ITILV3 - Day 19

Continual Service Improvement  (CSI):

Metric

Metrics define WHAT is measured and HOW it is measured.

CSI needs to collect 3 types of metrics:

1 - Technology metrics measure components.
Feasable, ok.

2 - Process Metrics measure service management processes
I tried hard on that but I couldn't figure out what would be a a Process Metrics Measure. If you have any clue, please tell me.
3 - Service Metrics measure end-to-end servcie
Another item that I couldn't understand in full.

Conclusion
I can understand the WHAT and the HOW, but currently I couldn't say, really, if what I do in terms of measure is technology metrics, process metrics or service metrics.
Yeah, today was not a very good day of study. Sorry.

ITILV3 - Day 18

Continual Service Improvement (CSI):

Approach

1 - What is the vision? - Determine goals and objectives.
A brasilian poet, Ivan Junqueira, once said that europeans, germans in particular, have the habit of constructing a WELTBILD. Once this WELTBILD, this vision about things is built, they start march ahead without doubts. All of that because the have a WELTBILD very well defined.
Is this something that we already have total command? No. Unfortunately no.
But is never too late. Let's start in our generation to build this WELTBILD.

2 - Where are we now? - Assess current baseline.
In general people have no major difficult to understand where they are.

3 - Where do we want to be? - Define measurable targets.
This is the trick question. Good managers and directors are able to answer that.

4 - How do we get there? - Underpin according to service improvement plan.
OMG! More and more trick questions! Well you must be carefull on this matter. Are you going to gather a lot of o people and then decide what must be done, or only one person is capable of such chalenge? Both strategies are valid.

5 - Did we get there? - Gather measurement and metrics from Sercie Operation.
Huuummmm, I don't think somebody will have nerve to say somehting like "That's it! We made it!". Nowadays savoring success is almost a sin. But if I were you, and if I knew that that goals were achived I would say "We made it!" (yes, I'm in favor of savoring success)

6 - How do we keep the momentum going? - Assimilate the changes.
Now I'm gonna tell you something that we shock you. If you have the power to decide things, why don't start diminishing the turnover to a minimium. No, better, why don't you eliminate turn over for good?! THAT'S GONNA KEEP THE MOMENTUM GOING!!!!! AAAAHHHHRGGGGGG!!!!!

ITILV3 - Day 17

Configuration Management System (CMS)

CMS Characteristics:

1 - Stores data about all  the CIs and their relationships.
Huuummm. What does it mean "and their relationships"?  Tags, would be a valid relationship? For instance, if post a CIs, and I add I tag related to another CI. Would that be enough to consider that the relationships are done?

2 - Part of the larger Service Knowledge Management System (SKMS).
I should make a better research on that subject SKMS. I really can't see the difference between SKMS and CMS. Is SKMS a part of CMS?

3 - Stores configuration records in Configuration Management Databases (CMDBs).
Well, this is a good point. I think that there are some CMSs wich the content are not persisted in a database. So, following this idea, CMS not based on database persistence are not suitable. Is that it? Is my conclusion right?

4 - Contains information about problems, incidents, impact levels.
FAQs!

CMS that I know and recommend. Wordpress, Joomla and Sharepoint.

1000 YEARS ANNOYING THE FRENCH (+1 livro lido no kindle)

Mais um livro lido no kindle!
Se você é uma daquelas pessoas que só lê livros técnicos (um profissional de TI, for example), talvez fique interessado neste livro

Ele fala basicamente da eterna relação de amor e ódio entre ingleses e franceses. O livro conta a história desta inimizade através de uma série de fatos históricos os quais o francês ou inglês comum não conhecem.
É uma incursão em um mundo completamente diferente do nosso, mas contado em uma prosa leve e despretenciosa.
Nota para este livro: 10.
Estrelas para este livro: ***** (5).

Sobre o autor:
Stephen Clarke (nascido em 15 de Outubro de 1958 em St. Albans) é um autor britânico que vive e trabalha em Paris e tem declarado seu amor pela França através de declarações como: "Eu amo a França, porque aqui se trabalha para viver e não vice-versa". Com seu romance A Year in the Merde estabeleceu-o como um escritor de ficção usando a primeira pessoa na figura do narrador chamado Paul West. Seus romances retratam o estilo de vida francês a partir da perspectiva pessoal de um temporariamente alienado cavalheiro Inglês que tenta apenas se encaixar na sociedade francesa.

