From Linkedin Questions & Answers:

 

Question:

What do you think is the biggest barrier to change?

We know that change is challenging. We know that despite our best efforts most change programmes are less than a successful. I'd love to know what you consider the toughest obstacles and how you manage to overcome them.

Answer:

The fear of the unknown and bringing people away from their confort zone is the biggest obstacle. People tend to be paranoid regarding changes and I really can't say that I blame them. The number of unmanaged changes that occur in acompany feeds into a bad reputation of changes. 

The best way to overcome this is to build a structure of effective governance around changes. Ensure Changes are properly managed through its lifecycles always including regression plans (Can't say I have seen many so far). Erradicating "stealth" changes will ensure that your reputation on changes is unharmed as well as ensuring all key stakeholders are involved to sign-off any change.

Fujitsu has a new prototype! a wooden laptop. Not only wood also some Corn-Based Bioplastics this laptop is known as Woodshell.

Beeing Green is a new hardware manufacturers policy that does not stop to amaze me. Hopefully it will continue!

.Net Web Developer at VIEW

For PT Guys:

Procura-se técnico com experiência em desenvolvimento de aplicações web sobre plataformas Microsoft Windows. Requere-se que tenha conhecimento e experiência em C#, .Net 1.1 - 2.0 e SQL Server.

http://www.linkedin.com/jobs?viewJob=&jobId=520010&trk=

Recently tried the Firefox Plugin called Sage. It is a RSS reader, and a very goodone by the way.

I recommend!

See for yourself:

Seems that one of my latest answers in LinkedIn was considered Best Answer! ;)
Apparently Iam now expert in Information Security!!! ;)

And the post that led to it was: http://diskcopy.blogs.sapo.pt/13559.html.

Check it in here!

I suggest the following medley:

Start with "Something's wrong" from K's Choice then "It's the end of the world as we know it" from REM followed by "I'm going slightly mad" from Queen and "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" from Mettalica

End with "Money for Nothing" from Dire Straits

I saw this a question on Linkedin that  made me pay a bit more of attention rather than usual.
The question directed me to the following post (http://lukenotricks.blogspot.com/2008/01/does-it-security-matter.html).

Dr. Luke O'Connor wrote a presentation based on Nicholas Carr Book "Does IT Matter" where Mr. Nicholas pleas “IT doesn’t matter and can’t bring strategic advantage at present!“.

Anyway Dr. Luke O'Connor made a sublime presentation, very actual. And one phrase caught my attention: "Focus on securing business processes not the process of securing"

Core Business People see IT as a strange and alien service instead of seeing as a method of reaching a goal. The continuous gap between operation services and core business services creates a reality where we do not focus our resources and capabilities in securing the actual business processes. The reality is painful but still real: we want to secure our business but we don't do it bearing in mind the business itself. What we do is to pick up COBIT, ITIL, SOX or whatever and apply it because it is needed (SOX) or because everyone else is doing it. ITIL for instance is what I call the flavour of the moment but we really should "taste it".

Beeing a bit more "ITIList" nowadays our IT starts in Service Design or in the addiction of Service Transition where it should start in Service Strategy supported by business requirements.

I am now reading some stuff about ITIL and I have already the training and the exam scheduled.

If anyone needs something to read about ITIL v3 you can always try this:

http://rapidshare.com/files/66189290/CN.ITIL.pm.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/66188876/CN.ITIL.pm.part2.rar

PT has a new job offering for their Field Force Technicians Academy:

Resolving tickets might be difficult to assess.

 

If a user submits a request support ticket just saying something like "I have a problem in Oracle", I must assure I collect all the information needed in order to troubleshoot the problem he is facing. The possible support ticket classifying must be Pending or Suspended. However If the problem presented by the user is somehow known and you can present him with a highly probable solution, I can simply send it to him while classifying the ticket as resolved.

 

Some might say that I am trying to loose ownership or accountability on the user's request making his customer experience worse. Nevertheless we, as a “Resolver” group must think on our customers as a whole. When I classify the ticket as resolved I am making myself available to another customer that also needs my help. This will improve Customer experience globally.

 

So, how will differentiate when to resolve or when to suspend? I will resolve whenever I have a highly probable solution, not a possible solution. Possible solutions are troubleshooting ("Please can you try this, can you try that..."). I will resolve when the probability of the solution presented is so high that I am almost sure I just have to wait on the feedback from the user to confirm the resolution or not. If not I will have to return to the troubleshooting.

 

Ok, now how about Closing Ticket's?

Easy! There are no Grey areas here. Every time you have a resolved case with a confirmed resolution you will close the ticket. And if you have a Standard Problem you will certainly have a standard solution. This is an obvious direct Close.

 

This must seem of little importance, whenever I suspend a ticket I am adding work to my stack that is pending and requires an action from me. If I resolve the ticket my work is done or not, but at least the next action needed must be from the user. Not you can focus on other issues/tickets. Closing the ticket is the main goal. No pending issues for me or for the user.

 

Graph below might help you!