#cmdb advice on twitter

If you are interested in some snippets of cmdb advise follow me on twitter and watch for the #cmdb hashtag.  I am live tweeting our quest to go from zero to cmdb in 6 months… I invite you to watch, learn and comment!

Nambu 1.1 .. Twitter unleashed for OSX

Yesterday Nambu unleashed version 1.1 of their new twitter client for OSX. Here is a quick review and some screen shots.

The good:

• The new release supports a tweetdeck like multi column view which lets you see all of your twitter activity in one handy window.
• You can now create groups.
• Much faster then the 1.0 release.
• Nice click through options on the users to see their profile and their tweets.
• Much quicker then any of the AIR based applications.

Needs Improvement:

• Groups are not working in the column view. (expect this will be fixed shortly).
• Some of the services are not working right now. Friendfeed as an example.
• The gray background for the tweet list is hard on the eyes. Color needs to change.
• The profile pictures and text are a bit too big for my taste in the tweet list. Others millage might vary if you have higher resolution.
• Group functionality needs a better way to add users. Maybe drag and drop in column view?

Overall it is an excellent improvement over 1.0. You can download it here: www.nambu.com.

And here are the screenshots.

Single window mode:

Multi-column window mode:

Click through a user to see some nice detail:

Comments on the Scalability of Facebook’s Social Behavior

An interesting points from a new Facebook study:

In other words, Facebook users comment on stuff from only about 5-7% of their Facebook friends. And as has been shown by many other studies, women communicate with more people in all cases than men.

via Facebook’s “In-House Sociologist” Shares Stats on Users’ Social Behavior .

The study also noted that people with more friends do not respond to more posts or chat to more friends.

I would propose that the true is not with end user bandwidth but their ability to consume the amount of data flowing through the newsfeed.  I have noticed for example at 100 friends the noise level and attention swapping in the news feed becomes almost unbearable.  The problem becomes even worse when the friend set is made of highly diverse clusters of people.  For example if your friend set is 1) your family, 2) your high school contacts, 3) your co-workers, 4) your close friends, 5) previous co-workers.  The issue is is there is little overlap between these sets of friends and this makes for a very cluttered news feed.

Optimally, your set of friends would be small, highly related and very active.  Best case with the example above people from two of the groups both comment on a status update but typically they are both interacting with you, not each other.

A couple of options:

1. Make the separate news feeds by friend list more prominent.  It is currently hidden in the drop down and I admit I don’t get their very often.
2. Direct the attention of the news feed based on clustering rather then just attention to particular people in the friend groups above.  Perhaps Facebook is trying to make this happen but I don’t see it.

Final thought.  Think about why so many users on twitter gravitate to the client Tweetdeck.  I suspect many people have created groups to break apart their twitter friends using different tweekdeck panes.  It is the only logical way to follow and interact with a diverse group of friends.  Similar problem with a solution like number 1 above.

Safari 4 vs Google Chrome on the Mac

I figured I would drop this post here from the future.

A few thoughts:

1. Safari 4 doesn’t need to wait for the future it is here on my Mac today and with its ultra fast Nitro (formally known as SquirelFish Extreme) java script engine it blows away the competition.
2. Google Chrome has V8 while Safari (webkit) has Nitro.  Go figure both browsers are using the webkit framework.  Each time Google commits something to the shared code base Safari gets better!
3. Google Chrome is using a complex IPC oriented renderer to manage having a single window with each tab running in a separate process.  Now, while I appreciate my browser not going out sideways when it hits a page which causes a crash I can’t actually remember the last time the browser crashed?  Won’t all this IPC stuff causing slowness in the rendering engine?
4. While Google Chrome will win the UI simple battle hands down Apple has managed to add some helpful features for people like my Mom.  Things like Top Sites is not designed for the Geek.  It is built for the rest of the world who doesn’t manage their book marks very well.  Coverflow helps trigger the old brain when we see a picture of that web site we were at.  Remember as you get older remember that travelocity is the airline booking site gets harder…

PS… when do I get Nitro on my iPhone?

Exposing User Driven Services using ITIL v3

I have been reading a flow of posts over on IT Skeptic discussing why creating an end user focused Service Management process drives the biggest bang for the buck within the ITIL v3 framework. Lets think about how users get services within any organization.

Channels:

1. Phone
2. Web
3. Email
4. Instant Messaging

Service Providers:

1. IT
2. Project Managers
3. Finance
4. Procurement
5. User Acceptance Testing

Key aspects of providing a clearly defined service:

• The User of the services needs a clear way to use each of the channels to reach the service provider.
• Where the user consumes the service the service must be clearly defined and provide “hints” to the User so they can provide required information so the service provider upfront. The “hints” must be in end user terms.
• All requests for service need to be queued and prioritized. Think about how many services are provided via email and the disaster which occurs when your inbox is full of responses to questions. You can no longer keep the queue straight.
• The execution details of actually executing the service should be hidden from the User. For example the User isn’t interested in the detailed tasks or collaborations which are required to dig into a capacity request and provide a response.
• There should be only one place all the channels end so users can always have a consistent experience.
• The user should have the ability to switch channels during service acquisition. For example, they may start by submitting a request on the web, but they may discover that the priority needs to be escalated. The User should be able to get a Service Desk Analyst on the phone and discuss how to escalate.
• At the end of the service the user should be surveyed to understand their satisfaction with the service. The survey results should be used to provide continuous improvement to the service structure.

