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  • When a co-worker asks you to teach him what you know, do you share the information or keep it to yourself? [closed]

    - by Chuck
    I am the only developer/DBA in a small IT department. There is another guy who can do it, but he's more of a backup as he spends his time working on IT support stuff. Anyway we have a new hire and I've been training him on the IT support side of things. Seems like he is eager to learn and be productive, but nobody is going out of their way to show him anything. He's been asking me to teach him database design, SQL, etc. For some reason, the boss has him working with me. He is also sending him to meetings that I go to, yet he hasn't said outright that I have to teach him anything. Meanwhile, the boss insists on doing a lot of the support work himself (i.e. he hoards information and doesn't delegate to anyone). I'm a little bit on the fence. First, the new guy doesn't yet have a strong foundation on the IT support functions which is where we really need help at this time. Second, I paid thousands of dollars for classes and spent many hours learning this stuff. Is it my responsibility to teach others skills that I had to learn on my own? Others here really aren't quick to share information so I'm not sure that I should either in this environment. I do know that if I get him involved, and get him started on projects, then I'd be responsible for his mistakes. I had to take the heat for the other guy when he made mistakes. OTOH the guy wants to learn something, is motivated, and I don't want to stop him. We've had our share of slackers in the group and it's nice to have someone who is willing to work for a change. So what would you guys do? Would you teach him the skills that you spent all of that time learning? Set him up with a test database on his PC and recommend some books for him? Encourage him to get a strong foundation in IT support first and ask later? We haven't had a new hire in years, let alone one that is interested in what I do, so this is new to me.

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  • 4 Ideas Computer Work From Home

    Working at home may seem to be ideal work. You can wake up late if do not have a meeting or scheduled work to be done. You have no boss to reprimand you. You don';t have to go deal with traffic on yo... [Author: Jeff Schuman - Computers and Internet - June 10, 2010]

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  • Does anyone work 10 hours shifts as a developer?

    - by dah
    I would like to switch from a 5 day week to a 4 day, but maintain a 40 hour working week. Would the 10 hour days affect your ability to be productive? I hate our public transit system so if I could reduce my transportation by 20% I would be glad. If other developers who work 10 hours shifts could be clear as the their experiences with it that would help me. I think my boss is flexible enough that he would be cool with it.

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  • Developing a SSRS report using a SSAS Data Source

    After designing several SSRS reports based on regular relational databases, your boss would now like several new reports to be designed and rolled out to production based on your organization's SSAS OLAP cube. How do you get started with designing a report based on a cube? Get smart with SQL Backup ProGet faster, smaller backups with integrated verification.Quickly and easily DBCC CHECKDB your backups. Learn more.

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  • Setting up a network e-mail server

    - by Jason
    Hello, My boss just asked me to buy a new server for our office network. I know next to nothing about servers and networking, so I need someone to point me in the right direction. He said he wants this to be our e-mail server with a network login. I have no idea how to set up an e-mail server, especially one that sends/receives e-mail using our domain name. We use a terrible piece of order/inventory software called Mail Order Manager (MOM). Our computers currently connect to the MOM database through a networked drive. My boss would like to move away from this peer-to-peer MOM setup. The software publisher offers a SQL version of MOM, but it's way overpriced. Is there a better way to connect to these databases without using the SQL version? Finally, the server needs to be running Windows. Does this question make sense, is it possible, and can someone help me get started? Thanks!

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  • Windows Server 2003 SBS domain in multiple sites

    - by E3 Group
    We have about 25 employees in our current office and are looking to open up another office in another capital city housing about 15 employees. In our current office, we are running a domain hosted by a 2003 SBS server and I've been tasked by the boss to expand our infrastructure to the new office in the cheapest way possible (cheapest way in the short run that is, because my boss doesn't think more than 6 months ahead). So I'm looking to get a second hand server and have it run Server 2003 Std with exchange server 2003. These are the things that it needs to do: Replicate shared folders that are hosted in the parent LAN. Deliver emails hosted in the parent Exchange Server Somehow link up with the parent domain controller and push the AD to the remote site I'm pretty sure 3 is impossible but the DC would be available if a VPN connection is present, right? On that note, would I be looking at hardware VPN connections? I'm not sure how to deploy the new site as this is my first time doing it and i'm making it especially difficult for myself, seeing as the AD and DC is on an SBS server. Would I first start by establishing a VPN connection and then joining the new server to the domain? Will things 'just work' if I install exchange onto the new server and point outlooks to it? and how would I be able to replicate shared folders?

