Kramii

Types of Questions

Kramii — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 20:59:05 +0000

Open Questions

Open a subject.

“How do you feel about…?”

Closed Questions

Gather and confirm specific facts.

“Do you want me to…?”

Focusing Questions

Focus on a topic that has been raised.

“You mentioned… earlier. What is the best way to acheieve this?”

Probing Questions

Explore a subject in more depth.

“Can you give me an example of…?”

Reflective Questions

Reflect on what has been said to confirm shared understanding.

“It seems you are suggesting… Is that right?”

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Gogo’s Crazy Bones

Kramii — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:54:41 +0000

My son was crazy about Gogos for a while, so we drew these silhouettes for printing on stickers etc.

You’re free to use these illustrations in any way you wish.

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VBScript to Get Domain Groups for Current User

Kramii — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 09:14:50 +0000

This take me back a bit…

Option Explicit ' Get the current user's domain and username. Dim wsxNetwork Set wsxNetwork = CreateObject("WScript.Network") Dim sDomain, sUser sDomain = wsxNetwork.UserDomain sUser = wsxNetwork.UserName ' Get the user. Dim objUser Set objUser = GetObject("WinNT://" & sDomain & "/" & sUser) ' We'll build a list of group names. Dim sGroupNames ' For each of the groups for the user... Dim objGroup For Each objGroup In objUser.Groups ' Add the group name to the string. sGroupNames = sGroupNames & objGroup.Name & vbCrLf Next ' Show the list of groups. MsgBox sGroupNames

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When Improving Technology Makes Things Worse

Kramii — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 14:08:56 +0000

A Secret

We all know that bad technology is bad for business. By “bad” I mean technology that doesn’t do what it is supposed to do, or which does it wrong, or which costs more to implement than the benefits it brings.

But I’ll let you in to a secret:

Good technology is sometimes bad for business.

Now, I develop software for a living, so I shouldn’t really be telling you that. I should be saying that good technology is a good thing – especially software – and that it will increase your bottom line, make you more productive, make you happier and generally improve your life.

And each of these things is true… but only some of the time.

The Problem

The problem is this:

Good technology makes processes more efficient.

At first sight, this sounds like a good thing. To understand why it often isn’t so good, consider two effects that technology will have on an organisation:

Efficiency and Effectiveness

According to Jim Collins (in Good to Great), “great” organizations all employ technologies that enhance their competitiveness. Collins also confirms the role that technology can play if you don’t keep up. However, he explains that technologies are accelerators that amplify the company’s strengths and weaknesses. This means that a company that aims to improve processes by adding technology will magnify both the good and the bad aspects of those processes. In any business area where practices are less than perfect, the imperfections will be amplified by technology. The problem is that making processes more efficient doesn’t necessarily make them more effective.

Lock-In

The other effect of introducing technology is that it can be a hindrance to change. A new software system, for example, can be a very costly acquisition (especially given that companies often underestimate the cost of software). Once the software is deployed, however, processes become locked-in to the way the software operates. Changes to processes often require changes to the software – which can be prohibitively expensive. The result is that the company looses agility, becoming bound to outdated practices that they know are broken, that they want to change, but which are impossible to shed because of technical constraints.

An example of this is the clocking system that was used at a company where I did some work. It was based on decimal hours rather than hours and minutes, so 7 hours and 30 minutes appeared on screen as 7.5. Everyone knew that this was a bad idea, because the entire staff of the company wasted time every month converting their clockings from hours and minutes into decimal hours. However, this method of working was locked in by the technology. When a companion time-sheet system was introduced, the specification indicated that it should also work in decimal hours so it would be compatible with the first system, further locking-in wasteful behaviour.

Conclusions

So, does all this make all technology a bad thing? Not at all. But it does suggest that we approach technology in a different way:

Great companies value technology.
Technology should not bee seen as a panacea, but a method of amplifying existing practices.
- Business needs should drive technology, not the other way around.
- Business systems should be fixed before introducing technology to make them more efficient.
Technology should be chosen on the basis of how easy it is to change as well as on how well it meets current needs. For example:
- Choose an Agile approach to bespoke software development.
- Reduce dependencies between technologies.

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.Net Implicit Casts

Kramii — Tue, 24 May 2011 12:31:21 +0000

Casts

A cast is a conversion of data from one type to another, for example from an integer to a float.

Implicit Casts

An implicit cast is a conversion from one type to another that is automatically assumed by the compiler. Therefore, an implicit cast does not appear in the program code.

