Work in the Flow

Meeting Minutes with Agreedo

2011-04-29T11:19:00.001-07:00

Most people agree that good meeting minutes are extremely valuable. It is always important to follow up verbal agreements with writing, and to remind people, once they leave the meeting room, of the action items. Now, you can rely on people's memories and their own note-taking, but I wouldn't advise that if you're a project manager.

I just checked out Agreedo, presumably the name has less to do with "Greed" than with "Agreed". It is a tool to set up meeting agendas and take meeting minutes. I would like to review its functionality while discussing other alternatives for achieving the same goals.

Agreedo allows you to set up a meeting and invite attendees, who can then add to your agenda. You add items such as "Information", "Decisions", "Tasks" and "Topics". Topics seem similar to Information, but they have an icon to make it clear that there will be children discussion items. Meanwhile, all of these items can have indented items beneath them. In addition, items can have comments attached – which can become an ongoing discussion between attendees.

Another interesting feature is the ability to "Start Meeting" and see a running clock of how long you've been meeting. It even turns red when you go over, a common issue around here.

When finished, you can export the items to Excel. You can also refer to Decisions and Tasks later, in a list that is meeting-independent. Personally I put all my decisions and tasks into similarly named SharePoint lists on my project SharePoint site. Of course, that does take work! Another option for me would be, using OneNote, to create Outlook Tasks – but that doesn't allow you to assign actions to others.

Overall, the functionality would be perfect as a feature for WebEx or another online meeting tool. As a standalone, I don't see myself using it. I would prefer to continue using OneNote, or in some cases, a Microsoft Word "Meeting Minutes" template. I guess I'm just old-fashioned, but it doesn't seem that difficult to me to organize my meeting minutes into Action Items, Decisions, and Discussion – I don't need the overhead of a new tool. The idea, however, of keeping meeting minutes in the cloud is surely appealing.

Project Management … Applied

2010-12-22T13:05:00.001-08:00

In the world of Softerewa

In the world of Software Project Management, a gal can get down on herself. Software is notorious for its late-running schedules and complex systems where every little thing that can go wrong will. So it was an excellent experience for me to apply my project management skills to something completely different. This year, I successfully created, produced – and even performed in – a holiday pageant that raised money for Cradles to Crayons, a local organization helping homeless children.

I couldn't believe I was doing something so big – after all, what did I have to bring to the table? Having never done this before in my life, I planned for small things, a small theater with a small financial investment, small expectations for the event, and small demands on my cast. After all, it was the very first time I was doing many of these things. Sure, I can dance – but I had never choreographed for more than two people before. I hadn't written and directed a show. I hadn't even acted in any community theater since I was eighteen. I certainly had never asked people to put their faith in me, first the performers who agreed to put in hard work and effort into this newborn show, and the audience, who had never seen a show like this – and not from me. I guess it is something like when the Angel appeared to the shepherds and told them that the son of God had been born in a stables nearby … except when I asked people to do something extraordinary for me, I didn't have the benefit of a halo and wings.

Risk management came in handy. I have seen other shows – of less complexity – succeed and yet have failures that I did not wish to repeat. A late-running software project is one thing – that some people come to expect. A late-running show with audience in their seats? Unacceptable. I have seen dance shows where performers have not appeared to perform – and when you have a story to tell – you cannot simply have a cast member bail out. So that was definitely a concern – and not one that I was able to mitigate with understudies. Rather, I got incredibly lucky that the one cast member who was injured in the week prior was replaced by another gifted performer who picked up and improvised with the outline she was given during Dress rehearsal.

With encouragement from my co-producers, we forged ahead, even when things seemed darkest, like when our original choice for roles were injured, when we lost the full involvement of one co-producer for a time, or when only a few people showed up for auditions. Bravery was required when I signed the contract with the lighting/sound technician, knowing that my nightly anxiety attacks would end (and they did) once I knew that we'd have that taken care of – but committing a large portion of my expected proceeds to this cost – the first one I couldn't just pay out of pocket. Even as an IT project manager, I had rarely dealt with profits and expenses so closely as I did on this show, knowing that failure meant not only a loss of reputation, but also loss of my own invested money. I had to evaluate each thing against its effect. Would particularly pretty tickets persuade more buyers, or could we get by on the cheapest ones? [We got the cheapest ones!] Were flyers worthwhile printing, or was it better to advertise with a digital flyer in email? In most ways, we scrimped and saved – and the strategy succeeded. The one place we spent money was the aforementioned light and sound tech, and when I saw the theater setup, I knew we had spent our money well. If we did not hire him, we would have had no way to project sound and we would have had no lights at all (the house lights and stage lights were one and the same).

The show was documented six ways to Sunday. I sliced and diced the data in different ways, according to the recipient of it. The lighting/sound guy had his cues, the stage manager another. We had spreadsheets of costumes, spreadsheets of props, spreadsheets of ticket buyers. Google Docs was an incredible resource, allowing me to create documents of all types and share them – collaborating with my team.

My technical expertise came in handy with setting up the website, along with the PayPal ticket purchases, as well as the collaborative Google site for the cast to communicate.

So it is with amazement and pride that I look back at the show I produced two weeks ago. Thanks to the hard work and diligence of all, we had a seamless show in a nearly sold out theater. We raised more than my expectations for the charity, and it was very well-received by both the local community and the dance community. It made people feel spiritual and connected to Christmas, and it raised cultural awareness of Middle Eastern cultures too.

The special thing I had to offer was not necessarily past experience with theatricals, or with event-promotion, of which I had very few – it was my Project Management – my Real Job that allowed me to succeed at this production – which is, as they say, "only a hobby".

Now, it's time for the post-mortem! Happy holidays to all!

Building Relationships

2010-12-22T13:02:00.001-08:00

I was catching up on my Projects@Work newsletters, which I've been dutifully auto-filtering into a Newsletters folder until I would have time to read them – and here we are at Christmas with newsletters going back to Octber. I'm definitely finding some gems.

So far, my favorite article is the following:

The Human Element: Janis Rizzuto

This quote here really spoke to me, about the lessons I've been learning this year. I can't say I'm an expert yet – in fact, in most ways, when it comes to leadership, I am a freshman. It's only now that I'm realizing just how important they are. As one of those "logic-based" people (and you know who we are), I believed that people should do things – and things should get done – because they were the right thing to do. Some of us are guilty of treating our co-workers not unlike the machine that we work with – input A, output B, with email as the delivery mechanism. Someone's job may be to do something, so they should do it. Then it breaks down – you sent your input, but you're not getting back the output.

In this environment of limited resources, where everyone is tasked with doing far more than 100%, it's your leadership – and relationship skills – that actually get things done. If every person we walked up to was doing absolutely nothing at that time, I bet the things we'd need to get done always would be. But it's not the case – most people are busy with competing priorities and more work than they can possibly hope to achieve. So, that's where "leveraging relationships" comes in.

"Project leaders need to be constantly building, maintaining and leveraging relationships to get things done. No one is going to care that you are the project manager, so you need to figure out how to broker agreements between multiple stakeholders to move things forward. Part of your value to your customer as a project leader is to remove obstacles, and the way you do that is usually not through authority. You have to be creative about how you drive accountability to make sure that people come through on their obligations to the project team." (Janis Rizzuto, 2010).

This is my biggest personal challenge for 2011, if I really want to succeed, is to develop these skills. If they are like anything else in life, it's not about a natural gift, it just takes knowledge, practice, and effort. Also, as this article says, you need to pay attention to these as part of your work. Building relationships with others is as important as anything else you do.

Think you are saving big money by offshoring? Think again. You always get what you pay for.

2010-09-09T19:59:00.000-07:00

Yes, in the short run, paying offshore developers 25$/hr may seem like a great deal. However, companies must be aware that there are a number of hidden costs. Some are avoidable if you know the cause. For example, you might have an on-shore person spending a lot more time managing the engagement, taking more time to detail requirements - as much time as they may have previously spent on building the application in-house. There could be costly errors if the offshore developers do not understand the business needs and requirements; this can be corrected if you have an on-site business analyst and/or if you can connect your off-shore team with your stakeholders. However, the problem that many US managers complain about is Quality - whether the off-shore developed code is maintainable and working - or is it spaghetti code and full of bugs?

If there are any quality issues, your on-shore resources will be discovering them, spending their much more expensive time debugging, reporting issues, and so forth.

I'm currently managing a project where a vendor is developing customizations off-shore. I'm not sure what kind of testing they are doing, if any. I do know that we get their code deliveries, myself and a number of other highly paid business people are spending many cycles testing and reporting issues. I know the vendor was selected because of their low prices. But if I had it to do again, I wouldn't. In fact, I'm incredibly overjoyed that by a stroke of good luck, my other current project has gone from off-shore resources to - not only on-shore but on-SITE resources. The progress that can be made when the developer can show his prototypes and talk directly with the stakeholders is well-worth the cost. It all comes down to - you get what you pay for.

I don't have a problem with non-American developers, as some do. I'm not xenophobic and I'd be happy if other countries reached our same standard of living. But over the years I have been a consultant or have been managing projects, I have seen that on-site, co-located development teams are far more effective. It doesn't matter what their background, race, or ethnicity is - it's all about whether you can talk face-to-face, be on the same timezone, and - in the case of quality issues - can make them accountable for their work.

