When the Backstop Becomes the Plan

From Doldrums to Hope

The days carry varying degrees of emotional toll, from the palpable to the expectant; the feeling that you may not be pulling your weight gives way to the exhilaration of success, because what was once intractable became resolvable.

We have moved from a week that seemed to present diminishing returns to one that appears to offer appreciating results. While we are not totally out of the doldrums, there is hope on the horizon, and things have been better than expected.

Governance Left Behind

Yet we get embroiled in administrative issues that should have had governance born from contractual obligation, including the clear requirement specifications that would apply to an architectural design, with guidelines for solutions to be crafted on agreed policy.

A backstop activity, meant only to tide us over until automation could take hold, has evolved into the core solution. This is because resources will not be committed first and, evidently, the architectural element is missing altogether.

Shortcuts Over Policy

The project manager, under pressure to deliver, has short-circuited the process, favouring the concept of ease over the policy guidelines that should govern it. The ideas are lifted off a contract statement and put into play, leaving the implementation resting on broad assumptions.

What we hear is that it must be done because the contract demands it; what we do not have is any documentation describing what is actually to be done. The best element of guidance to materialise today came in an email. However, can governance be run from an email, you wonder?

That is why this is being escalated. I am not convinced a proper resolution will be forthcoming before the pressure to act overwhelms the tendency to err on the side of caution; not out of any impossibility to perform, but because of the absence of governance that informs the processes required.

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When Technical Debate Meets Workplace Dysfunction

The Facts Always Win

In a lengthy set of exchanges on a technical forum, we tried to resolve what became an exception to the rule that proved a process was not functioning as intended or designed.

It was the second of such conversations where, again, one assumption about facilitating something could not be proven by the evidence gathered. My engineering background compels me to seek out and gather the evidence proving a point. Once I have that evidence, I can only be dissuaded with superior data.

My work life is filled with many such arguments where, as far as I am concerned, electronic data is more reliable, convincing, and conclusive. If you cannot present the evidence of the facts in play, then you are left adrift, subject to illogical premises redolent of clutching at straws.

Poorly Reading the Room

I appreciate that I can be quite forceful, but I make no apology for that. Whilst I am neither infallible nor omniscient, I am quite thorough and won't mind painstakingly reviewing whatever viewpoints I have reached if there is any doubt that the means for making those assertions are suspect.

Caught in the flow of these conversations, someone mistook the technical commentary for social banter. Taking exception, he suggested we take our liaison to a private space and, once we had consummated our tryst, we could return with the baby.

You pause and wonder what had got into them. You might take into consideration that they might have had a bad day, but to intrude and insinuate in that manner was uncalled for. The fact is, I have to countenance many impolite, uncouth, bad-mannered, and ill-disciplined people in the managerial cadre who exhibit little respect for their reports.

Another Place, Another Face

Having been a freelance consultant for three decades, I am quite likely to understand this more and better than those who have only been the archetypal corporate person. Anyone has the prerogative to shimmy and slide up or down the greasy pole in obedience and obsequious genuflection for pecuniary advantage. I have seen the best and the worst of the lot, but not at my expense.

My interlocutor was having none of it. Just one unfortunate abuse of privilege and an inadvertent level of tone can quite seriously piss people off. Our accuser was swiftly told off before a feeble apology came in response. I do not have to always be the vocal contrarian, and, likely, my card is already marked, but I am unperturbed.

There is an art to office politics and the power plays of the little-minded that amuse no end.

If the axe is dull,
And one does not sharpen the edge,
Then he must use more strength;
Wisdom is profitable to direct. Ecclesiastes 10:10

We've been at this game long enough to know where to use a dull axe, how it needs to be sharpened, when to use more strength, and wherefore the wisdom to see people for who they really are. In the same vein, all is vanity, vanity.

End of work year 2021

Listen attentively first

It has been a wonderful work year with much to celebrate even if the challenges and the frustrations that seemed to greet one at many turns. The job of being a subject matter expert in a big team of long-staying members who are steeped in the traditions and culture of an organisation whilst being hardened by their experiences along with the histories that have defined their presence or absence of amenity to change can be interesting.

Someone like me is supposed to visit first with a good pair of listening ears and a fresh pair of eyes long before I have a compelling speech to review the long-held perspectives, persuading colleagues, partners and hierarchies of alternative methods and best practice. It is more a battle of wits than anything else, the encounters can be bruising, yet necessary.

Make your footing sure

My view is, I am engaged to challenge the orthodoxy, expose the dogmatic and align towards the pragmatic, shepherding change, not as a hard choice but a progressive march which is rarely at speed but at snail’s pace with the purpose of incremental and beneficial improvements that the managers can highlight as big successes.

Sometimes, I cannot get in edgeways, all arguments deployed, most debates exhausted, glaring evidence presented that it is literally incontrovertible, but the political climate will not budge a nanometre.

It is usually political

You begin to learn to choose your battles carefully, find where you can build agreement, move that towards a consensus, manage the compromises well, so the main thrust of your ideas are not lost, then bring forth the benefits and the gains whilst assertively debunking woolly thinking, needless experimentation and pointless solutions crafted from the poor use or knowledge of the tools available to fulfil the requirements.

