itpov.com

Workaround for the Vista Explorer View Bug

Several of my friends are driven crazy by Vista resetting and overriding their Vista Explorer view settings. I looked all over to find a solution, and so I give proper credit, I found a solution in a forum post. The good news is, the solution worked. The bad news is, I had troubles finding it, and following it. And so, I present to you a bit of a cleaner rewrite of the steps to setting up the Vista view to be the same across all folders, and stay that way.

1) Browse to a folder to work with, and click Organize > Properties > Customize (tab).

2) In the top section for Use this folder type as a template select All Items. Click Ok to close the Properties Window.

3) If the folder is not setup the way you want it, set it up properly.

4) Open the Registry Editor (Start > Run > regedit).

5) Browse to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell.

6) (Backup this key before continuing… File > Export).

7) In the Shell key, there is a subkey called Bags. Bags holds the current settings for your folders as keys with numbers. You need to delete these keys. The easiest way is to delete Bags and then recreate it (Select Shell > Edit > New > Key and name it Bags).

8 ) Select Bags.  Edit > New > Key. Name it AllFolders

9) Select AllFolders.  Edit > New > Key. Name it Shell

10) Select Shell.  Edit > New > String Value. Name it FolderType

11) Double-Click FolderType. In Value Data, type NotSpecified 

12) Close Registry Editor.

13) Now, to apply the current folder settings to the other folders. Organize > Folder and Search Options > View (tab).

14) In the Folder View section select Apply to Folders. Click Yes to the confirmation message, and Ok to close the dialog.

15) (optional). At this point, you’re basically done. However, a folder still could have a different view stored in it’s desktop.ini file. I took one final step of browsing to the C: drive and doing a search for desktop.ini and deleting them all. Of course, you can just delete them as you go, but I find it worth mentioning if you’re looking for a truly clean start.

Password Security

This past week I met with a colleague and one subject that came up was secure password. He had recently changed administrator passwords and ran a password crack tool on it which took 4 days, and told me “that’s [darn] secure!”

If you’re feeling secure in a similar situation think about something. How often do you change your passwords? Every 45 days like most tools default? Every 30 days because you’re paranoid? Once a year because you don’t have time? Or maybe even, “I keep meaning to get around to it” but never do.

Even if you are paranoid and change your password every 30 days, with a 4 day crack time, the intruder on your network has 26 days to install on your system a back door that will allow them in forever (or until you find it, which probably won’t be easy).

On the other end of the spectrum, your password has to stay memorable. What is the purpose of having a password that you can’t remember? There are ways to do it. I’m not going to profess myself an expert with “the perfect password” though (although I did stay in a holiday inn express last night). Instead, I’d suggest a google search for “strong but memorable passwords”. Read multiple strategies and pick the one that fits you best.

Best Practices - What’s the point?

Lately the topic of Best Practices has come up for me quite often. I don’t know why, but that’s not important. I just figured it’s about time I weigh in on the subject.

People have a lot of feelings about what Best Practices mean and how to implement them. Some tell me they’re not important because “we’re unique, and that practice is not how we do it”. Others grab a strict best practices document and think they need to follow it to the point of dotting the I and crossing the T. Wow. I don’t think I’ve seen a topic with people so stubborn since I last turned on CSPAN!

Ok, here it is, from my point of view:

• Best Practices are your business rules.
• Best Practices are a substitute for experience.

That’s it.

Oh, you want me to explain my view? Ok, I guess that’s only fair.

Your business rules are the way you do things. It’s not the way Microsoft does it, or the way Enron does it, but the way you do it. Your best practices should resemble those business rules that experience shows work. By following the best practice you gain the security that what you do will get the job done, and it is the best way you know to do it.

Sharing these best practices is important. If you hire someone new, or have a partner in your business, you need a best practices collection (a wiki works nicely).  If you have a specific method you use to read/write from the database, why would you hire someone else and make them figure it out on their own? What if you have a partner that is using a completely different method? Maybe the best practice is simply where you can read/write from. Maybe it defines a method that you know works.

Advantages

I’m going to group the advantages based on the project management triangle. This is because the project triangle is about trade-offs in order to retain quality, and I’d like to show how best practices can actually help save in all three areas without sacrificing quality.