If you really want offshoring to work, there are a few things you might want to pay attention to:

Make sure your offshore team has really good phone connections. Even with the best English, if the phone connection is poor, communication will suffer. [Insert your language where I used English, which is the language I use to communicate.]
Invest in good online meeting technology, such as WebEx. The ability to share screens and voice conference is so important, whether you're sharing your requirements, or seeing a demo of something they have built for you.
See if you can establish at least some shared hours, if your on-site and off-shore resources will be working together. It can be so frustrating waiting 12 hours for an answer, or if you can never talk real-time at all.
Try to have someone from the offshore facility come to your site, meet the people s/he will be working with, and learn about the business. It will personalize the people that are working together, increasing cooperation and communication. And obviously if your off-shore people are working on or supporting business applications, it helps if they have some context.

And remember - contrary to what I recently read in a business textbook - programming is not like digging ditches. One programmer cannot simply hand off his train of thought, creative process, and so forth to another programmer at the strike of the clock. You are not going to have a magical 24 hour development cycle. Instead, you will have various 8 hour development cycles going around the clock. Now, if you have a service desk, you might get this. But not with software development.

2010-02-26T07:48:00.000-08:00

I have trouble keeping up with this blog, although I have so much to write about. I have switched to a new group within my company, the newly formed Program Management Office. I am back at Brandeis again, taking a class in Agile Project Management, which has proven very interesting - and inspirational. Now, recall, I thought I hated Agile because I thought it was all about lone cowboys and no planning. Finally, I have a new project in my life for about the six months, and the iterations of this project stretch far into the future, with no end in sight, and plenty of features on our product backlog.

This little dude came into my life in August of last year.

& of course I put him right to work.

What Business can learn from XBOX 360 Achievements

2010-02-08T09:08:00.001-08:00

When the XBOX 360 came out, it added a new dimension to gaming – Achievements. For those who are unfamiliar, I will explain. Achievements are earned through playing games, either through the course of playing through an adventure, or to celebrate certain feats of gaming – 25 headshots in a shooter or playing through the game at a certain difficulty level. When you accomplish an achievement, it pops up on your gaming screen and later you can view all your achievements for all of your games on your XBOX 360 profile. On top of this, your achievements are visible to others and you can compare yourself to your gamer friends to see who did what.

It's an amazing motivational tool. Like many people, I play games for fun. I play a game the way I want to play it, usually only once. However, with achievements, that has changed. I find myself looking up what the achievements are and spending time trying to get them, even if it means I try things I don't normally try. It forces me to explore the game more fully, even to play the game multiple times. And it's surprising how much I care about those little medals of honor.

It's not unlike star stickers that we might use for children's chores, or rewards for good behavior. Can anyone explain why a little one gets so excited about a gold star sticker? I remember earning them in a math class – nothing made me want to do math more than the recognition that I had worked hard in the form of a little star.

It works so well for children. It works so well for gamers. Why don't we try it on professional white-collar workers? Imagine if a project manager came up with a list of achievements. Some would be standard project achievements – as the team progressed through each stage. Other achievements would be for an impressive performance, completing QA with all critical bugs fixed, for example.

One important aspect of Achievements is Awareness. If you don't know what they are, you can't strive for them. Most of the time, the team knows the phases of the project, but how often do they have a way to measure how well a task is done, let alone a goal to strive for?

The second important aspect of an Achievement is Visibility. If you have a co-located Agile team, you already use a lot of visual artifacts. Why not an Achievement posterboard? A SharePoint site or other collaborative team site offers a virtual location. Another option could be part of the presentations at the project close-out.

Sometimes, we business people can learn from our leisure time. This time, the XBOX 360 taught me something valuable about motivation.

Salesforce.com for Rapid Application Development, particularly for non-profits

2009-03-17T08:20:00.001-07:00

In these lean times, more and more companies are turning to turnkey solutions. However, many companies – like mine – prefer the ability to customize their implementation. Sometimes turnkey solutions can be limited. However, systems that are built from the ground up not only increase the project timeframe, but they also can become a support nightmare. Each new application has a new user interface, new administrative functions, new support documents, and sometimes the original programmer ends up supporting so many of his homegrown applications that he or she has no time to write new ones.

I speak from experience here. In my present capacity, I inherited over 30 homegrown applications written in ASP.NET.

To me, Remedy was always the perfect solution for these companies. Here you have a workflow system that is extremely customizable, yet offering extremely rapid application development. For support, it is not difficult for a technical person to read and understand remedy 'code', which takes the form of visual elements within the Admin Tool (forms, filters, active links, et al.)

However, through a volunteer project I am engaged in with Common Impact, I have become aware of a new (to me) offering. Salesforce.com. This is software as a service, offered through the web to subscribing customers. For many years, I had known salesforce.com as a CRM product, that, by its name itself, served the sales force of a company. However, Salesforce.com has taken a dramatic step – they offer their product free to non-profit organizations. These non-profit organizations can use it to customize an application. It is perfect for contact management, help desk applications, and simple asset management. Even more advantageous for the struggling non-profit, it does not require an on-site installation – it is hosted.

Currently, my assignment on this project is developing a simple web interface for end-users who wish to create help desk cases or asset requests. At first, I thought I would be building this on my own – until I discovered Salesforce.com offers a 'web-to-case' feature that eliminates most of the need to write custom code. Peter Martin writes more about using the web-to-case feature in his blog, Cloud Clout.

I'll write more about Salesforce.com as I have more thoughts on it.

Also, look forward to a discussion of the new BMC Remedy Action Request System 7.5, with an all new administrative and development interface.

Kinks in the SQL Server 2005 Client Tool installations

2008-10-01T12:20:00.000-07:00

I was installing SQL Server 2005 client tools today. You won't believe how difficult that can be. First, it's pretty time-consuming! Secondly, you might run into a few kinks, as written here.

If you ever had any part of any SQL Server 2005 item installed before, you won't be given the option to install. The system believes it's already installed. So you'll end up uninstalling anything you had before, even if you had only installed a demo or some minor analysis tool. Then, try again.

This is somewhat documented here and many other places on the net.
http://www.kodyaz.com/blogs/software_development_blog/archive/2007/06/10/567.aspx

So after all that, if you get a message about the Transaction Manager is not available, you might be feeling pretty frustrated. Luckily, the fix was quite easy and documented at the link below:

http://jetlounge.net/blogs/teched/archive/2008/01/18/error-during-install-of-sql-server-2005-transaction-manager-is-not-available.aspx

2008-05-16T07:43:00.001-07:00

Stop the insanity! Or not – I've decided to go back to school. I convinced my manager that we should both take classes at Brandeis, Information Technology Mgmt for him, and Project Management for me. With an overlap of three courses, we looked forward to studying together, starting with Fundamentals of Project Management. When I registered, I found out that my previous classes in the Software Engineering program apply, despite being older than three years. The content of the Project Management course hasn't changed, so Brandeis is going to allow me to transfer that credit from my Software Engineering certificate to the MS in Project and Program Management. The only other online course I could take in the program at this time was Risk Management.

Risk Management. Risk is an area I prefer to avoid. Unfortunately, I have found with most risks in life, you can notate them and plan for them all you want, but they are still coming at you like a freight train – and I often feel like a Cassandra telling of Troy's downfall. Risk Management, in practice, seems more like a CYA. The Project Manager writes down the risks, attempts to get the stakeholders to be aware of them (all in vain), and then when the freight train hits, the stakeholders are still p.o.'ed, but you can hold up that section of the project documentation and say "I told you so." To continue with the references to Greco-Roman culture, it's Pyrric Victory.

With luck, this course will open my eyes to real Risk Management.

Tempted to go back to school

2008-04-15T13:20:00.001-07:00

I am very much tempted right now to go back to school. I have been at my current company for almost a year and a half, and I'm worried about growing stale. For almost three years of my life, as a consultant, I was at a new company every few months. I was constantly being exposed to new business environments, and as a result, constantly growing. That experience was something I could take with me to my current company. But after a year here, there is a great deal of pressure to conform to the same old way of doing things that everyone else does. However, I know what I offered, beyond programming skills, project management, communication skills and whatnot – is my unique perspectives. I brought change and new ideas to an organization that, in my opinion, really needed it. But my fount of new ideas is running low without new stimulus. I do feel like I'm on a mission here, to be a agent for constant improvement. So I am not content to just relax into a steady job and run with the status quo. I know that we can do better, but I need to find out how – and come back with the confidence to lead the way.

That's one reason to consider going back to school, and it is my main one. When I was back at one of my first software development jobs, I started taking graduate courses in software engineering, and I made a clear and amazing jump from clueless to clued-in. Suddenly, all the things my boss had been talking about (requirements, use cases, etc) made sense. It was also my first encounter with the software development lifecycle and with project management. You could definitely say that it put me on the career path I am now on, even if the degree itself didn't have much to do with it. Another reason to get an additional degree is for the inevitable resume. Those qualifications can help, within the company, but mostly outside of it. Of course, I also have the social pressure to become more educated, as so many of my friends attain their masters, and even PH.Ds. Two of them have MBAs. Even my spouse has more education than I do. Living in Boston, you can't escape the "keeping up with the Jones" of education. It often seems like everyone is in school.

I'm looking at three different programs. Given that my career path has been veering towards Business Analyst and Project Manager, further degrees in Software Engineering are out. And technical management doesn't seem exactly relevant right now. So count out MBA programs, for now anyway.

The most unique program I am eyeing is Bentley's Human Factors in Information Design program. This program is all about combining psychology with computer science, understanding how the human brain works, and thus, how to build the best possible interfaces for it, be that in software applications or television remote controls. Naturally I would lean towards the software end of design. The classes sound fascinating. However, applying to this program requires a full time commitment, as it requires the GRE or GMAT test, an application, and a commitment to be enrolled. Bentley is the most expensive option of all, almost 3000$ per class.