ITILV3 - Day 16

Configuration Item (CI)

A Configuration Item (CI) is any element (hardware, SLAs, software, services, facilities, or documentation) that is managed by Configuration management as part of the delivery of an IT service.
In other words, CI is everything. Chocolate, coffee, shades, telephones, iphone, paper clip, pens, pencils, erasers, lamp, tie they are all CI!

Any CI can be an element of multiple CIs simultaneously
OK.

Documenting the relationships between CIs assists with:
1 - Evaluating the impact and cause of incidents (feasable)
2 - Evaluating the impact of planned changes. (more or less)3 - Planning and design a service change (huuummmm, difficult)4 - Planning a software upgrade. (feasable)

The four items above seem to me almost impossible to implement if they are to be documented. You know, I alwasy think about Brazil context. Those 4 items seem to me very sophisticated techniques wich I don't believe brazilian companies will consider important to apply on daily basis. In the beggining ok, but thinking on long term, huuummmm, je ne crois pas.

Trabalhe naquilo que você gosta (huummmm... sei, tô entendendo)

Olha só.

Sabe aquela frase, "trabalhe naquilo que você gosta",  na qual está subentendida que se você trabalha em algo que não gosta você é um fracassado miserável? Há uma pequena emenda que deve ser feita nesta lei do "trabalhe naquilo que você gosta".

Se o seu é um trabalho solitário (escritor por exemplo), talvez este mantra "trabalhe naquilo que você gosta" seja uma verdade absoluta. Mas se o que você gosta de fazer exige interação com outras pessoas, daí é preciso ir um pouco além do mantra.

Trabalhe naquilo que você gosta, ok, mas não se sinta superior as outras pessoas que ainda não conseguiram isso. Pense que se todos fizéssemos apenas o que gostamos as sociedades humanas poderiam não ser viáveis. Pense no "DEXTER". Ele faz o que gosta, mas o que ele gosta não é lá muito bonito de se ver. E você acha que alguém gosta de desentupir bueiros? E você acha que alguém gosta de ficar consertado fios as três da manhã por causa de um temporal? E você acha que alguém gosta de ficar  rompendo concreto com uma britadeira durante horas e com isso ganhar todos os tipos de doenças? E ser mesário? Você acha que alguém gosta de ser mesário nas eleições? E dar aula em lugares cuja insalubridade é máxima? Você acha que alguém gosta disso?

Se cada pessoa no planeta fizesse só aquilo que gosta e que quer, tenho sérias dúvidas se a civilização humana duraria uma semana.

Então, na próxima vez que você ouvir esse mantra "trabalhe naquilo que você gosta", pense que a vida é um "pouquinho" mais complexa do que isso.

E por fim, eu diria para você, trabalhe naquilo que você gosta, mas se isso ainda não é possível, não se sinta a pior pessoa do mundo por causa disso. Aliás, aproveite para ir tomar um sorvete. Relaxe!

In fact, the French are the best globalizers in the world, even if they refuse to say so because they think the word is too English.

In fact, the French are the best globalizers in the world, even if they refuse to say so because they think the word is too English. They call globalization mondialisation, and if you ask the average French person what this means, he or she will cite McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Gap and Starbucks, and accuse the Anglo-Saxons of trying to controle the world economy. They will be surprised when you begin matching them name for name, with Carrefour, Perrier, Chanel, DAnone, l'Oréal, Louis Vuitton, Occictane and Renault, for example, as well as their big Champagne, fashion and perfume brands. Many French people just don't realize how spectacularly succesful their country is.
Trecho do livro 1000 YEARS ANNOYING THE FRENCH

ITILV3 - Day 15

Configuration Baseline

The configuration Baseline contains the initial approved specifications of multiple related configuration items - it is used by Change management as the basis (starting point) for all future changes.

A configuration baseline can be used to roll back the IT infrastructure to a known good configuration if a
change fails.