Time

• Design time is saved as common functionality is reused.
• Partners and employees share functionality best practices ensuring other members of the team do not recreate known good functionality.
• Many best practices allow for the automation of common tasks.
• Testing time is saved because the best practice is known to work.
• Utilizing a 3rd party best practice in an area you lack experience can save time in research and development.
• A small amount of extra time is needed to make sure the best practice is in writing, but it is far outweighed by the benefits of having the best practices.

Cost

• Saves money on training new employees.
• Significant time savings from reuse results in significance payroll savings.
• Best practices pertaining to the toolset avoids excess expenditures on repetitive or unnecessary tools.

Scope

• By reusing similar functionality in similar objects, the scope of the project can be met or increased at less cost and time.
• Resources can be applied directly to building the scope of the project, and not spent on support functionality.
• Starting with a 3rd party best practice in an area you do not have experience allows you to meet the scope where your experience is lacking.

A Final Word

Stop thinking that best practices are bad. Stop thinking that what other people do is what you have to do. Understand that your best practices are about making your company better. Don’t depend on the 3rd party best practices. They provide a starting point for you. They do not provide your best practice. Finally, if you are a part of a team and don’t have best practices and a way to share them amongst the team, don’t try to tell me you are a team. I know better.

The Big Picture - Part 5 - Conclusion

The big picture is something that needs to be considered when dealing with most anything requiring a solution. Too often the big picture is overlooked as people dive right in trying to create a quick fix. The bigger the picture you look at the more you will find the fundamentals of whatever it is you are doing. As you break down into smaller pictures you can isolate out the specifics of what you are trying to do. Just remember that each smaller picture also has a starting point, ending point, and path, and all 3 need to be defined.

While this might sound like a long and tedious process, that has not been my experience. As I apply this to my business planning, I find it amazing just how much I learn about my own process, and how fast I can pull things together by zeroing in on the areas of need.

The Big Picture - Part 4 - The Path

In the first section of this article I gave an overview of the big picture and some tips on how to get started. On this page, I will discuss one of the three core components of the big picture: the path.

The Path

The path is the meat of the big picture. This is how you’re going to do it, what you’re going to do, all the details. There are generally two schools of thought in dealing with the path: big design and rapid development. I am here though to present a third.

In big design the idea is to develop the whole path up front outlining the entire process in detail, and then get started working toward it. The positive side of this is you get a good feel for the big picture and don’t stray far from the path during development. The negative side is it lacks flexibility when you find during the process that not everything was quite as it appeared. Planning a large project is tough. It’s not understood even by the most educated individuals. It’s hard to understand the big picture all up front, and in the real world you need the flexibility to make changes to the path as new information emerges.

In rapid development prototypes are generally used in an iterative process to get to the goal. The idea is to get feedback at each iteration of the prototype and build on it. This creates a lot of flexibility by having a constantly review and being able to adjust to needs and wants as they come up. On the downside, the constant review encourages attention to detail and can distract the decision makers from meeting their primary goals. This can lead to a beautiful solution that doesn’t meet the goals.

Before you go there, I’m not here to argue the pros and cons of big design vs rapid development. Instead I’m here to present a third solution.

I mentioned on a previous page that there are always bigger pictures and smaller pictures to deal with. The way to deal with the path is to divide it up into smaller pictures. Each of these pictures is a self contained big picture (we’ll call them small pictures because they are a self contained picture inside our big picture). They all have a starting point and an ending point that leads to the next small picture. 

When breaking down the big picture, first break it down into 3-5 small pictures. This should be fairly easy to do. In a standard business process, I could start by saying I have a marketing process to bring customers in the door, I have an order process to take an order, I have a warehouse process to pack and ship the product, I have an accounting process to collect the money. For each of these I could define the starting point and ending point.

When defining the starting and end points I like to start with the last of my small pictures. The reason I do this is I know what my goals are, they are the goals of the big picture. Therefore, all I need to do is look at the beginning of the process and ask myself “what do I need in order to complete this process?”. In my example the accounting was the last step, and my goal is to bring in the money. In order to start my accounting process there had to already be an order and the customer’s need, the order being fulfilled, was already completed. As I go I find that I don’t miss items in my previous process because one process feeds off itself.

After I define my starting and ending points, I know the major goals of each small picture. Now I can deal just with one of these small pictures and break it down further. No matter how far you break it down, I recommend only breaking it into 3-5 smaller pictures at a time. If you get to more they get a little too difficult to ensure you are meeting all the goals.

