Wednesday, March 17, 2010

I Love that Kid pt 2

Daddy:  "Devin, you done?"

Devin:  "Yes daddy but no poopoo..."

Daddy:  "You didn't go poopoo?"

Devin:  "No, maybe it needs batteries"

Daddy:  "Your poopoo needs batteries?"

Devin:  "Yea I think my poopoo needs batteries."

Sunday, March 14, 2010

The Decline in Fanaticism

There was a time growing up when I knew where each of my friends stood with each sport. Chuck was a Pistons fan, Kenny was a Celtics fan, Chuck and I were Redskins fans.  None of us jumped ship . . . ever . . . . for any reason.  I hope that stands true for my Newgate Village homies to this day.

But ask a fan nowadays about the team they support in a single sport, and you'll likely get a litany of teams supported, with a plethora of reasons they support them.  People no longer are strong enough to stand by one team anymore.  No more loyalty to one college for all sports.  Everybody has their winner backup.  It's saddening.

The most common statement I hear goes something like this 'I'm a Hawks fan but the Cavaliers are my second favorite team.'  By definition, 'favorite' is a singular item.  By my definition of fan, there are no second favorites in the same league. That shows a new level of fairweatheredness that's either slightly above or slight below those NBA fans who haven't watched a game since Jordan left.  Oddly enough, I never hear the comment 'I'm a Browns fan but the Bills are my second favorite team.'  You know why I don't hear that kind of statement?  Because these so called fans never seem to pick a mediocre or outright bad team as their second favorite.

It really goes to the desire for today's fans to be associated with a winner.  Sports no longer hold that passion of my youth with the new generation of fans. From my teens up until my kids were born, if the Lakers, Redskins, or Hokies lost, the day and quite possibly the weekend were done.  Ruined. I felt it personally. I cared and loved that much.  I didn't rely on a second team.  I didn't support a player that didn't run with my squad.  Ask my friends what I said about Shaquille O'Neal once he left the Lakers.  In a nutshell, it was nothing nice.

What happened to those fans that felt the game?  That weren't afraid to lose?  That realized losing builds passion?  I actually have a friend who attended Virginia Tech but cheers for Duke basketball.  Her justification is that the Hokies have never been that good in basketball.  Besides berating her as a traitor, I should have asked her what happens if the basketball team runs into the good fortune that the once hapless football team did 16/17 years ago?  Would she forsake Duke basketball?  I doubt it . . . .sadly, I doubt it.

I have another friend who became a die-hard Falcons fan once they started winning.  He says he refused to support an organization in the state the organization was formerly in.  I'm a Redskins fan.  I support a team with an owner that has absolutely nothing to put on his mantelpiece in terms of achievement since he's owned the team. Blunder after blunder after blunder....still no excuse to jump ship.....

I just don't get it I guess.  Do these people also have second favorite wives?  I mean sports for me is about loyalty, about trust in the organization, about a love of the history of an organization.  Does any of that count for anything anymore?

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Implementing a Hosted Solution - Lessons Learned

How's this for a change of pace?  A work related post that is more observation than bitching.

We have been in the process of implementing Oracle's CRM on Demand since September 2009.  I have implementation experience but this was a much more intense experience.  So, even though we are only in pilot with tons of work and sleep-deprived days ahead of us, I thought I'd make a point to take some notes -- a 'Lessons Learned' kind of assessment.

Lesson #1: Get the right people involved. . . .EARLY!

  Any time a technical product is being discussed, negotiated, or researched, the IT department and at least a few subject matter experts should be involved.  Case in point, a database company trying to sell you one of it's business applications will almost always say 'Our product can handle whatever your business process may be as well as introduce you to best practice business processes that you may find useful.'  Without IT input, questions such as does your application meet my business process specifications with little to no customization?  Or will I have a ton of customization with your product simply being the interface for my customizations?  Further, subject matter experts need to be available to verify that what your company reps are telling the vendor, in terms of how you do business, is correct.  Often, executives have a high level understanding of what occurs beneath them but you don't want to base a million dollar application purchase on a high level understanding.

Lesson #2: Understand the limitations of your decisions

The product chosen was a hosted solution.  In layman's terms this means we are buying software that we are not installing on machines within our company. Rather, the software will be hosted at, in this case, Oracle's site.  Oracle will be in charge of hardware and software maintenance and upkeep which logically presents a cost savings in terms of administration of the software. Undoubtedly, this was told to the executive team.  Also, undoubtedly, the ramifications of not having an actual product in your possession were not, I assume, weighed as heavily.  As a developer, what I desire most is access. Access to development environments, databases, and whatever else I need to do my job.  With a hosted solution, I am partially handcuffed.  I no longer have free reign to 'go in the backdoor' and fix something through the database.  I no longer have the power I once did.  Not only is that a culture change for the development team, it's also a change for the user base who by now has gotten used to knowing that their IT team could formerly do tons of things in the application and around the application (reporting for example) with less red tape and quicker turnaround.

Lesson #3:  Quality, Speed, Expense-- Pick Two

This is not so much a lesson learned as much as it is a personal project management guideline.  I forget where I heard it but it has stuck with me through the years and I find it just as relevant now as I did years ago.

With every project, you have three main considerations: Quality, Speed, and Expense.  You only get two of these three.  Two you get to request at the forsaking of the third.  If you want a project completed quickly and with good quality, expect to pay a handsome fee along the line to get that done.  If you want a project completed cheaply and quickly, quality will suffer.  And if you want a cheap project with quality work, it can be done but it will take time.

There are other lessons that I have taken from this project that I hope to xpine on here but it is saturday night.....