Components of a well defined service:

• Service Description – An end user focused description of what they will receive as a result of requesting the service to be performed.
• Service Requirements – An end user focused script which leads the User through a set of questions which help discover requirements needed for the Service Provider. The better this script is the less times the Service Provider will need to consult with the user to clear up what is required. Continuous improvement is key in this space to reduce cost.
• Pre-defined service Execution Plan – A set of repeatable tasks which the service provider will use to deliver the service. The tasks provide a vehicle to deliver the service the same way every time with lower risk. Lessons learned and review of the tasks at a frequent interval should help drive down cost and remove errors which may occur.
• Clear Approval Process – The approval process for Service Execution should be pre-defined and the approvers should be pre-defined.
• SLA – A clear Service Level Agreement will help the user understand when they should expect the service execution to be complete. This reduces unnecessary queries to the service provider. These queries are a critical distraction.

Service Pipeline:

Channel -> Service Request -> Change Request

Service Contact Flow:

User -> Service Desk -> Service Owner -> Approver -> Specialist -> Service Desk -> User

Environments in the CMDB Part 2.

So, based on the kind comments of a number of people and a bit of pondering we came up with the following solution.

1. Each service model will be oriented around a single Application Environment (PROD, UAT, SYS, DEV) and then will include dependent CIs such as virtual and physical servers, database instances, application servers, etc..  Each dependent CI will be related to the Application CI using a direct impact type relationship.  (Our topology tools will find the dependency relationships between CIs and also add those to the CMDB).

2. The application CI which is being modeled will have a name like [application]-[environment] (e.g. app1-prod).  This will provide a unique name for each application instance as it exists in different environments.

So, the environment is a unique part of the CI name and could be easily reported out using %Like% type queries.  At some point we may also add an attribute to the Application CI but it is not critical path.

How to best model “environments” in the CDMB?

We have a bit of a conundrum with our CMDB implementation. One of our critical pieces of data is the environment each server, database and application/application system participates in. Example environments might be “dev”, “sys test”, “uat”, “prod”. One challenge we have is that a CI might participate in multiple environments. This is especially true with servers which may host dev, and sys test for example.

We have come up with two options. 1.) Create a CI which represents the environment and create a “is member of” relationship between the CI for the servers, applications and databases to the environment CI. OR 2.) Create an attribute on each server, application, or database CI which would be populated with one or more environments (e.g. prod, or dev:sys test).

The major downside of the attribute is it doesn’t do a very good job of managing the one to many relationship. The downside of the CI approach is it creates a monster relationship between every server, application and database and one of the environment CI instances. This relationship keeps showing up in the CI viewer.

Any thoughts from the experts?

Engineering Windows 7 : UAC Feedback and Follow-Up

Engineering Windows 7 : UAC Feedback and Follow-Up.

Well, holly cow!  Microsoft listens.  Windows 7 might really be something to get excited about?!

Day to day IT tasks and how they are managed using Change Management within ITIL

I am currently running a project using Agile SCRUM to deliver a CMDB solution, an Upgrade to Remedy Version 7 and ITILv3 processes. Obviously this type of effort has some pretty profound impact on the organization especially when there are years of process, policy and belief which currently govern perceived best practices.

Obviously the goal of any ITIL implementation should provide an adequate set of controls, and awareness and collaboration within the Enterprise. The teams consuming the current processes are looking for ways to optimize their work, while still conforming to the core principles above.

We have laid out certain goals to mine out more standard changes within our organization to streamline IT. It is apparent that the focus of the organization should be on the large, complex and risky changes while metrics collected during problem management should help us understand if have turned the knob too far one direction.

One of the teams brought an interesting problem to us today. They wanted to document a set of activities which would not require even a standard change entered into out change management systems. This at first raised concerns on my part until I reviewed the kind of things they were talking about. They were asking about day to day system administrative tasks which in my mind would not fall under the definition of a change with ITIL:

The addition, modification or removal of approved, supported or baselined hardware, network, software, application, environment, system, desktop build or associated documentation. — Source ITIL v3 Glossary

What is interesting is that by this definition many day to day administrative tasks such as cleaning up logs, running jobs, etc really don’t fall under the definition of “Change” as they are not modifying a managed CI. For example if an UNIX admin needs to clean out /var should a change record be required? Some may argue that it could affect the system but I believe we could argue that most times it is completely safe.

So my thought here is to require a published document which outlines these types of Day to Day activities which are not changes. The standard would be reviewed and managed under change management and be approved by the CAB. These types of day to day activities would not require any change logs or records within our Change Management system. If problem management shows by trend that this day to day work is causing incidents then we reel them back to Standard or Non Standard Changes.

I would welcome the thoughts of others…

Do you code for fun?

Conley nails a topic I have been talking up at work:

Every single programmer I’ve seen that is exceptionally good at their job also does it for fun.

via Don’t hire a programmer if they don’t code for fun .

Obviously skills are a key requirement for any job.  But when you narrow down the candidates and you are trying to make your final decision ask about the persons passion.  When the developer tells you about their side project and how much they love flexing their intellectual muscle to solve new problems you have the person you should hire.