The advantage to this approach to the path is that you create reachable goals in all your compartmentalized small pictures. This allows you to concentrate your efforts in one area.

If you apply this to big design, you can do your design in one small picture, get your approval, and start developing it even without building out the other small pictures. This will help create flexibility in that if you do make a change, you can look to the small pictures and only change the appropriate areas. It does not require analysis of the entire process.

Applying this to rapid development provides goals of the prototypes, and by reviewing the prototypes with these smaller goals in mind helps to keep the focus on meeting the goals of the big picture.

The Big Picture - Part 3 - The End Point

In the first section of this article I gave an overview of the big picture and some tips on how to get started. On this page, I will discuss one of the three core components of the big picture: the end point.

The End Point

You might be asking why I went to the End Point and not the Path. It has to do with how the big picture works. You first need to know where you are coming from and where you are going before you decide how to get there. This is a big problem with many people who believe that they just need to start down the path right away.

The end point is the sum of the goals you are trying to reach. I like to classify goals as either primary or secondary goals.

Primary Goals are the major goals of your process. These will guide everything you do. If you are not meeting your primary goals, then there is no reason for you to be performing the task you are trying to perform. Almost any business’s main process has the primary goals of making money and fulfilling the customer’s need. If the business loses focus on these two pieces, the process will not be a success. What are we trying to accomplish? That is the key question to defining your primary goals

Secondary Goals are goals that support the primary goals. These goals might not be seen when first identifying the big picture, but will more often appear as you work through the path or identify the threats and weaknesses during the SWOT Analysis. In the example of the business’s main process, some secondary goals might be to always have inventory to fulfill orders, or to meet some government regulations.

Understanding the Primary Goals needs to be done early when defining the big picture. If you don’t understand what you are trying to do, you can’t define how big or small the big picture is. One thing to keep in mind when dealing with the big picture is there is always a bigger picture and there is always a smaller picture. The Primary Goals will help you define what the big picture you are dealing with truly is.

Once you know your goals, you need to identify the Keys to Success to meet each goal.  The keys to success can also be called objectives. These are detailed items that will ensure your big picture is successful in meeting the goals you set out. While the goals might be general terms, the keys to success must be specific. As you develop the path you will use these keys to success to ensure you are staying on the right path.

A final note on the end point: I have discussed goals here, but early said the big picture can be applied to almost all situations requiring a solution. This is still true. In the marketing example I used previously, the customer was the end point. You can deal with defining a Primary Customer and Secondary Customers in the same way you deal with primary and secondary goals.

The Big Picture - Part 2 - The Starting Point

In the first section of this article I gave an overview of the big picture and some tips on how to get started. On this page, I will discuss one of the three core components of the big picture: the starting point.

The Starting Point

When a business is going to make a change or attempt to improve a process a common mistake is to not look at the starting point. Where are we today? How do we currently perform the process we are trying to improve? Who are we? Many people assume they already know these answers. This past week I have been working on business planning and came across a great tool called a SWOT Analysis. The SWOT analysis consists of evaluating two internal conditions, Strengths and Weaknesses, and two external conditions, Opportunities and Threats.

Strengths are internal factors that help you meet your objectives. These attributes you have some control over. When looking at the current process, what are the things that work well in it? What are the strengths of the team I am working with? Do they have previous knowledge of similar situations?

Weaknesses are internal factors that interfere with meeting the objective. Hey, if it works well now you aren’t fixing it, right? It’s important to understand where your weaknesses are so that later you can address those weaknesses. Another of my core principles is to look at my weaknesses and find the weakest link and make it the strongest, but that’s a post for a different day. What do we not do well? Where are things we can improve? Where do we need more experience/knowledge?

Opportunities are external factors that you can take advantage of to meet your objectives. You do not have control over opportunities, they are just out there. Maybe you’re looking to grow your business, and you see a competitor has just went under. The opportunity is a whole lot of customer base that is now looking for a new supplier. At this point you are identifying opportunities like this, so don’t jump into trying to take advantage of it. Who knows, there might be an even better opportunity out there.

Threats are external factors you cannot control but threatens what you are trying to do. Maybe the economy falling is a threat, or a change in technology is a threat. Like Weaknesses, it is easy to gloss over the threats. Many times they are scary. Your best plans can be undermined by a factor you have no control over. However, it is important to understand what these threats are. If you do, then when creating your plan you can plan around them.

