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IT Project Management in the Real World

// March 9th, 2010 // No Comments » // Blogroll, Technical Know-It-All

It is just one of those things in the IT world that is “ultra subjective”. The debate here is simply whether a PM managing an IT project be technically sound (with a technical background) or should the PM be a true blue (by the book) type PM.

I have worked with many Project Managers in my time, and I must say it is probably not one of those jobs that I envy too much. To give credit to the PM’s out there, it is one helluva difficult job. Having said that, difficult doesn’t mean that PM’s have the excuse to slack off. To be honest, being a technical consultant is not easy too and it also doesn’t mean we can just simply rock up on site and start configuring stuff and just walk away saying, “sorry I just broke your system” right.

Here are 3 little tips to what a perfect IT Project Manager should have (or at least according to my definition).

1. I personally feel while there are good PM’s out there that doesn’t have the most in-depth technical knowledge, it should be a pre-requisite that IT Project Managers have had experience in the technical side of things before. Technical PM’s will have a better understanding of the challenges the technical folks face. As much as the PM needs to know the business objectives of the project, what many PM’s fail to understand is that technical staff have technical objectives as well. The requirement will come as such, “we need to get this done in 2 weeks time. period!”. It sounds like a lot of time 14 days, but non-technical PM’s don’t know is that sometimes problems crop up, and resolution time may or may not be as planned. For example, if you come upon an unknown bug that you have never seen before, its really a trial and error attempt until you fix it. So it could be 1 hour, 2 hours or maybe even 48 hours. Who knows! So, always always check with the technical folks the exact amount of effort needed to complete a job plus 10-15% of risk time.

2. Technical staff do not want to be caught in the politics. “we need to work on this because we need to protect this account and etc”, “we need to not say ‘this’ because it will cause ‘this’”. I can’t remember the amount of times I have had gone through this. As much as this is unavoidable, if possible, try to leave your technical folks out of the whole political landscape. Manage it from the project management side and have yourself as the single point of contact. This ties back to Point 1, because in order to be the single point of contact, the PM will be somewhat tech savvy. Technical folks are good at handling the 1’s and 0’s but may not always have the bandwidth/ability to juggle politics. For us, the machine will either work or don’t work. It will never have a hidden agenda.

3. Technical staff do not like to lie (not technically at least). Many a time, I have seen PM’s make technical consultants commit to timelines and objectives for their own personal agenda, or even worst commit it on their behalf. There is a fine line between optimism and lying. Technical folks generally don’t like lying because their reputation relies on their ability to call it as it is. This is somewhat different from traditional sales folks, where customers know you are there to make a sale. So as a PM, if it is bad news, work your magic and convey the message gracefully, do not butter and sugar coat it and get the techies in trouble.

I am probably underestimating the role and difficulties of a PM and might not completely know what it takes to be the best PM, but one thing I know for sure are traits that will make a bad PM. So hopefully, those aspiring to a PM can take some notes from this.

Free Professional Services in the IT Industry

// March 5th, 2010 // No Comments » // Blogroll, Technical Know-It-All

For those who are unfamiliar with the term professional services in IT, in layman terms, it is services that vendors provide to help you install or implement upon product purchase. It could also be services that you pay to get a systems integrator or OEM vendor to come fix or perform. (Eg; performance tuning, data migration and etc.)

I have had the privilege to work in various countries in the APAC region and it is very interesting to experience how Professional Services or PS is perceived in different countries.

Let start with a little background. In order for a consultant / engineer to be truly skilled to perform an implementation or consultation, he or she needs to be trained and have achieved a certain level of experience. So how does he/she get there? They get sent to courses, thrown in the field with more experienced colleagues and learn. After which, it doesn’t end there. They will then keep refreshing themselves with new updates, which simply means on-going net new trainings. So what I am really trying to get at is this, PS consultants are highly trained technical staff and it “COSTS” a lot to get them to where they are.

So, on to my next point. It is interesting that some countries in Asia never appreciates this and almost always take PS as a given right to them. Some of the more frequent comments are …

I bought a TV that costs $2000 and I got free installation service from the vendor. Why can’t I get some free service when I buy $200,000 worth of enterprise equipment from you?

I am a big customer, if you don’t provide me free service, I can always take my business to another vendor.

In my honest opinion, it is unfair to compare a guy who installs your TV to a consultant that deals with your Enterprise IT Systems. Agreed? What is interesting though is that countries like Australia and Japan are usually more open to the discussion of Paid Professional Services. I have had the opportunity to work in Australia for a few years, so I can rightfully say this. The customers that usually pay for services in Australia are usually not those that do not have highly skilled staff at their disposal (infact, most of them have more skilled staff than most customers in Asia that requests services for free).

Some customers feel that the vendors should perform free service because of the high margins that have slapped onto the products that they sell. I am not going to deny it, but it is the same everywhere else. Take for example, when you buy a car. The cost you paid for the car is highly inflated anyway and when you try to get it fixed (aside from cases where it breaks during the warranty period), you still pay the mechanics to get it fixed right?

Some may complain that the cost of PS is not justifiable, which I sometimes do agree. So let me give you a hint. The prices are always set high because it is always a given that the customer will come back to negotiate this. “Yes, this is a given right as the customer”. So please negotiate. You can squeeze in a couple of freebies here and there, but remember, nothing is free.