Less strenuous is the Boston University PMI accredited 4-class Project Management certification. The classes do not sound that interesting, and with only 4 classes, they are required to be very broad. Advantages include the fact that it's entirely "online", and that it's accredited by PMI. It is pricy though – I would only be able to take 2 classes per year before paying out of pocket.

Finally, there is the familiar. I have a graduate certificate in Software Engineering from Brandeis. The only reason I did not complete it was that my consulting job did not allow me the luxury of taking classes, nor did the company have tuition reimbursement. Brandeis offers an M.S. in the Management of Projects and Programs. The program is not certified by PMI, and I wonder how much that counts. After all, Brandeis is a reputable institution, not a degree factory. The classes for this degree look quite varied and interesting, covering not just project management specifics, but also general management topics. Having taken classes from the school before, I know that the classes are good, very relevant to business and yet still academically challenging. Brandeis is the least expensive option, about $2000 per class.

Conducting Exciting Training

2008-04-06T03:36:00.001-07:00

I am repeating here the lessons of the greats, but only to assure you that, yes, they work. I recently completed a week of training on a not-so-exciting topic (reporting industrial accidents for manufacturing sites), in the Philippines. The workers in the Philippines all speak fluent English, making my job easier than it might have been in, say, China – but that doesn't mean their culture isn't different. It is!

Study the culture to understand how to adapt your training. I used the book "Culture Shock: Philippines" to learn what drives and motivates people here. Actually, I have to admit this was my own idea. I knew that our employees in the Philippines were less likely to report minor accidents, and the book explained why. The notion of hiya (shame) and amor-propio (self-respect) was the reason. And the motivators? Family, teamwork, helping out the community over the individual. I had to explain how helping the whole team feel safer was more important than being embarrassed that you had an accident, or feeling bad about "complaining" when reporting it.
Pop quizzes – use a reward system to get people to raise their hands. And make people raise their hands – any quiz where people are yelling out answers will create chaos and you won't know who to respond to. For that matter, insist that people follow the rules – it's unfair to others if you don't. We had chocolates to hand out, and people got all excited about "winning" the chocolate during the pop quiz.
Announcing your pop quiz will occur at the end .. at the beginning of class .. will make people listen better. After all, the purpose of the quiz segment is to ensure that people learned. Even better if they are taking notes when you seem to emphasize something because they think you are going to quiz them on it!
If you are doing multiple sessions, take notes on your experience and change your training. I changed it several times, adding slides for questions that kept coming up. I removed slides that didn't seem to flow, or seemed awkward.
Practice in advance if you can. By my third session, I could speak slowly while looking around the room, not even look at my slides. I should have practiced more in advance so that all my trainings were that relaxed.
Even during your lecture/demonstration, ask for input. I started asking my groups to suggest what kind of accident we should use for the demo. I got some funny answers (poisoning, drowning), but it definitely made the class more fun.
Don't lecture for two long! Over the ten trainings, I re-arranged my training quite a bit. At one point, I moved my group exercise towards the end, and put more information in front. Why? People kept asking certain questions that I would have answered afterwards. After doing that twice, I moved it back to the middle. The long lecture section was too long and people ended up with the same questions anyway. Besides, studies show people learn more from making mistakes first and learning why, rather than knowing "the right way" all along.
Group exercises rock! People loved that section, and it gave me a break, as hard as it was for me to step back for 15-30 minutes.
Lolcatz are universal. Everyone loves cute cats. And dogs for that matter.

Reader Questions: What am I up to?

2008-02-25T07:11:00.000-08:00

I recently received this question from a reader, and as I cannot figure out how to reply directly, I will be answering it here.

So, can you update us on how you are doing with Remedy these days? I understand you don't do just Remedy, but have you done an ITSM 6 to 7 upgrade yet?

I'll answer this in two parts, specific to non-specific.

I haven't done an ITSM 6 to 7 upgrade yet. I count myself lucky that I left the consulting biz before all that action blew up. I had a client that had just completed a v4 to v6 upgrade of ITSM, with vast simplifications of the new features in version 6. Understandably, I advised them to save time and money and stick with version 6 for a while, because version 7 contained so many differences that it would require either many hours of consulting to change it, or many hours of re-training their staff with new work processes. My current company has independently installed ITSM v7, with a few bumps along the way, and seems pretty happy with it. Personally, I saw Change Management v7 on a new installation and really didn't like it. It could be fear of change, of course. Easy customizations that we had done many times for many clients suddenly became difficult and time-consuming. We had to learn whole new ways of "undoing" things, as BMC had completely re-architected the solution. It wasn't always obvious why.

We have done an upgrade here on custom applications from v6 to v7 and that went really smoothly.

As far as Remedy goes, we continue to use it here. Rapid application development is one of Remedy's strengths and we use it for many custom applications. it is much faster to bring up a workflow application in Remedy than it would be to use Savvion or ASP.Net paired with SQL. The only drawback of course are the inevitable licenses, for people who may have been used to to the "free" licenses for SQL/ASP.NET applications, to realize that they need to buy licenses to use Remedy products. For the most part though, we are doing well with floating licenses that serve multiple departments as few people use Remedy applications all day long.

We did replace our Facilities Help Desk application, built in Remedy, with a total solution from Infor called Infor EAM 8. I am currently in the middle of user acceptance testing for this product and we will be doing training and rollout in the next few weeks - at last! The solution isn't as customizable as Remedy, but it is built for Facilities Maintenance Management so it already had most of the required features built in, including asset management.

Currently I am working on rolling out the Environmental Health and Safety suite that I created for my company worldwide. In a few weeks, I will be flying off to Manila to deploy it in the Philippines. To see this product come to fruition has been really wonderful for me. It has been my "baby" since I started developing it as a consultant to this company, and to see it come this far has been truly rewarding.

I'm also working on a huge Savvion deployment, a product that has not won my complete approval. I pity the Savvion consultant who has to work with it all day long. It is not a mature product yet, perhaps like Remedy was in version 3. Thank heavens I am not the project manager for this one! It reminds me of one of the most FUBAR'ed projects I had to deal with as a consultant, all of the classic mistakes have been made, despite all of the best intentions.

And my other HUGE project that I've mentioned in this blog is a Stockroom application, written in ASP.net 1.1 on a SQL 2003 database. It serves as a front-end to SAP, allowing people to easily get materials from the stockroom. Soon we'll be adding a piece that will have a handheld scanner, and people will be able to scan the parts that they are taking. Very exciting! But also very challenging, as I am managing an offshore team in this endeavor, as well as having to work with our SAP developers in Ireland.

why won't you do what I ask?

2008-02-05T07:34:00.000-08:00

Today I was so frustrated with my offshore development team that I had to google "Offshore team doesn't listen to me." Yes. I googled a full sentence. Not surprisingly, I got a few results.

My specific problem is that I request repeatedly for them to do something. For example, tell them that the app must use a web service rather than handle some integration internally, so that we can use that web service for multiple applications. Or perhaps as simple as telling them that the system must point to a particular Dev server, not to QA or Prod at this time. And no response. They dont' say they're not doing it, but they don't confirm they're doing it either. Meanwhile, the latest version I received is still not doing what I asked. At the same time, I get long emails from them describing bizarre situations they've thought about and want to know the answer to. "If a pink elephant logged in and pressed this button, what would be the expected result?" ARGH! I end up having to chase these strange requirements questions down, despite the fact that I've written clear requirements. These fools' errands distract me from the fact that they are not doing what I've asked them to do. But, it would appear, I am not alone. Witness the following entries of my fellow blogger (paragraph 2 or 3):

http://tarkatronic.blogspot.com/2007/08/management-frustration.html

At any rate, I think this is the hardest thing about managing any project where the worker(s) are anyone but yourself. You have to ask other people to do things. And they might not do them. They may not do them correctly, on time, and they may not respond to you at all. And how do you deal with that? Are you a rant & rave kind of person? Don't think so quickly that you're not because I've found you don't know how you're going to react until you face this situation. I find myself completely at a loss. I would certainly like to yell about it right now, but wisdom tells me that it wouldn't get me anywhere.

I know blogs are supposed to come to a pithy conclusion, but I'm sorry - no Jerry Springer message on this one.

Best Week Ever

2007-12-08T22:14:00.000-08:00

I had the best week. I was completely in the zone with Consultant Fu, even though I am now serving as Employee #14324 at giant corporation. The third-party consultant firm for the Infor EAM product came in to kick off the requirements analysis for our implementation, and we had a great week. I really enjoyed our business process consultant, and his technical lead both. It's important that consultants have good personalities if you are going to sit with them in meetings all week long. These folks did (and if you email me, I'll give you their names.)

I even came up with some great ideas myself, like combining two field values into a single selection (as it turned out, past data showed that they were always selected at the same time, not usually independent. If A, then B.) Also, we were able to reduce 6 pages of Category, Type & Item combinations (known in the Remedy world as CTIs) into 1 page of menu options. Redundancy reduced, simplicity increased. And to make it even easier for data entry, I came up with short codes to prefix each menu option so that related items sorted together!

It's important to recognize when you may have the skills, but not the knowledge. I knew we needed someone with the specific Infor product knowledge, and business process experience, who could tell us the best practices for an implementation. And that's exactly what got us back on track.