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  • Accounting setup in freeradius with mikrotik and the "always" module

    - by Matt
    I have a freeradius setup that is being used to provide authentication for users on a wireless network. The access points are all Mikrotik hardware and the users are connected 24/7. We've been using Daloradius with mysql and freeradius 2. The boss wants to use the accounting information and while this is all set up and appears to be working, I've found that not all the accounting information is present. Since our users may be connected for more than 24 hours at a time we keep this in here, it will reset some attributes daily so that the accounting packets work correctly. So he started poking around at this link: http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/RouterOs_MySql_Freeradius#Configuring_RouterOs_for_Radius_.26_PPP.2A_AAA And was looking specifically at the following section. Since our users may be connected for more than 24 hours at a time we keep this in here, it will reset some attributes daily so that the accounting packets work correctly always fail { rcode = fail } always reject { rcode = reject } always ok { rcode = ok simulcount = 0 mpp = no } However, that link references freeradius 1 and I can't find this in the radius.conf file for freeradius 2. What does it do and could it be a reason I'm missing data? EDIT: I have found one issue. We have a backup freeradius server that is also receiving the accounting packets. Although they are replicating, it's only a master/slave configuration. If the slave receives accounting packets it won't replicate them back to the master. Although I suspect this might solve it, the boss is not convinced due to the always module. Is there anything special I need to configure in the mikrotik AP's or freeradius 2 for clients connected 24/7.

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  • Accounting setup in freeradius with mikrotik and the "always" module

    - by Matt
    I have a freeradius setup that is being used to provide authentication for users on a wireless network. The access points are all Mikrotik hardware and the users are connected 24/7. We've been using Daloradius with mysql and freeradius 2. The boss wants to use the accounting information and while this is all set up and appears to be working, I've found that not all the accounting information is present. Since our users may be connected for more than 24 hours at a time we keep this in here, it will reset some attributes daily so that the accounting packets work correctly. So he started poking around at this link: http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/RouterOs_MySql_Freeradius#Configuring_RouterOs_for_Radius_.26_PPP.2A_AAA And was looking specifically at the following section. Since our users may be connected for more than 24 hours at a time we keep this in here, it will reset some attributes daily so that the accounting packets work correctly always fail { rcode = fail } always reject { rcode = reject } always ok { rcode = ok simulcount = 0 mpp = no } However, that link references freeradius 1 and I can't find this in the radius.conf file for freeradius 2. What does it do and could it be a reason I'm missing data? EDIT: I have found one issue. We have a backup freeradius server that is also receiving the accounting packets. Although they are replicating, it's only a master/slave configuration. If the slave receives accounting packets it won't replicate them back to the master. Although I suspect this might solve it, the boss is not convinced due to the always module. Is there anything special I need to configure in the mikrotik AP's or freeradius 2 for clients connected 24/7.

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  • How do you test your porn filter

    - by Zoredache
    For testing antivirus we have EICAR, for SPAM, we have GTUBE. Is there a standard site that is or should be included in blacklists that you can use for testing instead of going to your favorite porn site in front of your boss, the CEO, or someone else who feels that seeing such a site is an excuse for a sexual harassment suit? Update This is less about getting permission for me to test, though that answer is useful. I do have both permission and responsibility to actually make sure the filter is running. I am able test the filter is functioning with a netcat. Instead, I am hoping there is a standard domain name that is blocked by most/all filters for testing. I need to be able to share this with my boss and users. I need to be able to demonstrate what happens when someone go to a filtered page. I need to have a way to quickly prove to others that the filter is working without asking them to go to some site that will not cause grief if for some reason the filter is not working. If there isn't already a good domain for this purpose I may simply have to register a domain myself, and then add the domain to all the filters I am responsible for.