Not easy stuff, indeed. Imagine that you have a certain point of development life cycle wich you can go back whenever you want. Documents, databases, applications, machine configurations, network configurations. Imagine to maintain a snapshot that involves almost every aspect related to a certain technology development. Is it impossible? No, it is not. Is it hugely difficult? Yes it is. There should be a super tool that is cabpable of such task, but unfortunately i don't know any.

ITILV3 - Day 14

Change Types

Standard - pre-approved, low risk and common
Emergency - must be made as soon as possible
Normal - addition, modification, or elimination

The difference between standard and normal is not so easy to understand. But what I can tell you about those three types of change is that emergency must be always avoided. If every change is conducted as an emergency, very soon the building will be on fire. In this kind of enviroment, be sure you're using your kevlar clothes.

Profissionalismo!!!! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!!!

Oh, veja bem.

O significado de "ser profissional" em cada cultura é diferente. Estar no Brasil e querer cobrar um profissionalismo alemão das pessoas pode não ser lá uma boa idéia(experiência própria).

Então, antes de acusar alguém de não ser profissional, pense no contexto em que vivemos. Afinal o contexto brasileiro é diferente e único.

O profissionalismo é importante, mas antes de se irritar com alguma postura, pese os valores da empresa, pese o contexto brasileiro, e avalie a temperatura da situação.

Se você trabalha em uma empresa japonesa então faz sentido cobrar um certo tipo de profissionalismo, o qual não será 100% nipônico, pois estamos no Brasil. O mesmo vale para qualquer outra empresa "estrangeira".
E é isso. Profissionalismo, sim! Mas vá com calma :)

ITILV3 - Day 13

Change Roles, People, and Groups

All of the following are Change Roles, People, or Groups:

1 - Change Authority

2 - Change Manager
3 - Change Advisory Board (CAB)
We have this in the company I work

4 - Emergency Change Advisory Board (ECAB)
We have this in the company I work

The Change Authority provides formal approval for a specific kind of change.

The Change Advisory Board (CAB) is a group of people that review proposed changes, provide advice to
Change Management, and then aapprove or reject the change.
In Brazil, and in portuguese, we could call this "COMITÊ DE GEMUD"

The Emergency Change Advisory Board (ECAB) reviews emergeny changes that must be implemented quickly and don't have time to go through the formal change board approval process.

In the company I work, the change advisory board and the emergency change advisory board are the same group. I hope that this is not a violation of ITIL

There's no explanation about the change manager, but I think it is the change process itself. I know, my explanation didn't clarify this item  (sorry).

ITILV3 - Day 12

 Change Models

A change process model includes:

1 - Steps to be followed  (in order)

I use to write steps on my e-mails. Sometimes people don't like this method of communicate things, but it's very useful.
2 - Responsibilities - who does what -  
Well, this is more difficult to achieve. Let's be honest. How many times you found people  willing to take responsabilities? And how many times you found people experts in doging the bullet?
3 - Escalation procedures -
Be carefull with that. In general scalate is not a synonym of solution.  Frequently when you scalate a problem it gets worse.
4 - Measures of performance and quality -  
This is alwasy a "drama". Performance tools use to be very expensive, so the measures use to be mannual, therefore innacurate.

5 - Timeframe for step completio.
I know few project managers able to planned a timeframe and accomplish what was scheduled. But it's no impossilbe, ok?

ITILV3 - Day 11

Change Management

Change Management process goals
1. Understand the impact of the changes.
Difficult task. It takes a lot of time and effort and a certain kind of talent.

2. Use standard methods and procedures.
What would be the standard methods? Is it the methods that company already has or the market standards?

3. Record changes to service assets and configuration items in the Configuration Management System (CMS)
This is really important! Record, or writing in general, is a habit we brasilians do not have. People are not accostumed to write FAQ's, for example.
In the "Microsfot world", the most popular CMS is sharepoint. But CMS like Wordpress and Joomla are also easy ways of keeping records of change.