This week really gave me the opportunity to show my company why they hired me, although it took hiring external consultants to get this project going in the right direction. It was, after all, my idea to find specialized Infor consultants.

the most brilliant blog post I've read lately

2007-11-15T08:14:00.002-08:00

Read this - it's like my job on paper. Down to the Inventory System example - this is the battle I fight.

Gathering Requirements or Taking Orders

Here's a relevant quote that sums it all up -

So when you send your people to get requirements, are they saying, "Let me take
this problem back to the team and come back with a few recommended solutions" or
are they saying "You want fries with that?".

We've actually had a major shift here at my current company. Our IS Applications department used to ultimately report in to the business side of the house, and the site-based business side gave us orders - even when we said that the approach they were demanding was not a good solution, not workable at all in fact. But now we're working for a stronger worldwide IS organization, and now it's like we've got a new army at our back when we say that we cannot do something. But still, the old overlords are fighting tooth and nail, unable to accept that we are no longer letting them "have it their way". It sounds like we don't want to align with the goals of the business. Not true. Our over-arching goals are to solve their problems. We don't necessarily want to implement their solution however. We've got alternate solutions, based on actual knowledge of IT Systems.

That's my background as a consultant speaking. I would be hired not just to implement an application, but to help people find their way to their best implementation of the application. Yes, we customized - but generally we had to help our customer figure out the best customizations, or where not to customize and use the built-in functionality. Usually they had to populate a great deal of data elements - we would help them organize their data. If I was just there to follow the manuals and do an installation, they could have hired anyone. The reason they hired experienced consultants from my former company was because we offered that knowledge and, yes, opinion.

I often see developers who have no interest in requirements analysis. They want to get their marching orders and go straight to code. But what happens in the end? The end product doesn't meet the expectations of the customer. Because you can't take their word at face value - you have to understand all that is not said, the expectations not voiced. Assumptions that make an a** out of u and mptions. :-) With experience doing this (like I have), you learn what questions need to be asked. It's almost like mind-reading. I had one project that, when all I had done was completed the User Requirements doc, the customer told me I had just documented their process better than they ever had, and now they had a better understanding of what exactly they did. Music to my ears.

Anyway, I'm not bragging here - I'm trying to talk about how important it is for both customers & developers to understand that requirements gathering should be an interchange. That's why I don't like the word "gathering". It sounds like you are going out and picking nuts & berries. I like analysis, because it implies that you're taking a bunch of data and synthesizing it. It is a skill to be able to do that, and sometimes I'm still challenged by it. You can't get lazy - you have to stay on your game with this stuff. And the customer has to see the value too. They can't be thinking "how dare this developer suggest what we should do?". Of course, there are ways to phrase your opinion so that no one feels like anyone is being pushy, and as a consultant, I learned many strategies for that.

Savvion compared to Remedy

2007-11-15T07:50:00.000-08:00

You may have noticed I've changed the header on this blog. It's a temporary name - as I'm hoping to find the right name that encapsulates "workflow", as these types of applications are my thing - and also the stuff I write about project management and software development. I still have one foot in the Remedy development world, but I've just put my tippy-toe into a new product to me - Savvion.

I saw a Savvion demo, perhaps of their Process Modeler, and it didn't look to be in the same space as Remedy ARS. In fact, it looked more like a modeling tool, like a more meaty Visio. I hadn't yet made the connection that the modeling tool was the development tool. Savvion is also four times the price of Remedy ARS. Not that Remedy is undervalued - I think it's price reflects the fact that BMC wants to sell Remedy as a platform for their applications (ITSM suite, etc) - and some even say that a lower price for Remedy ARS could encourage more development on it - making it a .NET competitor.

My first look at Savvion - past the flashy demos on their site - was with the Savvion developer at my company. My task is to get up to speed on this application so that I can contribute my requirements analysis skills to the next round of application development. It took some time to install the BPM Studio on my computer. It looks as if the strength of Savvion is that, even more so than Remedy, a non-developer could go in and define workflow. However, accompanying that, any custom actions and database transactions require knowledge of SQL and Java. So, it is at the same time far more technical and far less than Remedy.

Strengths of Remedy - Very quick to develop - a "5GL language". Ability to integrate with other systems, sometmes easily. Form design is intuitive and the form is the database table, essentially. Common functionality is built in, such as database access (put & get), email notifications, opening a window. Can run on numerous OS and database platforms. Easy web interface - doesn't require web programming experience.

Strengths of Savvion - process modeling is easy for the business user, so eliminates need for requirements gathering by IT.

Savvion Links for the interested:

The brief summary I gave to one of my colleagues -

"It looks as if Savvion would let the business user build their own workflow,
and then only go to the developer for the more complicated integrations.
While in Remedy, the development team needs to find out what the business user
wants, before we can build it. However, the development in Savvion looks a
lot more challenging than Remedy development. At the same time, getting
requirements from the business user and translating those into workflow can be a
chore in itself."

as reality sets in...

2007-09-06T05:33:00.000-07:00

As reality sets in, I have started to realize the most straightforward path to software development, i.e. the much maligned waterfall method, just doesn't work. Perhaps each person needs to learn this for themselves. It's far, far easier to plan, but much more difficult to implement. So maybe those Agile people do have something to say.

Now, I still think this guy is over-reaching by saying that people hide behind detailed documentation. I would still argue if the developer here before me had written documentation, my job today would be a lot easier. I'd also argue that I've used my own documentation, because God knows my memory doesn't stretch back to something I wrote 6 months ago. But this article does explain how Agile is not the same as being undisciplined.

http://www.ddj.com/architect/201804241?cid=RSSfeed_DDJ_ArchitectDebug

Hopefully that links to the article on The Discipline of Agile. I'm planning to read more about Agile to see if it can help my department do a better job of meeting customer expectations.

So, on one project, we've started with an iterative process and I've sent off the first iteration to the development team in India. I realized that it was going to take years to gather all the requirements in detail, and it would be far more effective to get started on what we do know. We defined the highest priority use cases to the highest detail we could, and sent them off. We have 7 iterations planned. I have my fingers crossed and I hope that this process works. The customers are anxious.

On another project, requirements gathering was extremely painful. The customers couldn't describe what they wanted, exactly. The SMEs - the people doing the job that the software was supposed to facilitate - couldn't really decide on what they actually did. And because the goal was to make improvements and combine two similar systems into one . . . there were teams that disagreed on how the new application should work. To make it more difficult, I don't have the domain knowledge in the area (high tech manufacturing) to suggest the best features, or even imagine what they were telling me. They hadn't seen Remedy applications before, so they couldn't imagine Remedy's capabilities either. So instead of writing a requirements document - something I had tried and failed to start each week after our requirements meetings - I created a prototype. The next meeting was much more smooth, with fewer arguments. Because I had created something that we could all see, I was immediately getting much better feedback on what it should do.

Because the prototype was created in the same environment as the final product, my boss and I decided the best course of action would be to continue developing the prototype, allowing it to evolve between requirements meetings. Perhaps by the time we finished"defining the requirements", we would have a nearly finished product.

Re-Branding

2007-07-13T12:33:00.001-07:00

I think I should rebrand this blog. When I started it, I was a Remedy consultant - full-time, fully immersed in BMC technology. Now, I do some of my work in Remedy, but only the base system, not the applications. Most of the things I'm driven to write about are beyond technology: Project Management, Software Development Best Practices, or just work in general. I get the feeling that the people who would read my blog and enjoy it skip it because it's a "Remedy Blog" and that the people who want a Remedy Blog can't figure out why I don't write about Remedy anymore.

Not only that but I am truly convinced that no one has ever looked at this blog....ever.

should we really encourage people to document LESS?

2007-07-13T11:54:00.001-07:00

I found a link to this essay on Agile Documentation on Dr. Dobb's.

http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/agileDocumentation.htm

As I read through the critical points, I found ideas that resonated with me as well as ideas I strongly disagreed with. I agree that documentation is great for organizational memory. When you have to support what you wrote (or what someone else wrote), you love that documentation. And as the article points out, documentation is also a great way to think something through. Overall, I think the author's heart is in the right place and with the best developers in the world, all this may be true. But like libertarianism, you can't assume that everyone is a good citizen. Take away all the environmental regulations and you betcha you'll have a neighbor dumping toxic sludge into your shared stream.

1. The Fundamental Issue is Communication, not documentation.
So true, but the documentation is your CYA when the other people claim you didn't say what you said.
10. Comprehensive documentation does not ensure project success, in fact, it increases your chances for failure.
I'd like to see the stats on that. Documentation alone is not a golden bullet, but I'd wager more projects fail due to lack of documentation than because of it.

The general point of this article argues against documentation, something I really believe in. I cannot believe the agile model is just so good that you don't need to document. What I see over and over "if you follow AM practices, you will not need so much documentation because you will produce code so much faster and of better quality." To me, it sounds like one of those reticent developers who just wants to code and not be bothered with anything else. I find this type really difficult to work with both as a fellow developer and as a project manager, and especially as a customer.

So, how do I respond to some of these "questionable reasons for creating documentation". I'll take just a single one of them...

The requester wants to be seen to be in control. People will request documents, such as specifications and detailed architecture documents that they can sign off on and say “yes, go ahead and build us one of these.” Whenever I find myself in this situation I ask the individual(s) requesting the documents if they also want to be seen as responsible for the project's failure because the development team was too busy focusing on needless documentation and not on building software. I’ll then suggest that instead of requesting documentation they should instead request access to the software itself, even if it is just an internal release of the software, so they can provide constructive feedback about it. They can still be seen to be an active participant in the project and can do so in a productive manner.

