s interesting about this process?

1. The pricing is standard, so why do we need all of this quoting
2. Almost all home workers get a business line and broadband connection, the home working and other associated expenses have already been approved and a booking code assigned so why two approvals in serial?
3. It’s interesting that I never see the quote so I am not able to contibute to the discussion as to whether the option quoted is Correct, or Cost Effective.  However if I look at the BT personal service, 1Mb rather than 512Mb costs £3/month more, and a router costs about £20 more.  For a service upon which I am totally dependant every day and utilise heavily this means that someone considers 18p a day too expensive!
4. It’s probably much cheaper to keep my residential connection and existing router, upgrade it to 1Mb/s and add a second soft line, or setup auto redirect to my Mobile so we don’t miss incoming calls.
5. It’s a lot easier when you do it yourself!

I have always loved swimming, and since I have started to suffer with AOSD, it has become all the more important to me.  Right now I am not able to swim at all, but hopefully within a few days I will be swimming ten lengths, within couple of weeks I may get up to 40 lengths a day again.  Hopefully I will get back to 60 within a month or so, (which is what I was doing last year before this last flare). 

The kids love swimming even more than I do and would go every night if they could.  When I am ill this posed a bit of a problem as our pool, above, is not supervised and I rarely felt like taking them.  Now however they have just opened a new extention with splash pool and Jacuzzi, even better there is a great seating area.  So now no matter how I am feeling I manage to take them 3-4 times a week and am able to sit and read in confort whilst still keeping an eye on them.  I feel much less guilty, and its easier to ease myself back into trying the Jacuzzi and then those first 10 lengths!

I read quite a bit, mainly my RSS feeds and related web articles which I print so I am not tied to my computer all day.  But I also read plenty of books and magazines.  In the Categories Me\Books and Me\Magazines I have listed the most recent just in case anyone was interested. 

The reviews don’t appear in the main feed because they are all bulk posted and I didn’t want to clutter up the main page of my blog.  If you want to see them you need to look at the appropriate categories.