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  • System State Backup Retention Policies

    - by isoscelestriangle
    I was wondering if there was a general consensus on how long to keep system state backups. I am trying to reevaluate our current backup process, and trying to get a good handle on our current storage requirements. Our current setup involves tapes and sending backups offsite with Barracuda Networks. We have been doing our system state backups with Barracuda now, which does full backups daily, leaving our storage requirements growing quite quickly. My boss is a little too gung-ho with backups and wants our system states saved for quite a while. We currently have 5 days of nightlies, 5 weeklies, 3 monthlies, and so on. I think this is quite overkill for system state backups. My boss wants the ability to go back in time to find when an issue appeared, but I don't think that is practical. Many things change in the course of several months. I also think it would be hard not to notice problems with our DCs and other servers for several months. I would think that a previous week's snapshot and the current week's dailies would suffice. Any advice or reading you can point me to? Thanks!

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  • Why would e-mail from our own domain not be forwarded to gmail

    - by netboffin
    To solve a problem with spam on our server we tried to forward e-mail from our dedicated server's mailserver(matrix smtp service) to gmail, but while most e-mails got through e-mail from our own domain all went missing. They weren't in the inbox or spam or anywhere else. We've had to go back to using the old system, which means my boss gets a huge amount of spam. We have a windows 2003 server with iis 6 and the matrix smtp service installed. I've toyed with the idea of installing a mail proxy like ASSP but it looks pretty complicated. We're hosting 20 domains on the server as well as our own which has an online shop whose payment system depends on email. I can't start playing around with complicated solutions when it could have disastrous consequences and I don't know enough to implement them safely. So my question has two parts: Part One: Why can't we forward e-mails from people using the same domain. If our domain was foobar.com then [email protected] can't receive from [email protected], but he can receive from everyone else. Part Two: Is there a really simple server side solution to spam that would work with matrix? For instance popfile?

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  • Windows 7 permissions and Samba domain

    - by Nimzo
    I'm the main desktop support in an office of mixed MacOS and WinXp machines, about 60. I'm new to Windows 7. Currently our XP users are admins on their own machines, and my boss is wanting us to get away from that now that we're going to Windows 7 (64bit). My boss is largely absent from my day-to-day work, so I'm here looking for help =) I have numerous unattended .cmd scripts that we run from a server share, unattended software installs. Some run at login, some have to be run manually. With the NetworkAdmin account logged on to the computer, I am able to run the .cmd files and install stuff just fine. With my test account logged on (Power User), I cannot run the .cmd file - I get an Access Denied. When I change my test account to an Admin on the machine, I still get access denied. However, the test account can simply double-click the .exe and install the software just fine, as admin. Power User can't install anything. How do I fix it so that any power user or admin on the machine can run anything as long as it's on our shared software drive?

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  • Oracle at HR Tech: What a Difference a Year Makes

    - by Natalia Rachelson
    Last week, I had the privilege of attending the famous HR Technology Conference (HR Tech) in my new hometown of Chicago. This annual event, which draws the who of who in the world of HR technology, was by far the biggest.  It wasn't just the highest level of attendance that was mind blowing, but also the amazing quality of attendees. Kudos go to the organizers, especially Bill Kutik for pulling together such a phenomenal conference. Conference highlights included Naomi Bloom's (http://infullbloom.us) Masters Panel and Mark Hurd's General Session on the last day of the conference. Naomi managed to do the seemingly impossible -- get all of the industry heavyweights and fierce competitors to travel to Chicago for her panel. Here are the executives she hosted: Our own Steve Miranda Sanjay Poonen, President Global Solutions, SAP Stan Swete, CTO, Workday Mike Capone, VP for Product Development and CIO, ADP John Wookey, EVP, Social Applications, Salesforce.com Adam Rogers, CTO, Ultimate Software       I bet you think "WOW" when you look at these names. Just this panel by itself would have been enough of a draw for any tech conference, so Naomi and Bill really scored. TechTarget published a great review of the conference here.  And here are a few highlights from Steve. "Steve Miranda, EVP Apps Dev Oracle, said delivering software in the cloud helps vendors shape their products to customer needs more efficiently. "As vendors, we're able to improve the software faster," he said. "We can see in real time what customers are using and not using." Miranda underscored Oracle's commitment to socializing its HCM platform,and named recruiting as an area where social has had a significant impact. "We want to make social a part of the fabric, not a separate piece," he said. "Already, if you're doing recruiting without social, it probably doesn't make any sense."" Having Mark Hurd at the conference was another real treat and everyone took notice.  The Business of HR publication covered Mark's participation at HR Tech and the full article is available here. Here is what Business of HR had to say: "In truth, the story of Oracle today is a story similar to many of the current and potential customers they faced at the conference this week. Their business is changing and growing. They've dealt with acquisitions of their own and their competitors continue to nip at their heels. They are dealing with growth (and yes, they are hiring in case you're interested). They have concerns about talent as well. If Oracle feels as strongly about their products as they seem to be, they will be getting their co-president in front of a lot more groups of current and potential customers like they did at the HR Technology Conference this year. And here's hoping this is one executive who won't stop talking about the importance of talent just because he isn't at the HR tech conference anymore." Natalia RachelsonSenior Director, Oracle Applications

