January 18, 2013
Dear Everyone:
I’ve been “kicking telephones around” pretty much all week.
Last week, when “Babette” finally got out of court for the day (she’s
currently serving on Jury Duty), she saw my email to “Ted” that I would
be taking Friday off, since there wasn’t any work for me to do.
So “Babette” shot an email to “Matilda” in “Hobby” who assured
“Babette” that she had “plenty” of work for me to do, serene in the
knowledge that she had until the following Monday to actually produce
said work.
So I got “together” with “Matilda” on Monday to talk about telephones.
The Company has, literally, thousands of telephones.
Look on any desk.
Chances are, you’ll see a phone.
Even if there’s nothing else, there’s usually a phone.
And somebody has to keep track of all those phones.
Remember the software that I’ve been “testing” with “Ludmilla”?
It’s supposed to track multi-million dollar projects and
facilities around the world.
It’s also supposed to manage all those lowly, little telephones.
And where did the information about all those phones come from?
From an earlier system that was replaced by this new one.
Did anybody check the information before it was “uploaded” into
the new system?
What are you, nuts? Nobody
has time for that. This is
known as the “quick-and-dirty” (QAD) technique.
Also known as “Do-It-Now-Fix-It-Later” (DINFIL).
Here’s a Practical Example:
When the Records Centers first started using barcode labels to manage
boxes, they didn’t go around gluing thousands of labels to boxes.
Instead, they waited until they had a reason to pull a box,
usually because someone, somewhere, had requested said box.
Once the box was found and pulled, they would print the
appropriate label and glue it to the box.
It’s based on the old “80/20 Rule” (also known as the
Pareto principle):
80% of the boxes get pulled 20% of the time.
Conversely, 20% of the boxes get pulled 80% of the time.
So you focus your efforts on the 20% that get the most “traffic”.
If a box gets pulled once, there’s a good chance it will get
pulled again. If not, let it
sit on the shelf and don’t waste time and effort putting labels on boxes
that will never move, until it’s time for them to be destroyed.
The same principle applies to data uploads:
You know that some of the information is “wrong”, but don’t take
the time to “fix” it, or you’ll never get your data migrated.
(The “perfect time” for data migration is never.)
Instead, you upload the data “now” and “fix it” later.
And that’s where I come in.
Thousands of telephones, all over the world, and I’m attempting to
identify and “fix” some of them.
Specifically, trying to “locate” phones that have “incorrect”
locations. Unfortunately,
it’s not like I can tiptoe into an office in, say, “Hobby” and just look
at the phone there.
So I’ve been going through a (really
long) list of telephones to
see if I can make a “connection” with a person who may, or may not,
still be in the same place as the phone.
Again, 80% of the phones are just fine.
It’s that pesky 20% that we’re trying to correct.
Another example: As I was
looking through a list of phone numbers, I recognized the “CAI” assigned
to one. (CAI, among other
things, stands for Company Access Identifier.
Each person working for the Company has a unique identifier and
this is it.) It was my
former manager, “Larry”.
This particular phone is in “Martinez”.
But I know for an absolute fact that “Larry” left “Martinez”,
literally, years ago. He’s
not at that number any more.
And the “clue” that something is wrong is that the “Martinez” phone
shows a “Pleasant Hill” location.
Because “Larry” is now in “Pleasant Hill”.
So what happened? The
“phone” in question is a “CARD” phone instead of a “DID” phone.
(DID may, or may not, mean “Direct Internal Dial”.)
As to whether or not “Larry” still has that “phone card”…
In the meantime, all the data was moved from one system to another and
the new system is trying to “locate” the phones by “borrowing” the
location from the person to which the phone is “assigned”.
Except when Tuesday falls on Thursday, of course.
I know what you’re thinking:
It’s only 20%. How bad can
that be?
If you have upwards of 100,000 phones, not to mention thousands of
workers, that’s over 20,000 that are “wrong”.
And that can add up.
You might also be thinking:
With that many telephones “floating” around, aren’t you concerned that
someone might steal one? Or
a thousand?
Not really. You see, for
many generations now, business phones have had a little feature built
into them: If you unplug the
phone, it stops working.
Even if you plug it back in again.
Sort of like the radios in newer automobiles.
If the radio is disconnected from the battery, for whatever
reason, the radio won’t work until you enter the appropriate code.
So keep that code in a safe place.
Also, “DID” means it only works for calling “internal” numbers.
You have to have “special” authority to call outside the Company
Telephone Network (CTN).
Love, as always,
Pete
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