SWOT Analysis is meant to be done by an open group. Talk about things. Have a brainstorm session. Maybe your partners feel that something you see as a weakness is a strength. The goal is to learn more about yourself or where you are at now.  There is a lot more you can do, but the SWOT Analysis in itself will tell you a lot about the starting point.

The Big Picture - Part 1 - Introduction

One of the core principles I work by is to understand the underlying situation, or the big picture, when developing my solutions to problems. If I can understand the big picture, I can zero in on the area I’m dealing with and develop a solution that solves the problem and fits into that big picture.

Almost all situations where a solution is being provided, there are three major parts: a starting point, an ending point, and a path to get from the starting point to the ending point.

Applying this to a process you can ask these questions to get an overview:

• Starting point - Where are we at today?
• Ending point - What is our goal?
• Path - How do we get there?

Applying this to a marketing plan you might ask these questions:

• Starting point - Who are we?
• Ending point - Who is our customer?
• Path - What benefits are we providing for our customer? How do we get it to them?

I could go into multiple variations of this for other situations, but that should be enough to get the point across.

If you can fill in those three pieces, then you have the big picture. It’s probably useless, but you do have the big picture.

It might be useless, but it’s also important. When an artist creates a painting they first put some base colors in key areas using a broad brush. This is done well before they add their happy little trees. Now that you have a broad perspective of the three, you can start pulling together some more detail.

It is also important to realize that when you look at the big picture there is always a bigger picture to look at. If you are writing software to automate a business process, the big picture you are dealing with is the business process. However, it is important to look one step bigger into how that business process interacts with other processes. In other words, what are the starting and ending points of the business process, not just the one area you are working on.

Business Value

Every company has at least one in a high level position. It’s that guy who knows that the cheapest price is the best for the company. It’s a concept easily shared with others and like a virus, it grows to consume the organization. It’s a part of today’s culture. The “quick payoff” culture. Some companies take this to every corner of the business. You can drive the price down from your suppliers, search out the newest employee that will work for the lowest pay or purchase technology based on the price alone.

Other organizations go the opposite route. They buy the highest priced technology assuming it is the best. Their purchasing department looks for the top quality product for every part within the company (even office supplies… yeah, some do!) And when it comes to employees…. well, usually they’re still underpaid.

These organizations lack an understanding of value.

Value is getting the “biggest bang for your buck”. The best value is generally not the cheapest or most expensive solution, but rather lies somewhere in between. It’s that point where you spend a reasonable cost for a high quality result.

Purchasing Agent Lost Value

Nancy is the purchasing agent for ACME Company, who sells ProductX. ProductX is a the flagship product for ACME Company. In order to manufacture ProductX, Nancy needs to order widgets. WidgetA has been the product of choice for the past 5 years. Nancy decides to shop around because she wants to buy a year’s supply of widgetA. Nancy really pushes the haggling on these as she knows this purchase will be a big score for her sales rep. Nancy’s primary vender offers an outstanding price because ACME is a good customer. However, other venders want to steal her business and offer slightly better prices. Vile Company comes in though and offers Nancy widgetB at 20% less than the best price on widgetA. Nancy sees an opportunity to impress management, and orders widgetB from Vile Company. Nancy is thanked and treated like a hero for the next week. After seeing the response, Nancy continues to apply this method to other purchases, and Vile Company quickly takes over as the main vender with the cost savings on generic projects.

6 months later customer satisfaction has decreased 30% in new customers this year, return rate is up 100%, and the service calls are also up 200%. At this point, the warehouse is full of substandard parts that have been purchased from Vile Company. At this point the company culture on pricing has been changed. In order to go back to widgetA and all other original products the company view is that it will require an increase in cost of raw materials. By this time the damage is already done though. The save in cost without consideration of value has cost the company it’s image. Other venders are less likely to give ACME their best price because they realize ACME does not view them as a business partner. ACME’s buying power has decreased as the customer base has decreased. How much value did you really get with that cost savings?