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  • Rolling Along: PASS Board Year 2, Q2

    - by Denise McInerney
    Eighteen months into my time as a PASS Director I’m especially proud of what the Virtual Chapters have accomplished and want to share that progress with you. I'm also pleased that the organization has invested more resources to support the VCs. In this quarter I got to attend two conferences and meet more members of the SQL community. Virtual Chapters In the first six months of 2013 VCs have hosted more than 50 webinars, offering free technical education to over 6200 attendees. This is a great benefit to PASS members; thanks to the VC leaders, volunteers and speakers who contribute their time to produce these events. The Performance VC held their “Summer Performance Palooza”, an event featuring eight back-to-back sessions. Links to the session recordings can be found on the VCs web site. The new webinar platform, GoToWebinar, has been rolled out to all the VCs. This is a more stable, scalable platform and represents an important investment into the future of the VCs. A few new VCs are in the planning stages, including one focused on Security and one for Russian speakers. Visit the Virtual Chapter home page to sign up for the chapters that interest you. Each Virtual Chapter is offering a discount code for PASS Summit 2013. Be sure to ask your VC leader for the code to save $200 on Summit registration. 24 Hours of PASS The next 24HOP will be on July 31. This Summit Preview edition will feature 24 consecutive webcasts presented by experts who will be speaking at Summit in October. Registration for this free event is open now. And we will be using the GoToWebinar platform for 24HOP also. Business Analytics Conference April marked the first PASS Business Analytics Conference in Chicago. This introduced PASS to another segment of data professionals: the analysts and data scientists who work with the world’s growing collection of data. Overall the inaugural event was a success and gave us a glimpse into this increasingly important space. After Chicago the Board had several serious discussions about the lessons learned from this seven and what we should do next. We agreed to apply those lessons and continue to invest in this event; there will be a PASS Business Analytics Conference in 2014. I’m very pleased the next event will be in San Jose, CA, the heart of Silicon Valley, a place where a great deal of investment and innovation in data analytics is taking place. Global SQL Community Over the last couple of years PASS has been taking steps to become more relevant to SQL communities in different parts of the world. In May I had the opportunity to attend SQL Bits XI in Nottingham, England. It was enlightening to meet and talk with SQL professionals from around the U.K. as well as many other European countries. The many SQL Bits volunteers put on a great event and were gracious hosts. Budgets The Board passed the FY14 budget at the end of June. The  budget process can be challenging and requires the Board to make some difficult choices about where to allocate resources. Overall I’m satisfied with the decisions we made and think we are investing in the right activities and programs. Next Up The Board is meeting July 18-19 in Kansas City. We will be holding the Executive Committee election for the Exec Co that will take office in 2014. We will also be discussing plans for the next BA conference as well as the next steps for our Global Growth initiative. Applications for the upcoming Board of Directors election open on July 24. If you are considering running for the Board you can visit the PASS elections site to learn more about the election process. And I encourage anyone considering running to reach out to current and past Board members to learn about what the role entails. Plans for the next PASS Summit are in full swing. We are working on some fun new ideas to introduce attendees to the many ways to become involved in the SQL community.

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  • PHP - REGEX - use string for pattern but exclude it from being removed!