Graphical Network Simulator 3, GNS3 Review

// January 8th, 2010 // No Comments » // Technical Know-It-All

A few weeks back, I was tasked to skill up on IP at work. It seems like ages since I completed my Cisco Training Academy, so I decided the easiest way to get back into it is through Cisco simulators out there. In all honesty, I would much prefer having the physical boxes to play with but I have sold them all when I moved to Singapore 2 years back.

The popular simulators out there would be Boson and RouterSim, which (I honestly think) is fairly buggy at best. The problem with simulators like Boson & RS are manly due to the fact that it is usually re-engineered code made to look and feel like Cisco’s IOS. Not all commands are available (though visible on the “?”, doesn’t mean it’s usable), abbreviated commands (sh run, cop run st, etc.) doesn’t always work, output might or might not be what is expected and the list goes on. It’s not as bad as it sounds, because people do get away passing CCNA’s and CCNP’s from it. (Maybe it’s just me).

Anyway, I came across GNS3 as an open source alternative to the other “paid” sims out there. From experience, open source goodies are generally difficult to setup at best. But I was truly surprised with the setup for GNS on Windows. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for the Mac OSX though. Still struggling to get it to work on my Mac.

GNS is basically a GUI version of Dynamips if you are truly interested in what’s happening in the backend. (I’m not, so no elaborating here )

Like all things FREE, there is always a catch! The catch with GNS is that it requires a Cisco IOS binary file in order to work and it only supports router codes (no switches). If you really really need a switch, you can potentially configure a 36xx and put in an Ethernet card slot to make it into a switch. I remember seeing a tutorial on this on the GNS Documentation site. Officially, you have to be a Cisco Partner or Customer to be able to download these images, but surely I’m sure you can find some floating around on the web.

So how does it work?

What it actually does is emulate a Cisco Router with the original IOS on your workstation. It’s pretty much VmWare for Cisco Routers if you like. Once you sort out the IOS installation and tell it where Dynamips (which is installed as part of the GNS3 package) is located, you are ready to go. Building the virtual network if as simple as drawing a Visio diagram. You can also add in additional WIC’s or line cards, and RAM (just like VmWare can for Servers). And the best part… no limitation on CLI and output. What you see if what you get on the real thing! Same IOS code like the real deal, only difference its that you don’t have the equipment physically. If y0u can get hold of Cisco 36xx series router binaries, you can potentially setup a virtual lab to do your CCIE (a little far fetch, but not totally impossible). Based on the options available, the latest version is capable of taking Cisco PIX & ASA binaries, and JunOS. I have yet to try it because I do not have access to any of those code. Maybe you guys can let me know when you try it out.

So if you are an aspiring CCNA or CCNP or even CCIE on a budget, give this a go.

www.gns3.net

Ethernet world is a jungle to a SAN guy…

// December 10th, 2009 // No Comments » // Technical Know-It-All

The last couple of days, I spent many long hours sitting in a tiny room with extremely loud carrier grade switches, blowing hot air in my face, learning to configure and set up MPLS, VPLS, VLL, PB, PBB, MRP and the list goes on.

It’s been many years since, that I have turned up onsite only to have technical jargon’s thrown at me that I have no clue (at all) what its all about. Having said that, I must say it has been quite an experience to finally have a feel what goes on behind your home internet connection.

Still getting to grips with how all these technologies fit in to the whole picture though. I managed to find a good whitepaper by Nortel that explains the evolution of Provider Bridges (PB) and Provider Backbone Bridges (PBB) which really helped cleared up some questions I had.

It will be great if anyone reading can share with me some whitepapers on VPLS and VLL.

Synology DS210J NAS Review

// December 4th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Technical Know-It-All

Recently, my trusty TVIX 6500 pulled a stunt and overheated my movie and media collection (and fried my 1TB HDD with it). Should have seen it coming (and to think of it, I work in the Enterprise Storage industry). Everytime I saw a RAID 1/0 NAS unit at Harvey Norman, Sim Lim or Funan, I kept telling myself to not spend the money, “I can live without it”.

Finally I bit the bullet and went shopping for NAS unit that did RAID 1/0. As you might have already known, there are like heaps and heaps and heaps of NAS units out there. I was pretty set on getting the Vantec external USB drive which did RAID 1/0 (but without the NAS feature), until I came about a store that sold the Synology DS210J. I have read about it, and I knew it was pricey, but like any techie, I was curious. So no surprise, I bought it and fitted 2 x 1.5TB drives in it.

I’m always a firm believer that “price do not lie” and while it was slightly pricier that the others, I wanted to give it a go anyhow.

I wasn’t too impressed at first because I had some issues setting it up using my Mac, then I dug out my rusty Windows box and finally got it initialised. I felt it was kinda silly given that it required me to go to the Synology website to download the latest OS for the NAS given it wasn’t preinstalled.

Got that done, and wall-lah… I’m moving whats left of my music and media collection on to it. Didn’t have too much time fidgeting around with it for over a month but slowly I learnt more and more about it, and I must say, it is a very very good buy! I don’t say that too often but I’m truly impressed and happy with it. I am now running all the features on it, that I initially thought was a “good to have”.

If you are contemplating on getting it, trust me its well worth it!

Login Screen from the GUI

List of options

An alternative to FTP. Almost sharepoint-ish

Bittorrent downloader