There are Servers and Servers

Servers have tended to become more and more powerful as does the desktops in an user organization. Thus, quite often, a powerful desktop can actually take the burden of managing a few clients. The essential requirement for fulfilling a server role is just that. A server should have enough capabilities to service the client needs. There is no need for looking for a box that is called a server! Yet lot of people will actually try to buy a box called server even though it is not called for at all.

I saw this first hand a while back. There was a set up required for managing just 5 clients. The need was for these clients and the server to run a library management set up. The clients were recently obtained desktops that had Core 2 Duo and 2 GB memory and so on.  While these desktops cost below Rs.40,000 but what was being proposed was a so called "server" costing at least 3 times more! Strange how people seem to go by names rather than by capability and functionality required!

Whatever happened to Toyota Legend!

Everyone dealing with the topic quality used to swear by Toyota. Toyota's production system was an absolute benchmark everyone will cite as a benchmark. It was a legend and it endured for a long time! However this is totally shaken now. There has been several recalls of different models of Toyota cars on quality issues. So what happened! Difficult to say. May be the company got complacent and all those watchful eyes monitoring the assembly lines slipped. May be there was conscious cutting of corners. In a nutshell they must have deviated from their legendary quality assurance processes.

Some reports of bad component quality surfaced but then the vendor of the final product is responsible for the overall quality and these sound like passing the blame. If true, it'd still mean processes failed in determining the incoming quality of these components/sub-systems. It would be interesting to find out what really happened! Let's watch and see.

Places have Vibes

I was at another educational institute couple of days back for a couple of nights. reached there one evening, spent the complete days and then came away the next morning. The hospitality was nice, my presentations went well; those are some factors that may have played the part. But then the hospitality bit was apparent only after the day has gone by completely and the organizers let us know that they'll pick up the tab on the hotel bill. Presentations happened in the evening and until then I could not have felt good because of this factor. However, I felt good about the seminar right from the morning. Ditto about the institute, the way everyone was friendly and smiling and so on.

There is something always that you cannot define, nor analyze rationally that quite often gives you positive and negative feelings about a place, even before you have enough data to analyze things objectively. That's what must be this thing, commonly known as the "vibes"!

Confusion over the roles!

I have seen this happening several times before during my long career. in many organizations the administration and/or accounts departments have this wrong notion that they hold power over the main service providers. For example in a software development organization the administration would try and make the software developers run around for small little things. The software engineers needing a writing pad may have to go back and forth to the minion holding charge of the stock of pads. As this person feels power in controlling and giving away this pad he would exercise his authority by turning away the seeker of the pad couple of times. He will say how this time was inconvenient for him and the requester must come back at a more opportune time.

Unfortunately many a times the overall manager also does not understand what should really happen and encourage this bureaucracy. The basis is simple, the administration and/or accountancy departments exist for facilitating the work of the service providers, the real generators of revenue for the organization. These support functions are then service providers to the business generators/fulfillment people!

Saw this example come up once again! In this educational institute there is a system of signing the salary register by all the employees.So the faculty and other employees must go over and find the convenient time for the particular clerk or the accountant and get hold of the register and sign it. Problem is quite often some slots are signed many a times. So, suddenly there was this office order that they must be signed or else! The "or else" was that the current salary would be stopped. Then the affected person will have do a "prayer" to get the salary. A prayer for his legitimate dues!

Simple issue is what are we trying to save with the process! The time of a clerk or an accountant or the confidentiality of the financial data of who gets what! Looked like that was not an issue.Then why could not the register be circulated to the people for signing! Saving everybody's time, in fact! By making multiple other people come round multiple times there is a lot of wasted time and chaos in the support division anyway!