And this protects the developer(s) or the consultants more than it protects the customer! In consulting, we called it a Statement of Work and it was our bible. Access to the software itself is great - if you have the software built already. But how much time do you want to waste building software if you haven't yet documented what the customer asked for?

the arrival of process

2007-07-13T11:45:00.000-07:00

My department - and I am the ringleader on this particular item - is in the midst of changing our processes for software development. It was fairly informal, since our customers were internal. Ask them what they want, build it, give it to them. If there was any documentation, it served the developers more than the customers, perhaps explaining a particularly difficult piece of code.

The department was getting beat up right and left - and why? A few reasons. One, we were always late with our estimates. The "estimates" were usually really loose ideas given by managers before requirements were analyzed (which of course, they never were analyzed, not formally). And an additional reason why we weren't making our dates? Our customers would bring us new requirements, or complete changes in direction, at various points of the project - causing projects to extend and extend.

There are a lot of pain points here, especially for me, taking over from a guy who wrote applications for ten years and didn't really need to document them - after all, he was always going to be here to support them, right? And now that we're offshoring some of the development, I need a better way to communicate our requirements.

I'm proposing requirements elicitation and analysis, project vision/scope statements, use cases where applicable, a change management process by which we do not increase the scope without analyzing the cost and risks, and more. I've been doing a whole lot of reading in a variety of places [Books 24 is a great subscription to have ], getting a broad idea of industry best practices and combining it with what I learned in Software Engineering school and what I've done as a consultant. None of these ideas are new, but for some reason, they had never taken root here.

I'm really happy about the changes we're going to make. Already, use cases have come in handy. When I presented a set of use cases to the stakeholders and SMEs, they immediately understood what I was trying to capture, and I was able to get much better feedback from them. It worked like a dream, just like the books said it would! And the vision document - after reading what they came up with for a vision set into a simple paragraph, they realized that they had left something out of the scope - and we were able to fix that in the early stages. Without the vision document, I'm quite sure we would have proceeded to the end before discovering the missing requirement.

Best of Business Travel & a Note on Nuts

2007-04-11T20:37:00.000-07:00

I don't have many opportunities to do it anymore. But it used to be more of a chore than an opportunity. Perhaps that's why today's flight was one of the best I've had, made sweeter by the fact that I no longer live on the road, but I still remember how to navigate it.

I flew, for the first time, Jet Blue. I fully understand the Jet Blue mania now. They have paired efficiency with customer service. Some airlines removed blankets and pillows, food, and increased seating to save money. Jet Blue uses some novel ways to achieve the same effect, without the customer dissatisfaction. For example, they collect all trash and headphones prior to landing, to save time on plane cleanup. They also deplane from both ends, increasing the speed at which passengers can get on with their lives, as well as saving money (less time on the ground means more $$$). I was impressed with what they did have - two free snacks and plenty of beverages, DirectTV from my seat, and big comfy seats with lots of legroom. It was as nice as being in USAir's first class! Nothing looked broken or overused, always a worrier (what else is broken on the plane?). And the restrooms were impeccably clean! I had one of my best flights ever, including watching the Top Design marathon for the entire six hours of flight-time.

Then I arrived at my Marriott, and got my free Starbucks beverage in exchange for being a valued Marriott Rewards Silver Elite member! Yes, that's what I got out of the long and painful assignment where I lived out of a Residence Inn for four months. I get to be "elite" when I show up at a Marriott. Gotta admit - I do enjoy the way Marriott does their points program. They always make you feel special, and it's really easy to use your rewards. I am using mine this summer at a posh hotel in Miraflores, Peru.

Now I'm all showered and waiting for my caesar salad and glass of pinot grigio to arrive. Ahhh, refreshing! It helps that all I have to do tomorrow is give an hour-long presentation on an application that I am deeply familiar and extremely proud of! This is what Business Travel ought to feel like!

Now a funny little thing that happened on the flight. Assuming that we'd have no snacks, I purchased a bag of cashew nuts to tide me over on this dinner-time flight. With that and a fruit smoothie, I got a receipt for 10$! Shortly before boarding, there is an announcment - a passenger with an extremely sensitive nut allergy will be on the flight, so please do not take any nut-containing products onto the flight! Well, it all seemed a bit unreasonable to me, worrying that my hard-bought nuts will be confiscated. After all, I'm extremely allergic to dogs and yet dogs are often on the same plane as me. Besides, I am wearing a thin layer of Brazil Nut body butter on my skin, as always. I could just rub up against this guy and put him into anaphalactic shock!

I keep the nuts in my bag and just resolve not to open them in-flight. I come to my seat and find myself in a window, next to one of the most oblivious co-passengers I've ever seen. I won't go into the other reasons why, but let's just say - the first thing I see him do as he settles in is put a honkin' sack of nuts in the seatback pocket.

"Excuse me, are those your nuts?", I inquired.

"Yeaaaahh," he drawled back.

I informed him of the announcement and that I was in fact glad to see his nuts because I have a large bag of nuts myself, and was glad I am not seated next to said allergic passenger. The announcement was again repeated over air, several times, reminding us not to eat nuts. Of course, there are nut byproducts in all sorts of things.

I would love to have a nice salty cashew right now, even more so now that they are haram, but I keep thinking if I even go so far as to open my bag, a light will go on over my seat announcing "Emergency! Emergency! Nut-eater in 19F!"

Now, the man next to me actually packed a full-size cobb salad and a pizza, on top of these nuts. He was chowing down, including on his nuts! I surreptitiously reached into my bag and grabbed a single nut from my own bag, clutching it tightly and slipping it into my mouth as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, the smell of peanuts wafts over as my seatmate crunches away. I wondered whether the allergic passenger would go into shock, and wouldn't we feel awful? Of course, I reasoned I could blame it on the guy next to me since I took care to hide mine.

The 2 Priorities

2007-04-04T18:46:00.000-07:00

On a frequent basis, I have these little realizations that I'm not a consultant anymore. Like, as I realize that putting my laptop into my desk drawer is becoming a routine, for example. Or, when I walk to the cafeteria for the first time (outside) as an employee, remembering my first days here as a consultant when I was terribly sad about the uncertainty of my job and wishing I could just stay at this client forever. It's kinda neat - keeps me from taking it for granted.

Last week, I had an inordinate amount of stress. One of the differences between consulting and being an employee is that you don't just have one stressful project, you have many! And you are usually responsible for supporting quite a few finished projects. I ended up going to my manager and asking him to select two priorities for me to focus on. This kept me sane. I'm doing the same thing with my own employee - setting two priorities per week.

This could be my own management innovation - the two priority method. The first priority is what you throw all your energy into. The second priority is what you do when the first priority is on hold, or if you simply need a mental break. When the first priority completes, the second priority becomes the first. Now, add another. Slowly slowly, you make it through your list.

The alternative is staring down your hundred item to-do list, feeling overwhelmed, attacking it all at once, and yet progressing at the same rate or slower than you would have, if you acknowledged that a human being can only do a few tasks at a time. And you're stressed to the nines.

Same work, less stress. The two priority system.

As a sidenote, does anyone actually read this blog? If so, please raise your hand - I'm curious.

Teaching is Leadership

2007-03-27T22:54:00.000-07:00

Lately I have been struck by the synergy between what I am learning as a dancer, as dance is my avocation, and what I am learning as an employee and manager. I have an entire essay about this that I began to write during Management training, when thoughts began to flow fast & furious. Tonight, though I just have one comment.

A manager is really like a teacher. Both roles hold authority of others, but their primary goal is to help the other people grow. In the manager's case, it's a self-serving purpose too - better employees means more efficient management. And both people have to learn to teach to the level of the person.

I saw my dance teacher give a perfect example of Situational Leadership tonight. All of the students were tasked with tagteaming a full routine, meaning each student was assigned to dance solo in front of the rest of the class for a segment of it. With most of her long-term students, she simply watched and clapped along. She was Supporting, or you might even say Delegating. However, her newest student had never done this before. Our teacher saw that this woman was nervous and stood up and danced along for a bit, giving her ideas on what to do - just enough to get the student back on track. She judged that the student had low confidence, but had exhibited high motivation in the past to learn, and that the student had some skill but wasn't sure how to apply it in this new situation. This called for Directing Leadership. And it worked! Now, if she had interrupted me and started telling me what dance moves I should be doing, it would have thrown me off my game and perhaps even upset me. But then I'm pretty comfortable getting up and improvising to music I've never heard before.

I had wondered how a leader/manager could make the decisions to use one leadership style or another on the fly. I suppose it takes a lot of practice. But if that's all it takes, why don't more people adjust their management style to the employee and task at hand? I think it's something you need to keep in your mind, and that's why I'm applying the theory to other parts of my life - to really entrench it there.

The Importance of Customer Service

2007-03-23T09:51:00.000-07:00

I attended training in Management Skills this week, and one of the standout messages was "Know Your Customer". As the class material pointed out, we all have a customer, and most of us forget that when our main customer is other departments within the same company. Managers in particular need to understand their customers' needs so that they can better lead their group, prioritizing the right projects. Sometimes IT people feel as if we are so needed and crucial that we don't need to sell ourselves to our customers, the other people working at the company who use our applications or need our assistance with technology. Sometimes, that's true, but it makes for a better working environment when the IT department is trusted and liked. When servers have to be upgraded, applications deployed, or new policies put into place, the user community adapts much better when they trust the people providing the service.

So, if you are an IT department, you are providing products/services - desktop support, database applications & access, network access, reports production and delivery. If you are following BMC's route-to-value with the CMDB, then you know that you need to start by defining your services. It has no meaning to track something in your CMDB that no one wants or uses.

