February 1, 2013
Dear Everyone:
Today was my “official” Last Day at Work.
The Software Deployment Project, for which I was dragged back into the
office at the end of last May, is officially completed.
It ended on time, which means management got their bonuses.
They took everyone involved out to lunch last week at a local
winery.
(It’s Northern California.
Of course there’s a “local winery”.)
We started in the “Tasting Room”, where everyone could have some
wine before lunch. There’s
nothing like alcohol on an empty stomach to get things going.
Then they herded us on a short “tour” which culminated in a “cave” where
the wine is stored and, incidentally, there could be more wine tasting
and appetizers. Put another
way, nearly an hour standing around making small talk with people you
don’t know while sipping more wine and eating strange foods in small
portions. Then back to the
“Tasting Room” for more wine and the opportunity to buy bottles, or
cases, of wine at “discount” prices.
Then, finally, back to the dining room where lunch, scheduled to begin
at noon, started promptly around 2:00, which happened to be the time the
“shuttle” was supposed to take people back to the office.
Eventually, various project “leaders” got up and made pretty
speeches. Everyone,
including me, got a Certificate of Appreciation.
Project Completed.
Of course, that doesn’t mean the work is done.
There’s plenty of post-deployment cleanup to be done.
There always is. And
there will be quarterly updates involving all the “enhancements” that
haven’t been worked out yet.
All of which will need testing, of course.
Nevertheless, I had a little “heart-to-heart chat” with “Babette” and
decided that I was ready to go back to being “retired”.
In the meantime, I needed “something to do” until COB (Close of
Business) on Friday.
At first, they came up with some scheme to “fix” the mess that is
“Groups” in the software.
Turns out the software has been in use for about four years now; and in
the course of those four years, the people in charge of security kept
making up security “groups” whenever they needed one.
Here’s the basic idea: You
have a “group” of people who all need the same access.
Facility Managers, for instance.
So you make up a security group for Facility Managers.
Then you add the individuals to the group.
When someone stops being a Facility Manager (promotion, demotion,
moved on, whatever), you simply remove them from the group and they no
longer have that access.
Here’s the basic problem:
Once-Size-Fits-All doesn’t really fit anyone.
So they make up another group and link a couple of Facility
Managers to the new group to give them “specialized” access.
Then those Facility Managers move around.
And more people get added to the group.
And more groups get made up.
And pretty soon, you have a mess.
At last count, there were “25 distinct combinations” (not groups,
combinations of separate groups) that had been identified.
So they decided to sit down and reorganize the whole thing.
First step: Find out who has
access to what (never mind why.)
So “Ludmilla” started making up a “matrix” to identify parts of
the system and what each individual can “see” when they move around.
And, being “Ludmilla”, she took the Once-Size-Fits‑All approach,
trying valiantly to fit every conceivable combination into a single
spreadsheet, because that was easier for her.
Needless to say, it didn’t work.
Back to the drawing board.
In the meantime, there’s the telephones.
When I have “nothing better to do”, I’m still linking tables in a
database to “find” telephones that are assigned to someone, but don’t
appear to have a proper location.
This gives me a list, usually by some location like a building in
“Hobby”, arranged by a unique identifier, typically a person’s HRID
(Human Resources IDentity).
Once I have this basic information, I can export it to a spreadsheet.
Go through the spreadsheet, finding IDs that have the same phone
number in both tables.
That would be “easy” except for one thing.
The “people” table has the country code, followed by the Area
Code, followed by the actual phone number.
The “phone” table has just the seven-digit number.
So they may be the same, but the computer can’t see the
resemblance.
That takes a human to “eyeball” the two numbers and figure out if
they’re the same or not.
And, by the way, take out all the duplicates, and skip over the ones
where the phone already has a room assigned to it; we’re trying to fix
the phones that don’t have rooms.
Once I have that cleared up, I import the spreadsheet back into the
database, this time linking it with another table that includes the
seven-digit phone number and a “Comment” field that was once used to
show what room the phone is actually in.
Or not.
Export again to (yet another) spreadsheet and “eyeball” again.
Take out the duplicates and highlight the ones where the comment
appears to match the actual room number from the original table.
This may seem like a lot of trouble, but it really does pay off down the
road, when a technician is going room to room, looking at phones.
The list will shorten that job significantly.
So I sent as many lists as I have compiled to “Matilda” in
“Hobby” and the ball is now in her court.
May she have fun with it.
Meanwhile, I’m planning on spending my first week “back in unemployment”
relaxing and maybe doing a little (very
little!) (Pre-)Spring Cleaning around the house.
Not that there’s any hurry.
Just taking it easy.
Love, as always,
Pete
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