    - by aSeptik
    Hi All guys! i'm pretty new on regex, i have learned something by the way, but is still pour knowledge! so i want ask you for clarification on how it work! assuming i have the following strings, as you can see they can be formatted little different way one from another but they are very similar! DTSTART;TZID="America/Chicago":20030819T000000 DTEND;TZID="America/Chicago":20030819T010000 DTSTART;TZID=US/Pacific DTSTART;VALUE=DATE now i want replace everything between the first A-Z block and the colon so for example i would keep DTSTART:20030819T000000 DTEND:20030819T010000 DTSTART DTSTART so on my very noobs knowledge i have worked out this shitty regex! :-( preg_replace( '/^[A-Z](?!;[A-Z]=[\w\W]+):$/m' , '' , $data ); but why i'm sure this regex will not work!? :-) Pls help me! PS: the title of question is pretty explaned, i want also know how for example use a well know string block for match another... preg_replace( '/^[DTSTART](?!;[A-Z]=[\w\W]+):$/m' , '' , $data ); ..without delete DTSTART Thanks for the time! Regards Luca Filosofi

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  • Blackberry (Java) - Drawing graphics on top of rendered text/buttons etc

    - by paullb
    Based off the one of the demos I have the following code. Currently what displays in the simulator is just hte contents of the paint function, however the ObjectChoiceField is still selectable if one happens to click in the right location. I would like both the text contents and the paint function contents to appear. Is this possible? public CityInfoScreen() { //invoke the MainScreen constructor super(); //add a screen title LabelField title = new LabelField("City Information Kiosk", LabelField.ELLIPSIS | LabelField.USE_ALL_WIDTH); setTitle(title); //add a text label add(new RichTextField("Major U.S. Cities")); //add a drop-down list with three choices: //Los Angeles, Chicago, or New York //... String choices[] = {"Los Angeles","Chicago","New York"}; choiceField = new ObjectChoiceField("select a city", choices); add(choiceField); Manager man = this.getMainManager(); } ... public void paint(Graphics g){ super.paint(g); // g.drawRect(0,left,500,500+left); g.setGlobalAlpha(0); g.drawRect(100-left,100-top,200,200); String text = new Integer(left).toString(); String text2 = new Integer(top).toString(); g.drawText(text + " " + text2,120-left,120-top); }

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  • Blackberry app development - Drawing graphics on top of rendered text/buttons etc

    - by paullb
    Based off the one of the demos I have the following code. Currently what displays in the simulator is just hte contents of the paint function, however the ObjectChoiceField is still selectable if one happens to click in the right location. I would like both the text contents and the paint function contents to appear. Is this possible? public CityInfoScreen() { //invoke the MainScreen constructor super(); //add a screen title LabelField title = new LabelField("City Information Kiosk", LabelField.ELLIPSIS | LabelField.USE_ALL_WIDTH); setTitle(title); //add a text label add(new RichTextField("Major U.S. Cities")); //add a drop-down list with three choices: //Los Angeles, Chicago, or New York //... String choices[] = {"Los Angeles","Chicago","New York"}; choiceField = new ObjectChoiceField("select a city", choices); add(choiceField); Manager man = this.getMainManager(); } ... public void paint(Graphics g){ super.paint(g); // g.drawRect(0,left,500,500+left); g.setGlobalAlpha(0); g.drawRect(100-left,100-top,200,200); String text = new Integer(left).toString(); String text2 = new Integer(top).toString(); g.drawText(text + " " + text2,120-left,120-top); }

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  • Google Adwords API response parse

    - by Yun Ling
    I am trying to figure out how to parse the Adword API query response without exceptions and one issue that i came across is that sometimes, the data itself contains comma besides the comma between each column. Say i do a query on Adroup, campaign and impression by using <reportDefinition xmlns="https://adwords.google.com/api/adwords/cm/v201209"> <selector> <fields>CampaignName</fields> <fields>AdgroupName</fields> <fields>Impressions</fields> <predicates> <field>Status</field> <operator>IN</operator> <values>ENABLED</values> <values>PAUSED</values> </predicates> </selector> <reportName>Custom Adgroup Performance Report</reportName> <reportType>ADGROUP_PERFORMANCE_REPORT</reportType> <dateRangeType>LAST_7_DAYS</dateRangeType> <downloadFormat>CSV</downloadFormat> </reportDefinition> Since my campaign has comma within the string like below: "Adroup,Campaign,Impressions, Premiun Beer, Beer, Chicago, 1000" where the adgroup is "premium beer" and campaign is "Beer,Chicago". that will cause an issue if we parse this information by using comma. Does anyone know how to solve this problem?

