When will the understanding of projects catch up to the understanding of science?

In 1814 de Laplace described what would be known as “The demon of Laplace”. He stated that if one knew the exact state of every object in the universe one would be able to predict the exact future. Then for about 150 years scientist in all kinds of different fields like meteorology, physics, economy etc tried to predict weather, economical development and other dynamic systems. According to this theory one could skip small details since the bigger picture would overrule any small effects very small initial differences would have on the end result.

Then in 1963 Edward Lorenz described what he called “Deterministic Nonperiodic Flows”. Sounds booooring but was made known to most people as “The Butterfly-effect”. Not least by Jeff Goldblums character Dr. Ian Malcolm in the film Jurassic Park. In science it is referred to as Chaos theory today. This effectively killed all notions of small details having no effect on the end result. This happened about 50 years ago and has radically changed the way science works.

Still in each and every project most people, and particularly the stakeholders, still think that we can make a plan, predict everything and that will be gospel. We are also expected to do this plan with very limited time and resources. Then when some little detail shows up that affects the project they act surprised, want to investigate responsibility and escalate to the big chiefs why we so capitally failed in predicting this little detail. The “inquisition” brings out all their hidden toys and starts the fires. Someone has to be condemned for this utter lack of predicting everything and we have to declare our total incompetence as Galileo was forced to stand trial for the Inquisitor Maculani for his heretic teachings.

So my question is, when will there be an understanding that project managers cannot predict every little detail in a sequence of events involving a lot of people for the next months or years? No one expect a weather forecast to be exact for the next 6 months or so, everyone knows we cannot predict the currency rates in detail for the next year, so how are project managers expected to have this magical foreseeing that no one else has? Is there a secret club with a lot of old people in pointy hats and dark rituals one has to go through to be elevated to some higher form of being?  

What site templates are available using Office 365?

Well there is a special set of site templates that are available using Office 365:

Team Site
Blank Site
Document Workspace
Basic Meeting Workspace
Blank Meeting Workspace
Decision Meeting Workspace
Social Meeting Workspace
Multipage Meeting Workspace
Blog
Group Work Site
Asset Web Database
Charitable Contribution Web
Contact Web Database
Issues Web Database
Project Web Database
Document Center
Personalization Site
Basic Search Center
Visio Process Repository
Express Team Site (only Office 365)

Using SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Edition as a comparison you would have also these site templates:

Records Center
PowerPivot Site
Business Intelligence Center
Publishing Site
Publishing Site with Workflow
Enterprise Search Center
Enterprise Wiki
FAST Search Center

15 worst passwords

The 15 most common used passwords according to "someone".

1. password

2. 123456

3. 12345678

4. qwerty

5. abc123

6. monkey

7. 1234567

8. letmein

9. trustno1

10. dragon

11.baseball

12. 111111

13. iloveyou

14. master

15. sunshine

SharePoint Web Analytics Report Error

Sometimes you run into a problem that just has to do with timing. Yesterday we were working on a brand new SharePoint 2010 setup, and one of the first things to check (due to requirements) was the Web Analytics Reports.

When doing   so we got an unexpected error. There was no info in the logs related to the ID. Initially we didn’t find any data in the .usage log file but after running the two services Usage Data Import and Usage Data Processing and setting them to run every 5 minutes we did get data in the .usage log file.

But no luck. There was still the error when accessing the Web Analytics Report in Site Settings.

However, it turns out there is also a workflow that has to run, the Web Analytics Trigger Workflows Timer Job, and by default this runs once every day. So if you don’t try this the first one or two days after setup there will never be a problem. However, if you want to run this the first day after setup you have to change the schedule for this job or run it manually.

Then there was no more error.

CV’s – the death of renaissance people

The attribute “Renaissance” and the expression “Renaissance Man” is all about broad knowledge in multiple disciplines. The ambition and what is attractive is the ability to do different things at different levels within different areas and by that experience and knowledge create new things and unexpected wonders.

This was once very popular, this was once highly respected. The men and women who could master completely different tasks and succeed in doing so where regarded with respect and admired for their stamina, their never ending enthusiasm for new knowledge and willingness to tackle new situations.

Most people today will at different intervals end up in situations where one is asked to present earlier work or experiences. The most common way of doing so is by creating a CV, a resume. If you are looking for a new job or a new consultancy assignment this is the first screening before one even gets to talk to people.

The employer or the consultant manager will have a list of skills required for the job. This is often a quite narrow list of bullet points that one has to match.