This, I aver is the bane of being in a technical role at a high level, it is usually more political than technical, and it is where you have to master the art of communication. How to point out bad practice that it becomes a learning opportunity rather than it being taken negatively as criticism. Accord praise liberally and acknowledge fully ideas proposed and activities beautifully performed by others even if you wish you had that idea first.

Be dependable more than indispensable

Win confidence and trust, not so much to make yourself indispensable but valuable and dependable, this is what 33 years in the field of computer information technology has taught me, 26 of those years, I have mainly been a freelance consultant. I don’t get moved along like I am part of a glacier, I have to earn my place and prove my worth constantly through continuous learning and practice, education, excitement, enthusiasm, curiosity, and grit.

My work year 2021 is now over for me to go and deal with the essential matters of the heart. A stand-in has been invited to provide support to my standard of expertise and know-how, whilst I am away. I did not achieve everything I hoped I will in the organisation in the year past, but I think there is enough understanding that I can be helpful in matters of architecture, policy, implementation, and administration.

To the coalface of the work front, I wish you all a wonderful yuletide season and a more rewardingly, prosperous and fulfilling New Year, maybe, just maybe, we would also see the back of this global pandemic and launch into a new life of cherished experiences and exciting adventure. 

Technical: A whole weekend networking

On it since Friday

It is like the dogged determination of a hungry dog that just found a juicy bone, I could not relent until I had found a solution to my unfortunate network problem. I have been with Virgin Media for over 6 years until I was quite persuaded to review the quality of the service and how much I was paying for it, especially that of the package I was offered, I was only using the broadband and not the telephony or television bundle.

After getting a third off my subscription, I was sent a new cable modem, the Virgin Media Super Hub 3 to replace my Virgin Media Super Hub 2AC, it was supposed to be a plug-n-play activity which I left until after work on Friday, it was anything but.

Blog - For the food, I can forget

It should work, I thought

Connecting it up in the basic configuration that I had with the one I was replacing with the wireless configuration switched off, that was the beginning of my problems, my wired connections that came through a switch to just 19 other devices on my network could not reach the Internet. What was baffling was to use a basic analogy, I had arrived at the gate, been seen by security and all I needed was to be waved through, but I was held back.

The Super Hub 3 listed all my devices on its administration page, but it was not letting them onto the Internet, it being the gatekeeper. Could it be a compatibility problem? Quite doubtful as all my kit had only had their firmware updated.

No Internet no help

My NETGEAR Nighthawk X6 R8000 router on its administration page was saying there was no Internet connection, yet, my Amazon Fire Stick 4K was getting on the Internet having obtained by WiFi an IP Address, it was making no sense as my laptops obtaining IP Addresses from the same router could not get online.

There was nothing wrong with my setup, the only variable that had changed was the Super Hub 3. So, I called Virgin Media and they were as helpful as a blacksmith giving a brain surgeon instructions for performing a radical frontal lobotomy. Much as I was convinced that the problem was with the Super Hub 3, I switched it to modem mode with no success.

Reverting to router mode and the wireless service enabled, some devices did connect but it was unstable, my laptops getting nowhere. I then reconnected the old Super Hub 2AC but as the service had been bound to the new hub, I was having no luck.

Firm on the wares

Along the way, I found that the switch TP-Link TL-SG108E was behind on its firmware, so I updated it, though the latest was 3 years old. Still, no progress and Virgin Media from their myopic perspective even after over an hour of communication with a lady considerably more knowledgeable about networks were satisfied if I could connect one device and it went online, the problem was mine. They even wanted me to pay an additional fee for support on a service they changed only 4 days ago. I was exasperated.

Internet searches crept along with snippets and no clear solutions, I needed to piece together these elements with the hope that I might get some headway. Then I realised the stock firmware on my NETGEAR router did not expose all the elements I need to troubleshoot that No Internet screen comprehensively. Now, I was on to a crazy path that could brick my router. I found flashed the router firmware with the latest version of FreshTomato firmware for my model, it first looked dead, but a factory reset gave it a FreshTomato persona and I was ready to play.

It all clicked together

I was given too many levers than I knew to manage, even my knowledge of networks was challenged, but I found enough to manipulate things better. I put the SuperHub 3 back into modem mode disabling the wireless functionality by default attached it to the NETGEAR router where the router now acted like the SuperHub 3.

Things were beginning to make some sense even if things did not seem to work as required. Then a final tweak, the gateway address which used to be the address of the SuperHub in router mode now had to become the address of the FreshTomato configured NETGEAR router and suddenly, all my devices appeared in the list of managed devices by NETGEAR and they were waved through the gate, the SuperHub 3 and onto the Internet. That is the short version of how I deduced the solution.

The WiFi SSIDs had changed, so all my devices were reregistered as well as my wireless printer and I guess we can all go to bed happy. Much as it was a bit inconvenient tethering my work laptop and another to my mobile phone for the day, I guess some things have to be done to get other things fixed.