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  • str_replace between two numerical strings

    - by user330840
    Another problem with str_replace, I would like to change the following $title data into URL by taking the $string between number in the beginning and after dash (-) Chicago's Public Schools - $10.3M New Jersey - $3M Michigan: Public Health - $1M The desire output is: chicago-public-school new-jersey michigan-public-health PHP code I am using $title = ucwords(strtolower(strip_tags(str_replace("1: ","",$title)))); $x=1; while($x <= 10) { $title = ucwords(strtolower(strip_tags(str_replace("$x: ","",$title)))); $x++; } $link = preg_replace('/[<>()!#?:.$%\^&=+~`*&#233;"\']/', '',$title); $money = str_replace(" ","-",$link); $link = explode(" - ",$link); $link = preg_replace(" (\(.*?\))", "", $link[0]); $amount = preg_replace(" (\(.*?\))", "", $link[1]); $code_entities_match = array( '&#39;s' ,'&quot;' ,'!' ,'@' ,'#' ,'$' ,'%' ,'^' ,'&' ,'*' ,'(' ,')' ,'+' ,'{' ,'}' ,'|' ,':' ,'"' ,'<' ,'>' ,'?' ,'[' ,']' ,'' ,';' ,"'" ,',' ,'.' ,'_' ,'/' ,'*' ,'+' ,'~' ,'`' ,'=' ,' ' ,'---' ,'--','--'); $code_entities_replace = array('' ,'-' ,'-' ,'' ,'' ,'' ,'-' ,'-' ,'' ,'' ,'' ,'' ,'' ,'' ,'' ,'-' ,'' ,'' ,'' ,'' ,'' ,'' ,'' ,'' ,'' ,'-' ,'' ,'-' ,'-' ,'' ,'' ,'' ,'' ,'' ,'-' ,'-' ,'-','-'); $link = str_replace($code_entities_match, $code_entities_replace, $link); $link = strtolower($link); Unfortunately the result I got: -chicagoamp9s-public-school 2-new-jersey 3-michigan-public-health Anyone has a better solution for this? Thanks guys! (the &#39; changed into amp9 - wonder why?)

