IT Enterprise Systems and Services
Requirements
are the 'what you want,' like when your kid says, 'I wanna pony.' Analysis
is what you get, as in 'You're getting a tricycle.' –Unknown
Even if you are on the right track,
you'll get run over if you just sit there. –Will Rogers
Good people are good because they've
come to wisdom through failure. –William Saroyan
... it is not enough to show that
a situation is bad; it is also necessary to be reasonably certain that
the problem has been properly described, fairly certain that the proposed
remedy will improve it, and virtually certain that it will not make
it worse. –Robert Conquest
Development projects are fraught with pressures: deadlines, decisions that must be made and more. This article provides some insight into keeping your cool when the heat is on.
An examination of changing priorities and approaches to telecom OSS projects in view of the number of problems due to size and complexity of recent efforts.
Risk management is a key element in any successful software development effort (or really any project of any sort). This site provides a set of high-quality links to resources on the Internet about risk analysis and management.
This paper describes the team roles and responsibilities that Microsoft uses in the own internal development efforts and in their business consulting business. It provides a vision for how individuals work together as a team on IT projects.
While originally written to public testers of free software, this essay offers some good overall concepts for preparing well-written problem reports. And since problems reports tend to be the most visible (to our customers) work product, the importance of good reports cannot be underestimated.
Have you ever thought how many different types of test there are? Well, here is your chance to find out! There are roughly about 32 different types of test listed on alphabetical order. Check out this site to find out what they are.
Patterned after Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, this article explains the best practices of successful testing groups including independence of the testing group and the application of risk-based principles.
This article provides a nice, gentle introduction to the technical aspects of the TCP/IP protocol suite.
Comprehensive and well-organized and categorized web directory. Significantly easier to use than the others which try to be all things to all people.
Want to express your thanks to a co-worker who did a great job? The ePraise site is dedicated to online greetings appropriate for business situations. Categories include Recognitions, Thank Yous, and Holidays, among others.
The author of In Search of Excellence gives a 20th anniversary retrospective on the book and it's profound impact on business management. He also provides some self-effacing comments about book itself.
Command Prompt Bar adds a command line window to the Windows taskbar and/or the toolbar/menubar in Windows Explorer. This allows you run commands without opening the Run dialog or a command prompt. The Command Prompt Bar can be hidden on demand just like hiding other toolbars.
This is a search bar that integrates into the Windows 2000 taskbar. By default, searches are executed on Google, but the toolbar provides an extensive library of keywords that allow searches on Yahoo, FAST, and Altavista, as well as phone number searches on Switchboard, definition lookups on Merriam-Webster, and much more.
Moving
toolbar buttons in MS Office applications by opening the
Customize dialog (Tools | Customize…) is tedious. If
you simply want to move a button (within a toolbar or between
toolbars), simply press and hold the <Alt> key and then click
and drag the button to its new home.
At the Windows NT or 2000 command prompt, you can have the UNC path for mapped drives (e.g., \\wcgoktulf116\tul1wssinteg for the L:\ drive) displayed by modifying the prompt. For example, enter the following command at the command prompt:
PROMPT $m$_$p$g
This will change the prompt to show
the UNC path ($m), a carriage return ($_), and the standard path with a greater than
symbol ($p$g).
To make this change permanent (for all command prompts), open the
System applet from the Control Panel, create a new system environment
variable named PROMPT and assign it the value $m$_$p$g.
In MS
Word, when you execute an action, you can repeat it by clicking the
Repeat toolbar button (if it's on the toolbar), you can choose
Edit | Repeat from the main menu, or you press <Ctrl>+Y.
However, a quicker way to repeat your last action is to simply press
the <F4> function key. For example, suppose you underline some
text and you want to repeat that action on another selection. Select
the next text you want to underline and press <F4>.
Remember the Lite-Brite sets when you were a kid? Remember how you always ended up losing the little pegs in the carpet? Well, now you can play with an online version, so you don't have to worry about stepping on the long lost pieces.