We also need to provide good customer service. Desktop Support and Help Desk of course are primarily about customer service. However, IT project managers and application developers could use a lesson in customer service as well. I really enjoyed the article I've linked to here - Joel on Software: Seven Steps to Remarkable Customer Service. In particular, I think a lot of us could benefit from "Take the Blame" as a way to defuse arguments. For a Help Desk Manager struggling to retain their smartest employees, I like the bonus step - provide a career path for customer service people.

It's been a whirlwind!

2007-03-14T06:59:00.000-07:00

I've been at my new position for several months and I've been so caught up in learning new things that I haven't had a chance to update. However, many of the things I've encountered are article-worthy.

Some highlights of my last three months:

Learning ASP.NET and SQL Stored Procedures so that I could make enhancements to an application that has been sitting on the shelf ready to go out to users, but had no one to take care of it since the last guy left.
Learning how to write Transact-SQL for a project to customize Infor's Datastream 7i, a product usually used for managing facilities plants.
Project Management - how it works in the real world! I took the classes, but now I'm managing, let's see, 3 projects at once.
Managing! I am the supervisor of one employee, which may not sound like a lot, but I'm glad I'm starting with only one. Being a good manager is like being a psychologist and an educator as well as a "boss".
Upgrading three different servers to ARS 7.0 has been an adventure. I can tell you that I've run that upgrade script no less than 100 times.

To that end, I picked up a few excellent books, and I'll do a little capsule review in the meantime.

The Art of Project Management - Scott Berkun

This is an O'Reilly publication, although it lacks their characteristic animal on the cover. It is a fabulous book. While most Project Management books focus on helping you pass the PMI test, this book is focused on real life and has extensive chapters on dealing with difficult situations and so-called "difficult people".

Getting Past No:Negotiating Your Way from Confrontation to Cooperation - William Ury

As the author points out, most interactions we have in life end up being negotiations. We cannot provide everything for ourselves, so we have to work with others who may not have the same motivations and goals as we do. This book was an excellent resource when I was struggling with a particular person on one of my projects. It helped me understand that this person had his/her own understanding of the situation, different from mine, and wasn't just trying to be difficult. I believe I will return to this book again and again for guidance. I liked the fact that it wasn't about tricking the other person into doing what you want, but rather about finding a mutually beneficial solution.

Just Promoted!: How to Survive and Thrive in Your First 12 Months as a Manager - H. Betof Edward

This book is geared more towards the executive manager, but it has some advice that is useful for any new employee. Some of it talked about the importance of first impressions, and what you need to achieve in order to earn credibility in a new position. It also wrote about the psychological effects of going from an individual contributor position to supervisory/management position. Overall, it hasn't been that helpful to me but I will keep it on my shelf for the future.

Big Changes

2006-12-13T06:17:00.000-08:00

Recently, I was approached by a client where I had worked for a long period of time in 2005 and revisited frequently this year. They had lost one of their people and created a new position to fit exactly me. Essentially, I'll be managing both the Remedy application and all of the ASP.Net applications that currently run on a SQL/IIS platform. They wanted me because they recognized my skill in requirements analysis is something they could really use in someone that will be designing and developing internal business applications. I won't be able to focus much on Remedy though - I'll be managing the Remedy Administrator, but I've already been told I cannot get sucked into Remedy development. My big challenge will be learning the .NET platform and boning up on my web development and SQL skills!

So I'll be getting out of the consulting world for a little bit, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to keep up with the BMC/Remedy product line and posting updates to this blog! But I may need to get some help. So if you think you have something to offer to RemedyBlog, let me know. I can set up additional writers for the blog.

The Email System: My Favorite New ITSM 7 Feature

2006-12-13T06:13:00.000-08:00

Finally, the ITSM product offers a feature that customers have wanted for years. While Remedy has had an Email Engine for a while and you could send out automatic notifications at any point, customers often wanted a way to send out updates at any time, and link that e-mail to the request.

Both Change Management and Service Desk 7.0 include a feature called "Email System" (as well as an equivalent feature called Paging System). Choosing the option from the sidebar opens up an dialog where one can compose an email, selecting a recipient from the people involved in the request (assignee, requester, etc) and inserting values from the request (Summary, Description, Request ID). After sending the e-mail, the contents are tracked in the Work Info tab.

I had actually written a customization for ITSM 6 that did most of these things. What I like best about Remedy's implementation of the requirement is that you can adapt it for use with any app - there are no changes to the Change or Incident forms since it is a separate dialog box, and the fact that they came up with the idea for field-value replacement.

ITSM 7 Highs & Lows

2006-11-14T13:37:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was my first real day implementing an ITSM 7 app (Change Management if you must know). So far I've set up the Foundation Data, Change and Task Templates, Approvals, and even delved into a little customization. Then I ran through the application as a user to see how it worked. Here is a list of my ups & downs.

Thumbs Up!

The Process Accelerator makes it much easier to progress through the much more complex processes of Change Initiation, Approval, Scheduling and Implementation.
The Change Approvals have many more options than they used to. In 6.x and before, you could only set up approvals based on CTI. Now you have many options.
Notifications - you can turn each individual notification type off or on by user, or by application.
The multiple types of categorization (product categorization and service categorization) really opens up a company's options for categorization and allows for many permutations. It's a real improvement though it seems complex at first.
Change Templates are very cool and Task Templates have been beefed up significantly.

Thumbs Down!

No more Asset Tracking. The CMDB is bare-bones with a very user-UNfriendly interface. It's confusing, figuring out how you're supposed to access the CIs, or link them with people.
Configuring users requires a PH.D to figure out the permissions needed.
Every time you add a Change Template, you need to configure every single group that can see it. If you want a change template to be accessible to all groups, this will be very time-consuming.
All the forms have changed their names. Everything has a new naming scheme. If you were an expert in any application, no more. We are all starting from scratch. And Remedy doesn't have any more documentation of their code than they ever did.

Fun with Javascript

2006-11-06T14:02:00.000-08:00

Are your users complaining that they do not see their requests or have the right permissions when they log in with their network username and password to your midtier? Could be that while the username was recognized and authenticated by AREA LDAP, it doesn't match the value on the Submitter field for their requests. Why? Because people often use mixed-case lettering when typing their login names (i.e. "JSmith" vs. "jsmith"), but Remedy only recognizes an exact, case-sensitive, match between the current user and the Submitter field. Even on case-insensitive databases like Microsoft SQL!

You're not likely to convince people to type in all lowercase if they are not accustomed to it, and to make matters worse, AREA LDAP is happy to authenticate them no matter how they log in. If you are using the self-help module of ITSM, you may soon have a single user with Help Desk Cases entered under three different usernames.

The solution is to force an lowercase entry on the login page.

The solution is really very simple - simply add this to HTML code where the text box for the Login is defined. You will want to add this where you see the "input type = text NAME =username" code. For reasons beyond my imagining, the Blogger technology that runs my blog will not allow me to enter HTML code without having it converted.

You are going to add this code to the tag. What it says is - convert anything entered into this field into lowercase.

onChange="javascript:this.value=this.value.toLowerCase();"

Just keep in mind that anytime you change one of the JSP files, like login.jsp, you will have to make those changes again every time you install a patch or upgrade.

A Review of Remedy Knowledge Management 7.0

2006-10-24T08:13:00.000-07:00

I just had the opportunity to learn about BMC Remedy Knowledge Management 7 and meet with the people who created it. Remedy Knowledge Management was formerly known as KMXperts, until the small start-up was purchased by BMC. RKM, as it is known for short, has its own web interface that can be used completely separate from the ITSM suite, or one can integrate it into Incident and Problem Management as well as self-service. It is compatible with every version of ITSM going back to 5.6, and can be made to work with any Remedy product given some customization.

Installation
Installation is fairly complicated. First, you have to install Hummingbird Search Server. Then, you install Remedy Knowledge Management. Finally, depending on your version of ITSM7, you must do a few customizations to integrate it with Remedy. This involves importing forms and workflow, copying fields from a temporary form to your ITSM forms, and importing the workflow. In some cases, an administrator may have to make additional customizations.

Hummingbird Search Server is the same product used for full text search. It searches the XML documents where the Knowledge articles are stored.

The system requirements for Remedy Knowledge Management are key, and may affect some company's decision to use the software. For example, it requires a database and a web server, though not necessarily the same ones that BMC Remedy ARS is using. Keep in mind that if you are using Apache Tomcat as your web server, you will need the appropriate version of the JDK. For Tomcat 5, you will need JDK 1.5, and for Tomcat 4, you need JDK 1.4.

Features

Each knowledge article contains several fields, separating the problem/error description from the solution. There are different types of knowledge articles, including how-tos, problem solutions, and errors. Each has different fields that can be used. Each text field can contain rich-text elements such as colored text and images. In addition, attachments can be added. These editing features represent a huge improvement over the rather simplistic HPD:Solution form.

Another feature allows articles or parts of articles to be limited to internal support staff, or visible to Self-Help. I personally have repeatedly customized a similar feature into the OOTB solutions, so I was glad to see that the rights/permissions are included in the Remedy Knowledge Managemenet package.

In addition, there is a review workflow for each knowledge article, as well as a revision history and a way to request updates. This allows companies to set up a technical reviewer, business reviewer, and a grammatical/spelling review by a technical writer.

The search tool is also excellent. It can search for a single or multiple words in the article, search by Category, and even search by relevance. Included in the ITSM integration are 7 different levels of searching, and of course you can do an advanced search from the web interface.