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  • Messing with the Team

    - by Robert May
    Good Product Owners will help the team be the best that they can be.  Bad product owners will mess with the team and won’t care about the team.  If you’re a product owner, seek to do good and avoid bad behavior at all costs.  Remember, this is for YOUR benefit and you have much power given to you.  Use that power wisely. Scope Creep The product owner has several tools at his disposal to inject scope into an iteration.  First, the product owner can use defects to inject scope.  To do this, they’ll tell the team what functionality that they want to see in a feature.  Then, after the feature is developed, the Product Owner will decide that they don’t really like how the functionality behaves.  To change it, rather than creating a new story, they’ll add a defect.  The functionality is correct, as designed, but the Product Owner doesn’t like it.  By creating the defect, the Product Owner destroys the trust that the team has of the product owner.  They may not be able to count the story, because the Product Owner changed the story in the iteration, and the team then ends up looking like they have low velocity for something over which they have no control.  This is bad.  One way to deal with this is to add “Product Owner Time” to the iteration.  This will slow the velocity, but then the ScrumMaster can tell stake holders that this time is strictly in place to deal with bad behavior of the Product Owner. Another mechanism often used to inject Scope is the concept of directed development.  Outside of planning, stand-ups, or any other meeting, the Product Owner will take a developer aside and ask them to complete a task for them.  This is bad!  The team should be allocating all of their time to development.  If the Product Owner asks for a favor, then time that would normally be used for development will be used for a pet project of the Product Owner and the team will not get credit for this work.  Selfish product owners do this, and I typically see people who were “managers” do this behavior.  Authoritarian command and control development environments also see this happen.  The best thing that can happen is for the team member to report the issue to the ScrumMaster and the ScrumMaster to get very aggressive with management and the Product Owner to try and stop the behavior.  This may result in the ScrumMaster being fired, but if the behavior continues, Scrum is doomed.  This problem is especially bad in cases where the team member’s direct supervisor is the Product Owner.  I don’t recommend that the Product Owner or ScrumMaster have a direct report relationship with team members, since team members need the ability to say no.  To work around this issue, team members need to say no.  If that fails, team members need to add extra time to the iteration to deal with the scope creep injection and accept the lower velocity. As discussed above, another mechanism for injecting scope is by changing acceptance tests after the work is complete.  This is similar to adding defects to change scope and is bad.  To get around, add time for Product Owner uncertainty to the iteration and make sure that stakeholders are aware of the need to add this time because of the Product Owner. Refusing to Prioritize Refusing to prioritize causes chaos for the team.  From the team’s perspective, things that are not important will be worked on while things that the team knows are vital will be ignored.  A poor Product Owner will often pick the stories for the iteration on a whim.  This leads to the team working on many different aspects of the product and results in a lower velocity, since each iteration the team must switch context to the new area of development. The team will also experience confusion about priorities.  In one iteration, Feature X was the highest priority and had to be done.  Then, the following iteration, even though parts of Feature X still need to be completed, no stories to address them will be in the iteration.  However, three iterations later, Feature X will again become high priority. This will cause the team to not trust the Product Owner, and eventually, they’ll stop caring about the features they implement.  They won’t know what is important, so to insulate themselves from the ever changing chaos, they’ll become apathetic to all features.  Team members are some of the most creative people in a company.  By losing their engagement, the company is going to have a substandard product because the passion for the product won’t be in the team. Other signs that the Product Owner refuses to prioritize is that no one outside of the product owner will be consulted on priorities.  Additionally, the product, release, and iteration backlogs will be weak or non-existent. Dealing with this issue is not easy.  This really isn’t something the team can fix, short of taking over the role of Product Owner themselves.  An appeal to the stake holders might work, but only if the Product Owner isn’t a “manager” themselves.  The ScrumMaster needs to protect the team and do what they can to either get the Product Owner to prioritize or have the Product Owner replaced. Managing the Team A Product Owner that is also the “boss” of team members is a Scrum team that is waiting to fail.  If your boss tells you to do something, failing to do that something can cause you to be fired.  The team needs the ability to tell the Product Owner NO.  If the product owner introduces scope creep, the team has a responsibility to tell the Product Owner no.  If the Product Owner tries to get the team to commit to more than they can accomplish in an iteration, the team needs the ability to tell the Product Owner no. If the Product Owner is your boss and determines your pay increases, you’re probably not going to ever tell them no, and Scrum will likely fail.  The team can’t do much in this situation. Another aspect of “managing the team” that often happens is the Product Owner tries to tell the team how to develop the stories that are in the iteration.  This is one reason why I recommend that Product Owners are NOT technical people.  That way, the team can come up with the tasks that are needed to accomplish the stories and the Product Owner won’t know better.  If the Product Owner is technical, the ScrumMaster will need to take great care to protect the team from the ScrumMaster changing how the team thinks they need to implement the stories. Product Owners can also try to manage the team by their body language.  If the team says a task is going to take 6 hours to complete, and the Product Owner disagrees, they will use some kind of sour body language to indicate this disagreement.  In weak teams, this may cause the team to revise their estimate down, which will result in them taking longer than estimated and may result in them missing the iteration.  The ScrumMaster will need to make sure that the Product Owner doesn’t send such messages and that the team ignores them and estimates what they REALLY think it will take to complete the tasks.  Forcing the team to deal with such items in the retrospective can be helpful. Absenteeism The team is completely dependent upon the Product Owner to develop features for the customer.  The Product Owner IS the voice of the customer and without them, the team will lack direction.  Being the Product Owner is a full time job!  If the Product Owner cannot dedicate daily time with the team, a different product owner should be found. The Product Owner needs to attend every stand-up, planning meeting, showcase, and retrospective that the team has.  The team also must be able to have instant communication with the product owner.  They must not be required to schedule meetings to speak with their product owner.  The team must be the highest priority task that the Product Owner has. The best way to work around an absent Product Owner is to appoint a new Product Owner in the team.  This person will be responsible for making the decisions that the Product Owner should be making and to act as the liaison to the absent Product Owner.  If the delegate Product Owner doesn’t have authority to make decisions for the team, Scrum will fail.  If the Product Owner is absent, the ScrumMaster should seek to have that Product Owner replaced by someone who has the time and ability to be a real Product Owner. Making it Personal Too often Product Owners will become convinced that their ideas are the ones that matter and that anyone who disagrees is making a personal attack on them.  Remember that Product Owners will inherently be at odds with many people, simply because they have the need to prioritize.  Others will frequently question prioritization because they only see part of the picture that Product Owners face. Product Owners must have a thick skin and think egos.  If they don’t, they tend to make things personal, which causes them to become emotional and causes them to take actions that can destroy the trust that team members have in the Product Owner. If a Product Owner is making things person, the best thing that team members can do is reassure them that its not personal, but be firm about doing what is best for the Company and for the users.  The ScrumMaster should also spend significant time coaching the Product Owner on how to not react emotionally and how to accept criticism without becoming defensive. Conclusion I’m sure there are other ways that a Product Owner can mess with the team, but these are the most common that I’ve seen.  I would encourage all Product Owners to seek to be a good Product Owner.  If you find yourself behaving in any of the bad product owner ways, change your behavior today!  Your team will thank you. Remember, being Product Owner is very difficult!  Product Owner is one of the most difficult roles in Scrum.  However, it can also be one of the most rewarding roles in Scrum, since Product Owners literally see their ideas brought to life on the computer screen.  Product Owners need to be very patient, even in the face of criticism and need to be willing to make tough decisions on priority, but then not become offended when others disagree with those decisions.  Companies should spend the time needed to find the right product owners for their teams.  Doing so will only help the company to write better software. Technorati Tags: Scrum,Product Owner