In general, implicit casts can only be made when the conversion does not result in loss of information. This means that an implicit cast cannot be performed where the value being converted must be rounded or truncated.

C# Implicit Casts

		TO²
		sbyte	byte	short	ushort	int	uint	long	ulong	float	double	decimal
FROM	sbyte	-	x	✓	x	✓	x	✓	x	✓	✓	✓
	byte	x	-	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
	char	x	x	x	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
	short	x	x	-	x	✓	x	✓	x	✓	✓	✓
	ushort	x	x	x	-	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
	int	x⁴	x⁴	x⁴	x⁴	-	x⁴	✓	x⁴	✓¹	✓¹	✓
	uint	x	x	x	x	x	-	✓	✓	✓¹	✓¹	✓
	long	x	x	x	x	x	x	-	x	✓¹	✓¹	✓
	ulong	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	-	✓¹	✓¹	✓
	float	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	-	✓	x³
	double	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	-	x³

Notes on the Table

May cause loss of precision but not magnitude.
There are no implicit conversions to char.
There are no implicit conversions from floating-point types to decimal.
Constant expressions can be converted provided the constant expression is in range of the destination type.

VB.Net Widening Casts

		TO
		SByte	Byte	Short	UShort	Integer	UInteger	Long	ULong	Single	Double	Decimal
FROM	SByte	-	x	✓	x	✓	x	✓	x	✓	✓	✓
	Byte	x	-	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
	Short	x	x	-	x	✓	x	✓	x	✓	✓	✓
	UShort	x	x	x	-	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
	Integer	x	x	x	x	-	x	✓	x	✓¹	✓¹	✓
	UInteger	x	x	x	x	x	-	✓	✓	✓¹	✓¹	✓
	Long	x	x	x	x	x	x	-	x	✓¹	✓¹	✓
	ULong	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	-	✓¹	✓¹	✓
	Decimal	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	✓¹	✓¹	x
	Single	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	-	✓	x
	Double	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	-	x

		Char	Char array	String
FROM	Char	-	x	✓
	Char array	x	-	✓
	String	x	x	-

Notes on the Tables

May cause loss of precision but not magnitude.

Explicit Casts

An explicit cast requires special syntax in the source code.

Summary

C#	VB.Net	Data Types	Restrictions	Runtime Failure
-	CType	Value and Reference Types	Widening or narrowing conversion must be defined between the two data types	Throws InvalidCastException
Cast Operator	DirectCast	Value and Reference Types	One type must inherit from or implement the other	Throws InvalidCastException
as	TryCast¹	Reference types only	One type must inherit from or implement the other	Returns null (C#) or Nothing (VB.Net)

Notes on the Table

Later versions of VB.Net only.

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SQL Server: Example Naming Convention

Kramii — Tue, 24 May 2011 10:36:51 +0000

An example of a SQL Server naming convention I have encountered:

Tables

tcTableName (e.g. tcAsset) for core tables, i.e. tables that contain regularly changing data and have insert/update/delete queries run against them.
trTableName (e.g. trAssetType) for reference tables, i.e. tables that contain static/unchanging data, usually used in reference to data in core tables.
tjTableName (e.g. tjUserRole) for join tables, i.e. tables that provide a many-to-many join between two other tables.

Columns

tableNameId (e.g. assetId) for primary keys.
foreignTableNameId (e.g. assetTypeId) for foreign keys.
“name” for text fields in simple ID/Name tables, e.g. in trAssetType (assetTypeID int, name nvrachar(100)).
lowerUpperUpper (e.g. propertyEntranceStorey) for all other columns, with no particular convention on the column names other than the lowerUpperUpper case.

Views

vwTableNameSubset (e.g. vwAsset, vwWindowHistory, vwWindowHistoryLatest)

Other

Stored Procedures: uspTableAction (e.g. uspAssetDelete) (usp = User Stored Procedure – don’t use “sp” as its reserved for system stored procedures and SQL Server always checks the Master database for the SP first before checking the current database, meaning its bad for performance).
Functions: fnXXX
User-defined Data Types: uddtXXX
ID Columns: tableID / foreignTableID (e.g. assetID / assetTypeID)

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What Makes Technology Popular?

Kramii — Wed, 18 May 2011 12:19:43 +0000

It is easy to assume that technology becomes popular simply because it is better than the competition. But as the saying goes, “that ain’t necessarily so”. In fact, the history of innovation is replete with examples of inferior technologies capturing a larger market share than their technically superior rivals.