So if you have been around a bit, done a few things other than just the looked after previous tasks, you are disqualified. In the long run this limits your paths and once starting down one road there is no way off that. In the other end that gives the organization, step-by-step, employees and staff that are inflexible, lack outside influences, lack abilities to adjust to new situations and super experts on one thing and one thing alone. Is this the desired way we should go?

Generally there are two accepted groups that one can be sorted in, experts or generalist. Either one can know a lot about few things or one can know a little about a lot of things. That is the common idea.  The renaissance person that actually actively cultivates his or her skills in several areas is left out of this classification.

If you are one of these persons you will find yourself creating a zillion different CV’s depending on what actual skills are asked for in a particular assignment. But you will quite often be sorted out anyway since you didn’t do just that particular thing for the last century or so. By this approach Da Vinci would never have been allowed to create defense machines, art and scientific experiments. Cicero would never have been a politician, a philosopher and author. Galileo would not have been allowed to be a master of mathematics, painting and play the lute for kings and dignitaries.  

Have you ever run into a project or application where one can see that things have been done in the way they used to be done ten years ago? Even as this is a brand new application? How is that? Well, the simple answer is if one continue to select people who have done a particular thing, and only that, for the last ten to fifteen years, you will get a product or application that is produced in the same way as it was for ten or fifteen years ago.

Have you ever found yourself going to several meetings and then afterword being refused by mutually exclusive reasons? For one you where to technical, for the other you where to broad, for a third you hadn’t done so and so many years of exactly that particular thing. Although you do have the skills asked for, you have experience of that type of work and you have succeeded before in performing the same tasks?

Then you are probably someone who refuses to be locked in by conventional constrains on your ability to learn new things. Someone who to takes on new challenges and succeed in completing them. Someone who wants to expand your experience beyond what is the absolute minimum for what is needed and someone who can see new things and new solutions.

You are probably a renaissance person.

Exploring Exchange Online: Assign your own domain

Today’s exploration of Office 365 took me to Exchange Online. One thing one for sure wants is to use once own domain(s). And the twist is that we host all our domains on our own DNS servers.

Assigning a domain that you already own, turns out to be dead easy.

I just logged into the portal at portal.microsoftonline.com and selected the Domains option in the left-hand menu.

Then adding the domain and select to activate it for Exchange Online and Lync Online.  Once that was done i was presented with the DNS-records to add to the DNS-zone.

I entered the records and waited for 30 minutes. It was stated that it could take up to 72 hours but who can wait for that long to check?

Then I logged into the Exchange Online web mail and tested to send email and also tested to send a mail to that mailbox.

Bingo all done! Super easy.

Next step will be to explore migrating mailboxes. Will be fun J

Exploring SharePoint Online: Site Template Solutions



So today I decided to explore the common task of using site template solutions. Previously it has been a common task to create a site and then save it as a template, download that template, upload it to another farm and then create a new site based on that template.

Creating the site templateIn a vanilla setup of a SharePoint Foundation I created a small Support site. Just a simple thing with the following content:

1)      A document library

2)      A Customer list

3)      A Task list

I also created the custom column Customer in the document library and task list creating them as lookups from the Customer list selecting on Company. For each component I created a new view to be used on the front page and then added them as web parts to the front page web part page.

There after I connected the web parts so when one select a task in the Task list the relevant documents in the Document web part and the relevant Customer data in the Customers web part was filtered out.

Pretty easy stuff not using any fancy things or custom solutions.

I also deactivated all site features and saved the site as a site template.

Getting the site to my SharePoint Online instanceAfter downloading the WSP to my desktop and then adding it to my Solutions gallery at netconzent.sharepoint.com I activated the solution.

Then I went to the All site content page and selected to create a new site. No problems so far. The site template could be activated and shows up in the list of templates.

Bam!!!

Well that didn’t work out very well.

Turns out that in the SharePoint Online instance several of the basic features that are native in even SharePoint Foundation has been removed. This is all very well explained here:

 http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-online-enterprise-help/why-do-i-receive-an-error-when-i-try-to-create-a-new-sharepoint-online-site-based-on-a-site-template-created-in-sharepoint-foundation-or-sharepoint-server-HA102737442.aspx

The error in my case happens to be for reporting services that isn’t even used in the solution but even so is included in the WSP.

Lesson learnedOnly sites that are created in SharePoint Online can be migrated into SharePoint Online using the solutions gallery and web site template mechanism.

This will be a major challenge for anyone migrating an on-premises application to SharePoint Online and will require a lot of testing and manual hands-on stuff when doing so.