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  • Push Trunk or Push Branch to Production

    - by coffeeaddict
    I'd like to get an idea of some processes on build process with Tortoise SVN. Primarily I'm wondering do you push: The Mainline Trunk A branch after QA has grabbed it into a working copy locally and tested the branch and then some build pushes that branch The problem I have is I work at a craphole (hey, it is what it is and I'm venting on stackoverflow, you better believe it..good way to relieve stress due to complete utter chaos) and we have no formal process for pushing anything. In fact even worse my boss directly codes against production. When I have changes, he pushes the mainline trunk. The problem becomes when I make database changes on our Dev database for lets say Branch A. Well...that breaks Branch B and C. I have like 4 projects going on at once! Why? Well, I will not get into that (chaos). So consequently I rename a table field, or add a field or whatever in SQL Server and walla, now my other branches have stale code pointing to previous field names. So what happens? I have to merge certain changes to this branch, to that branch, etc. It feels like a war zone. Finally, what happens is I try to only merge the minimum. Lets say I made DB changes for Branch A's code but now I had to jump back on Branch B's project. Well I need to merge "some" of A's changes over for those database changes so that B's code is not going to bomb out and is able to work with the new table changes. Finally boss pushes the mainline trunk to production. Now I get an email "you forgot to remove the hyperlink for this". That hyperlink was actually a feature I added in Branch A. But what he's talking about here is he just pushed the mainline trunk to production which now has my merged changes from Branch B and any database scripts for Branch A because remember I had some DB changes and if he pushes code, it's got to reflect those changes thus some partial database changes must also be pushed even if it's not related to this project. Well...I missed the hyperlink, so kill me. Maybe that's why we need a build process boss? (sorry, it's been a nightmare working here which is why this thread is getting so detailed). Anyway, obviously this is a nightmare. And he dictates almost everything. The only reason we have source control is because I've worked on hard core teams and that's the first thing you setup. Well there was none here. Problem is I can't dictate the structure..he does but he's never really used source control!! My God. So we have no QA. This is an e-commerce website. That's another huge issue. So consequently I'm expected to be perfect. That means mainline trunk needs to be perfect for whatever we're pushing, whatever branch feature. Is this luda? wtf do I do? I could go off on him after tying so many times tactfully to explain that we need a freakin build process (not just copy local mainline trunk to production!) but I've tried to push before and got yelled at. So I gave up on that. So it will help me tremendously to know how others are pushing their source from Tortoise to production. I was not the person pushing when I was on previous teams so really I'm not too versed in build processes. We are a fairly good size e-commerce site and get a couple millions hits a month.

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  • Cisco Routing through VPN

    - by Superman
    I am looking for a way to allow a client Win7 computer, which connects to our California office's Cisco ASA 5510 over an IPSec VPN connection to then be able to connect to a computer in our chicago office which is itself connected through another Cisco ASA router to california. It appears that we are unable to route client vpn connections between each other, and I cannot find any guidance on how to enable this. Let me know if this is possible / what needs to be done.

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