There is a survey feature included, allowing knowledge consumers to rate the article and submit their comments.

Remedy Integration
The Remedy integration is two-fold. For support staff, a Knowledge Management tab is added to the Incident or Help Desk form. On this tab, they can search for relevant articles. Once a useful article is found, the staff member can use it, which retrieves information from the article and inserts it into the Resolution/Solution pane. However, unlike the OOTB Solutions feature, it does not resolve the case. From the Solution/Resolution pane, support staff can submit knowledge articles, just as they would have submitted solutions.

For self-help, Knowledge Management replaces the Solutions table on the Remedy Requester - New Request form. However, the end-user cannot use the knowledge. By default, the integration does not submit a resolved case when a knowledge article is used. This was a feature of the OOTB Solutions.

Customers may want to change the Remedy ARS side of the integration to suit their needs. However, the lack of the two features listed above can be considered a problem.

In Short

Remedy Knowledge Management 7 improves over the OOTB Solutions feature in a number of ways.
Pros
* Easy rich-text authoring
* Workflow for reviewing and approving knowledge
* Easy searching of knowledge articles
Cons
* Limited Remedy ITSM integration
* Touchy configuration - one mistake in the configuration can make the system inoperable

Ecora's potential for ITSM integration

2006-09-21T07:23:00.000-07:00

Have you heard of Ecora? This New Hampshire based company creates software that's analogous to SMS or some of the BMC products, and their Auditor suite is used by a variety of companies, including my current one. They have two main products, Patch Manager and Auditor, which comes in several varieties.

Ecora Patch Manager can patch any Windows application, from Microsoft to Adobe. It can assess whether a system needs a patch. In these times of constant Windows vulnerabilities and subsequent fixes, system administrators really need this sort of tool. But Patch Manager, as I see it, isn't really ripe for Remedy integration, unless you imagine that perhaps you could integrate it with Change Management and push out patches that way.

Their other product is Auditor, which comes in Lite (free), Basic, and Professional flavors. It is simultaneously a CI (configuration item) discovery tool and a Configuration Management tool. You can direct it to detect changes to your identified CIs. It is all stored in the Auditor CMDB, which they indicate is compatible with the BMC Atrium CMDB. It also has a number of handy reports.

Anyone can give their Auditor software a try. They offer Auditor Lite free on their website. I tried it out, creating a report on my own system, and it was amazing the sort of data it could retrieve, including driver versions, Internet Explorer versions, network connections and more. It formatted it all into a choice of Word or HTML reports. The HTML reports used a Java applet and were a little slow on my system, but the Word document was beautiful.

Soon, the company will offer a Remedy integration, but some people have already created integrations using Remedy's EIE product. Auditor is yet another way to pull useful data into the CMDB, where it can then be used by people through all the strata of the IT organization.

I'm really looking forward to learning more about Ecora and how it can work symbiotically with the Remedy ITSM suite.

ITSM 7.0 Installation

2006-09-21T07:16:00.000-07:00

Well, the saga continues. I've now installed ITSM 7.0 several times, with each time taking several days to complete. By the end, I still don't have a working installation. Learning from my mistakes, here are some tips:

* You need a lot of memory. We're talking 4GB minimum.
* You need a lot of hard drive space. Your database needs to be 2GB minimum, with another 1GB allocated to your transaction log.
* Get the latest version. If you, like me, downloaded a pre-release version, you'll find it sorely lacking and downright confounding when it doesn't match the documentation. While you're at it, get all the patches too. There's already patches for Change Management and the CMDB.
* Installation order of the apps is now unimportant, HOWEVER, you do need to install approval and assignment engine prior to the applications. Both of these come with ARS 7.0, but are installed separately (as is the email engine and flashboards). CMDB is also a prerequisite, as one might expect - being the basis of any ITIL process.
* You need to license before you install the apps.
* If your app installation goes wrong and you want to repeat it, you'll need to remove all evidence of the application from your system, or it will not reinstall.

I've settled for the fact that my two-year-old laptop, used and abused as it has been by years of consulting, is not a welcoming environment to the new applications.

Disconcerting ITSM 7.0 Installation Discoveries

2006-08-02T08:28:00.000-07:00

Heard a nasty rumor that, despite the documentation, you must install in a particular order or risk issues...that order would be ARS 7 -> Approval Engine -> CMDB 2 -> Assignment Engine -> IM -> PM -> CM -> AM. Even having done this and after over 24 hours of installation time (on vmware), I discovered I was missing workflow right away.

The Application Administration Console (RAC:Config:Console) had no attached workflow and I was unable to begin configuring ITSM 7.0, which by the way does not come with sample data. Now, I was able to locate the relevant workflow in the unpacked binaries from my installation...
\servicedesk\im\incident700[1].win\win\incident\cdrom\ar\rac\workflow\en

The question is - what other definitions were not imported...I guess we'll find out.

Oh, also one might think that you could reinstall the product to get the missing workflow. The answer is no - the installation detects that it is already installed and will not re-install. I guess they assumed that it would work right the first time.

Some of my colleagues have run into similar problems with missing workflow and failed installations. I assume that we're all using the same older machines, hence the anomalies. On a real server, up to the latest specs, these issues should not occur.

Service Desk 7.0 - Upgrade Considerations

2006-06-22T10:13:00.000-07:00

I attended one of BMC's webinars yesterday, focusing on the Service Desk product. Service Desk, consisting of Incident Management and Problem Management, is the replacement for Help Desk. I learned quite a bit. The upgrade will be difficult for some people, because in addition to adding many new features, the offering has changed and some of the old features are no longer available. In addition, licensing has changed quite a bit.

Change Request (I.e. Change Tasking) is gone from Service Desk. Customers must purchase Change Management. Their replacement? Tasks in the Incident and Problem forms. For some customers, who have been using Change Tasking, this change will require a lot of reconfiguration.
Asset Tracking has been changed to Asset Inventory. I haven't yet learned the extent of the paring down of the product.
License Management, Incident Management and Problem Management applications must be licensed on the server before the application can be installed. All existing Help Desk customers are eligible to download these.
All customers who own Remedy Help Desk user licenses will be eligible to receive 1 Incident Management license and 1 Problem Management license for each user license.
You must upgrade all the applications at one time. In other words, you cannot install Service Desk 7.0 to work with Change Management 6.0
The upgrade to SLA and SLM (the product is now combined into one) must be discussed with your Account Manager, due to a cost differential in the new product.

In future articles, I look forward to sharing some of the cool, new features rather than harping on the difficulties that some customers will face. As a consultant, I'm in touch with my customers and I know that the news above may upset some of them. It seems as if BMC has decided to change the direction of the product, and to make these radical changes all at once. While previous versions have all strives to be backwards compatible, it seems that BMC has decided to make a clean break. Well, hopefully we'll only have to go through this once.

Issues with changing the requester on an existing Help Desk case.

2006-06-01T11:50:00.000-07:00

This is just too good not to share!

Explanation of Problem:

Submitter Mode Locked permits people with read licenses to modify only their own submitted requests, without requiring a write license. However, to prevent misuse of this, Remedy locks down the Submitter field so that it cannot be changed.

Helpdesk 6.0 - In order to allow requesters to modify their own cases, fill out surveys, etc - you must set your server's Submitter Mode to Locked. Requesters see their own cases in the Requester console and receive notifications on their cases.

But what if the Requester must be changed? In our situation, cases were coming in through e-mail and if the requester could not be found via email address, Remedy set the Requester Login Name to the email address. Once the Help Desk received the case, they updated the Requester based on their knowledge of that person. However, errors fired saying that they could not change the Submitter field.

Solution:
Modify the filter that updates (pushes) the Submitter field on the SHR:ConsolidatedList form.
Instead of pushing Requester Login Name+ into Submitter, use a Direct SQL action. It should look something like this.
UPDATE SHR_ConsolidatedList SET Submitter='$Requester Login Name+$' WHERE Record_Entry_ID='$Case ID+$'

Afterwards, you will need a similar action to set the Submitter field on HPD:Helpdesk.

Alternate Solutions:

Of course, if you only need to do this for a short period time, it's much quicker to run Submitter Mode from Locked to Changeable. Another option is for the product users to use "Copy to New" to create new tickets instead of changing the requester on an existing ticket.

Another way to do this: Make a View form of the Helpdesk table in the database and push the value to the C2. It's the same as the Direct SQL functionally - just another option for getting around the rules.

Disclaimer - this functionality should only be used to support a normal use of the Helpdesk product, not to violate the Remedy license agreement that states that users must have a write license to change data.

I must admit - I didn't come up with this on my own. I had help from a few great fellow consultants. I can't name names - anonymity and all. I will say that I work with some smart and resourceful people.

ITSM 7.0: Early Thoughts

2006-05-23T06:53:00.000-07:00

As I read the pre-release documentation for ITSM 7.0, I've been doing a lot of thinking. Most of my projects have involved an upgrade or an installation of ITSM. Both ITSM 5.6 and 6.0 were ITIL-compatible, but didn't make a huge leap away from the previous versions. ITSM 7.0 is a ocean's voyage in a new direction. In particular, the mostly widely used of the ITSM applications, Helpdesk 6.0, is undergoing a facelift. Actually, it's more face-transplant surgery than facelift.

Helpdesk has been evolved into an all-encompassing Service Management application, ServiceDesk, containing Incident Management, Problem Management, and Knowledge Management. Not only does the form look different - it behaves differently. One can write scripts to prompt a user for successively more specific information, a feature that many clients have customized in the past. The new applications are process-heavy, and this attention to process is highlighted by a process bar across the top of the application. The new version is more ITIL-compatible than ever.