Human Resources Lost Value

With sales down, ACME Company has decided to cut costs and Rhonda, the HR Manager, starts making the cuts. The IT department is the first to be cut, and the business decides to run solely with Ryan, the IT Manager. Other departments see similar cuts. Shauna, the customer service manager, decides she’s on a sinking ship and moves on to greener pastures. Troy, the most experienced customer service representative is promoted to manager with an increase in responsibility, but not an increase in pay. Rhonda interviews several CSR candidates and settles on Paula. Paula was not the best fit for the job, in fact she has no experience. However, the cuts put the pay at the 41st percentile in the industry, and all the skilled CSRs would not work for that pay.

Paula is young and does not want to work. She took a job because she wanted the spare cash. Troy is learning the responsibilities of a CSR Manager and does not have time to train Paula properly. The other CSRs are busy with the extra load, and don’t have time to train Paula either. So Paula sits around daydreaming of where she will go partying this night. Meanwhile, Troy and the other CSRs are up to their eyeballs in work. Troy knows he did not get a raise, and knows Northwind across the street pays at the 61st percentile (he happened to be friends with Shauna and she told him when she went there). Meanwhile, the other CSRs are stressed by their new added workload, and because they watch Paula sitting around doing nothing (not all her fault, no one taught her what she was supposed to be doing, and the company did not pay for a self-motivator).

A new culture has taken over the customer service department at ACME Company. The employees all feel they are on their own and start working to defend their own interests. They all look to Northwind company as an opportunity that will pay them more (the grass is always greener, right?). ACME Company lost it’s focus on valuable employees. As a result, the customer service department is providing poor service to the customer, resulting in a poor reputation in the industry. The department lost it’s sense of “team” which just escalates the issues. Spending a couple more dollars an hour to take care of their new CSR Manager, and hiring a self-motivated employee would have created some valuable assets in a time of greater than average need (because of the quality issues due to the purchaser not understanding value)

Information Technology Lost Value

Remember Ryan, the IT Manager who’s department was cut out from under him? Well, Ryan is a thinking man and is going to make this work. Ryan, like most IT Managers, hears things. It just so happens that Ryan is familiar with a customer service system that if implemented requires little training and can walk new CSRs like Paula through a phone call to help the customer. Ryan places a call to AdventureWorks, the makers of the software. AdventureWorks explains to Ryan the basics of how it works. As they explained, the trick is in the setup. If you setup your scripts properly, you can walk the CSR through any situation. AdventureWorks quotes out the system with consulting. It is their common practice to come out and help a company setup their initial scripts properly. Ryan takes this to the CEO, who is excited by the software. He sees the silver bullet to save his company. Like most IT personnel though, Ryan talks in technical terms and makes it sound easy. In a follow-up meeting with the CEO and CFO, Ryan finds out that they are approving the software, but will save money and not get the consulting. Instead, they explain that they understand the business well enough on their own and can set it up themselves.

ACME Company installs the software and sets it up to their liking, but the customer service does not improve. In fact, returns are way up! What happened? Well, the CEO and CFO did not want to spend a lot of time on their scripts. Instead they created a basic order script and a basic return script. While this allowed for them to track the orders and returns more closely, it did not provide the value of reducing education costs. In fact, it just added to the responsibilities of the CSRs. Not only that, but when a trouble call came in, the new CSRs would immediately go to the returns script.

Conclusion

ACME Company’s misconception that cost and value were the same thing was an error in core business concepts that resulted in a downward spiral for the organization. Without a massive reorganization, the company will not succeed. Let’s not rule ACME Company out yet though. It does have a lot of intelligent people like Ryan and Troy who can help team to return the company to it’s former glory. And who knows, if ACME Company decides to change, they might even call back excellent employees like Shauna who decided to get off a sinking ship, but might be open to building a new one.

Note: While the examples of the fictitious ACME Company might be extreme, I would like to point out that all of these examples are things I have seen in businesses, just not all at the same time as portrayed here!

Upcoming Blog Events

This past week I closed another chapter of my life when I left my job. It sure had a lot of good points, but also a lot of bad. It made me think about a lot of things. Mostly it made me realize just how far I have grown in business knowledge… from an IT perspective (hey, it’s the name of the blog, what do you expect?)

In the next few weeks I’m going to try to do several updates to the blog. This would be an interesting time for it, because I have some serious thoughts about business perspective. Of course, I did say “try”. I’m an optimist, but I’m also realistic. I realize I am averaging a post a year for the past 2 years. Believe me, the 3 people who read this blog let me know!