Some of the best known (and hotly debated) examples of include:

Betamax / VHS
Ethernet / Token Ring
Mac / Windows
Firefox / Internet Explorer

Moreover, there are also plenty of perfectly good technologies that die a death because they lag far behind their rivals in terms of sales, despite their being little difference in their technical merit. Most format wars are a case in point.

So, why does this happen? How does a technology come to dominate the market, often at the expense of other, sometimes superior, alternatives?

Pick Me! Like Donkey, some technology has what it takes to get picked.

The answer lies in the way that individuals make decisions about the technology they use. The technology that gets picked for three reasons:

It meets a need (or at least appears to)
It gets publicity – sometimes through deliberate advocacy, sometimes through word of mouth
There costs of adoption are outweighed by the benefits

To illustrate, we’ll consider a well-known example: the Windows operating system.

Firstly, users who get what they need from Windows are unlikely to go looking for alternatives. They might do so, however, if they start to believe that their are problems with Windows that reduce their productivity. For the majority of Windows users, however, Windows meets their needs. Whether that is because it is a great product or because the users don’t know any different is irrelevant. The point is that for many users, it is simply good enough.

Secondly, even if they go looking, Windows users are unlikely to find out about many of the alternatives. This is because they just don’t receive very much attention from developers, other users nor the press. How many Windows users have heard of the Haiku Operating System, for example? On the other hand, it is more likely that they will have heard of the Mac or Linux.

Finally, even if Windows users find an alternative, they won’t switch unless the benefits of switching outweigh the costs of adopting the new platform. If critical applications are available on the new platform, users might switch. If not, they are unlikely to do so. Similarly, if the learning curve is steep, they may be reluctant, but if the user experience is similar, they may be more willing to do so. Ubuntu is a popular Linux distribution because of the focus on usability, whereas others are less so because they’re difficult to get used to.

So, there you have it: technology is not popular just because it is good (although that helps), but because of market forces – marketing in particular.

Thanks to the jgauffin for the inspiration behind this post.

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C#: How to Clone a Generic List

Kramii — Wed, 18 May 2011 10:29:59 +0000

Found on StackOverflow, this is a tidy example of an generic extension method that uses LINQ:


static class Extensions
{
    public static IList Clone(
        this IList listToClone) where T: ICloneable
    {
        return listToClone.Select(item => (T)item.Clone()).ToList();
    }
}



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How to Improve Service and Lower Costs

Kramii — Mon, 16 May 2011 08:35:54 +0000

Focus on the systems that provide value

How you view a problem is the key to the way you solve it. If our focus is on anything but the systems that provide value we will be driving waste into our business.

Don’t focus on economies of scale

Standardisation isn’t always improvement

Don’t focus on tools, but on principles

Every situation is different.

At a high level, the ways that a service organisation provides value are different from a manufacturing business or an R&D department. This is why lean tools don’t translate to service organisations.

At a low level, each organisation has a different pattern of demand for its services. This leads to different problems which require different types of solutions.

Don’t focus on individual processes

Efficient processes don’t always lead to efficient systems.

Consider the value stream. Costs arise from end-to-end services, not individual transactions. Lowering individual transaction costs can increase overall transaction costs.

However, poor performance in one area has a knock-on effect in other areas.

Focus on providing better end-to-end services

Better service lowers costs
Follow the value flow, eliminate waste
Fragmentation of flow introduces waste (e.g. separating back-end from front-end breaks up flow)
Improve systems – systems control behaviour

Create better measures

High scores don’t add value
Measures should relate to the purpose of the system from a customer POV

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Improving the Information Service

Kramii — Fri, 13 May 2011 15:49:50 +0000

A grab bag of ideas:

Focus on business value

Nothing else matters.

Provide a great interface

At these levels:

Technically
Personally

It should be:

Easy to access
Responsive
Reliable
Make people feel good

Build a solid, agile infrastructure

You’re going to pay interest on technical debt. So keep your implementation clean.

Where appropriate:

Simplify
Consolidate
Standardise

Your:

Hardware
Software
Configuration
Names

And remember:

If you’ve got one, you’ll need two.

Don’t think savings, think investment

Invest in:

Staff
Tools
Infrastructure

Know your assets

For each key asset:

Know its value to the business
- What would you do if it wasn’t there?
Know what it costs
- To buy
- To replace
- To maintain
- To use
- Of alternatives
Know who is responsible for it
- Within IT
- Within the business
- Outside (contracts, supplier)
Know its limitations
- Technical
- Legal (licensing etc.)
What it depends on
- Hardware
- Software
- People

Emphasize quality over quantity

Get it right first time
Do less and do it better
If you can do it once, you can do it twice

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