But in their quest for ITIL-compatibility, is BMC/Remedy going to lose some customers? I have been wondering how many clients will choose to stay with safe, familiar ITSM 6.0. BMC/Remedy usually only supports the last two versions, prompting people to upgrade on a regular basis. But now customers are faced with a choice. An upgrade to ITSM 7.0 isn't just a technological change. It's not just a quick upgrade project. It requires a paradigm shift in the organization, a mental switch. In ITSM 7.0, customers will no longer be able to ignore ITIL recommendations. The new version is all about the new way of running your IT department, proactive instead of reactive, focusing on real solutions and improvements vs. fire-fighting. Sounds good in theory, but unfortunately many of my clients have stayed in fire-fighting mode, not having the time or motivation to evolve as an organization. For them, the new version will be a hassle and inconvenience, and they will probably choose to stay with version 6.0.

Another issue will be compatibility. A quick peek at the compatibility matrix shows that the new version of ARS will not be compatible with Windows Server 2000. Some companies are not agile enough to switch operating systems as quickly as Microsoft can release them. Some may choose to hold onto the 6.x versions of BMC/Remedy products because they aren't ready to upgrade their servers to Windows 2003. Of course, that doesn't mean it won't work on Windows 2000, but if Remedy Support won't answer your calls, it doesn't matter.

At the same time, the new version offers many benefits. Quite a few common customizations are now "out of the box". For example, I have added an "Internal/External" feature to Pre-Defined Summaries and Solutions for many clients, allowing them to mark some summaries and solutions to be used only by the Support staff, and others to be available to the public. This feature is now out of the box in the new Knowledge Database, formerly known as Solutions.

Work Log, everyone's favorite field, has undergone a huge transformation. No longer is it a Diary field that, once updated, could never be changed. Now, each work log entry is stored in a separate form. You have the option of editing work log entries, and marking them internal/external. For myself, I've often created a "requester-visible" work log so that clients could keep their internal work log separate from requester updates. So this will be a great addition. Plus, being able to edit work log entries means an end to embarassing eternal spelling mitakes. However, this move from Diary field to a separate form does present a problem for upgrades - how to migrate those Work Log entries? There were similar dilemmas moving from Audit Trail as a diary field to Audit Trail as separate form, when moving from 5.6 to 6.0.

Stayed tuned to this blog for more of my thoughts on the newest version of the product formerly known as HelpDesk!

Removing the BC Checkbox in ARS 6.0 and ARS 6.3

2006-05-22T09:48:00.000-07:00

When you select a date for a "Date" field (not Date/Time), there is a BC checkbox that appears. Some people find the BC checkbox irrelevant and would like to remove it. Here's how to do it so that it no longer appears in the midtier.

ARS 6.0
Locate the JSP file for the Date Popup dialog. It is \apps\shared\ar_date_popup.jsp
It is always a good practice to make a back up copy.

Edit the file and remove these lines. This just removes the appearance of the BC checkbox, not the data itself. If you do this, every date will be in AD because the user will not see the BC checkbox in order to check it. It goes without saying that if you upgrade the midtier, this file will be restored to its original state. Before patching the midtier, make a backup copy of your modified file.


   /****** BC *****/
   document.write(" vinput type="'\" name="'\" era="=">\" ");
            <%             }             %>

   document.write("onClick=\"onEraClick();\"> %<%= bc %> ");

ARS 6.3
In 6.3, BMC changed the midtier code, so there is a different process.
There are references to displaying the BC checkbox in two files. I'm only dealing with IE here so I'm only fixing these two. For Mozilla, you're on your own. I've just done this and tested it and it works. Caution - if you comment out more lines than this, you're going to get errors that may prevent your page from displaying so be careful.

Apologies for the appearance of the code - this blog does not really allow me to paste HTML/JSP code samples properly.

Look for files in \Resources\IE\Javascript
ClientCoreAcc.js
Comment Out (with /* and */) these lines


if (this.mShowBC) {
htmlVal += ""; name="'\" value="'\" type=" htmlVal < artb="">

ClientCore.js
Comment Out (with /* and */ ) these lines



htmlVal += "";

htmlVal +=" " + getLocalizedMessage("BC") + "";



}

Some Tips for Configuring ARDBC LDAP

2006-05-22T09:14:00.000-07:00

Remedy/BMC Action Request System provides a built-in integration to LDAP sources, such as Active Directory. The ARDBC LDAP integration allows Remedy to view data within an LDAP source. This integration is often used to populate People or User forms.

So you probably know that you can use 3rd party software like Softerra's LDAP Browser to view LDAP objects. This is a great way to get that LDAP URL that the integration requires. If not, check out the link above for some great LDAP browsing software. It's also useful for looking at the attributes within LDAP, to determine whether or not you want to use them or not.

In LDAP Browser 2.6, choose the "OU" that contains the data you want. Right-click and get Properties. You'll see a URL on the Entry Properties. Copy that and change the word "base" to "sub". If you don't make this change, you may see any entries at all. "Sub" indicates that you want to search this part of the tree and all branches below it.

So in this example, we have an Active Directory site for the invented site acme.com...see where you see the word "sub"? If I just copied & pasted that out of LDAP Browser, that would say "base".
ldap://acme.com:389/OU=Users,OU=Accounts,DC=acme,DC=com??sub?(objectClass=person)

Next tip...
When you create a Vendor Form in order to access the LDAP source, you'll select "ARSYS.ARDBC.LDAP" under Available Vendor Names and then you'll use the menu to select the appropriate ldap URL under Available Vendor Tables on the right. Right? Wrong. At least half of the time the LDAP URL that you identified above is NOT in the list. Here's your workaround.

Choose the closest possible URL. For example, a URL that appears as if it looks at the same types of objects. I know - it's not the right one - just pick one and save.
Close the form and re-open it. Open Form Properties and go to the Vendor tab. Change the Table Name to the right one - the one you figured out by using LDAP Browser. Save the form and close it.
Re-open the form again. Open the Field Properties for the Request ID field. On the Database tab under Vendor Information, set the Name to be an attribute that you know to be unique and between 5-15 characters long. Any record with a Request ID over 15 characters long will not appear in the Vendor form. If you chose a non-unique field, searches on the Vendor form will not work.
Right-click and start adding fields from the vendor table at your leisure.

Customizing ITSM "Personal Preferences" form for additional user preferences

2006-05-19T08:48:00.000-07:00

In my past two projects, I've had a requirement to add additional user preferences to the Help Desk application. The theory behind this article could apply to a custom application as well as the ITSM suite. You have to put that preference somewhere that users can access and change it.

When you want to add a new setting for Remedy users, consider adding it to SHR:PersonalPreferences rather than User or SHR:People.

Often developers take the approach of adding it to User. After all, most of the time, the entries in the User form represent people who will using the Remedy application.

There is no easy way to access the User form from the Remedy ITSM application. Support users would have to be savvy to know that they would have to open the User form. And then, you may not want to make it easy to open the User form and modify it.

So, some developers turn to the SHR:People form. They reason that people can easily open their profile right from the Help Desk Case. This may be a good approach, but if you have a large number of people in the SHR:People form, it could take a long time to query that preference. Also, most custom fields added to SHR:People lead to lengthy customizations on SHRCFG:ConfigPeople as well as SHR:People, doubling your workload.

However, you have the perfect form sitting in front of you and yet few developers choose to use it. It is easy for support users to access, right on the Support or Management Console. SHR:PersonalPreferences is the form I am speaking of. Support users can set their own preferences, easily, and database performance won’t be affected by such a small query.

To use the workflow, follow Remedy’s lead. When the preference setting is needed, it can be retrieved from the Personal Preferences form and stored in a display-only field. For example, a company may want to have a button to run the SMSadmin.exe (a Remote Control client). Because SMS will install itself in different locations depending on your available hard drive space, each person may have a different path to the application. The system can store each person’s SMS Path in SHR:PersonalPreferences, retrieving it only when the user uses the Remote Control button.

When I added one new field to SHR:PersonalPreferences, I had to modify 2 forms and 6 Active Links. In the technical part of this article, I will go into the workflow that you will change.

Forms:

SHR:PersonalPreferences – Add your new preference setting(s) here. You may also wish to add trim fields to organize the new data.
SHR:PersonalPreferencesDialog – Open the PrefsTableField field, and add your new setting as a column. This display-only form is used when people select a preference to modify.

Active Links

SHR:SHRPRE-AddPref04 – Add your new settings to the list of fields saved (pushed) that the user clicks the Add buton.
SHR:SHRPREF-OnOpenRfshForm – Add your new settings to the fields that are retrieved when a user clicks Personal Preferences on the Support/Management consoles.
SHR:SHRPREF-OnRtnPeople+04 – Add your new settings to the fields that are retrieved when a user enters a login name and presses enter to retrieve the settings.
SHR:SHRPREF-SelectPref1 – Add your new settings to the fields that are retrievevd when the user chooses preferences from the SHR:PersonalPreferencesDialog form.
SHR:SHRPREF-ModPref05 – Add your settings to the Set Fields qualification, so that the system will check for your settings when looking for duplicate preferences.
SHR:SHRPREF-ModPref05 – Add your settings to the fields that are saved when the user clicks the Modify button.

You will also have to add fields and workflow to retrieve, check, and use the settings you’ve added. This workflow will vary based on what your settings are meant to do.