The Change Management Process Owner is responsible for defining:
Key Performance Indicators (KPIS)
Change Management metrics

ITILV3 - Day 10

Change

Service Change is the supplementation, alteration or deletion of anything that affects IT services or components

Changes are made proactively to reduce costs and/or to improve service

Changes are made reactively to fix a service interruption or to modify the service to accommodate changes in the environment

ITILV3 - Day 9

Capacity Management Information System (CMIS)

Service capacity and performance data is stored in a Capacity Management Information System (CMIS).

Information sotred in the CMIS supports the Capacity Management process by predicting current and future IT service volume.

======================================================================

The information above is too generic. Let's see what I've found about TeamQuest CMIS

 •Reduces time to resolve cross-silo problems, with vendor-agnostic solution for physical servers, virtual servers, and storage systems.

•Performance data management perfect for both high-level dashboards and detailed analysis, efficiently facilitating high-level business service drill-down to detailed data.

•Analyze performance and capacity through all the tiers of your computing infrastructure, from services and applications all the way to your underlying storage systems.

•Reliably and accurately measures production applications in real-time with extremely low overhead; capable of collecting and managing more detail, more efficiently.

•Frees staffing resources from the need to maintain multiple, disparate data repositories, by providing one virtual performance database with everything you need.

•Grows with you and your infrastructure, with a scalable distributed architecture and policy-based administration.

•Delivers information in a form that is meaningful to business and IT managers, determining what portion of each IT resource is contributing to each business or IT service, and managing financial and business process performance together with IT infrastructure performance.
Are all claims true? Maybe, but I liked the perspective of an applicaton or system that is able to do all of those things above.

ITILV3 - Day 8

Capacity Management

Goal: Ensure that service capacity is enough to meet the needs of the customer both now and in the future at an acceptable cost.

Capacity Mangement includes three subprocesses:

1 - Business capacity management - I don't understand this item as a IT assignment

2 - Service capacity management

3 - Component capacity management - Is it possible to differentiate Servcie capacity from Component capacity?

Capacity Management uses input from Demand Mangement to determine what services are required.

From who comes Demand Managment?

ITILV3 - Day 7

Business Case

A business Case is used to make a decision regarding whether or not to support a business project, action, or task.

When is it used?
To justify a significant expenditure

What does it include?
Cost, benefits, options, and risks

======================

When it comes to Brazil, I believe that business cases are already very common, but the results are seldom disclosed to public domain. Why was it approved? Why was it rejected?

ITILV3 - Day 6

Availability Management

Availability Management is responsible for meeting the IT Service availability requirements as stated in the
Service Level Agreement (SLA).

Availability Management Proactive Activities:
1 - Identify vital business functions (VBFs) - ok
2 - Design availability - What does it mean? Design process to be executed when something goes wrong?3 - Risk assessment - This can be very annoying. People tend to list thousands of risks, but they never have the possible solution to them.

Availability Management Reactive Activities
1 - Analyze and measure - I'm sorry but these two actions can be applied to everything. And in what planet is analyse a reactive action?

2 - Monitor and report - Is this a reactive activity? Are you sure?3 - Failure and unavailability analysis.

ITILV3 - Day 5

Automation

Best practice: Automate simple processes that are well understood.

Service Management areas that use automation effectively:

1 - Event Detection
Didn't get it.

2 - Design
Automation in design is really important and really feasable. As an example of automation I would point out the team foundation system(microsoft), Cruise Control (open source), Jenkins (open source), and other already well known tools.

3 - Trend analysis
I don't know any company in Brasil that has a departament that deals with trend analysis. It mus exist, of course, but I never knew one.

4 - Reporting
Well, automation in reporting is mainly blocked by endusers who demand constant customization. Automation and customization are two processes that rarely go together.

And that's all folks.

Leonard Nimoy does a William Shatner Impression on Hero Complex: The Sh...

ITILV3 - Day 4

Application Management

Goal: Make sure that the application has the necessary functionality to satisfy the businesse requirements.
Man, sometimes ITIL seems to me the science of the obvious....

Application Management  responsibilities:

1 - Control the entire application lifecycle.
Really? Ok, ok. let's not be so harsh on ITIL. In Brasil controlling is not someting we already master. But I think it's perfectly possible to achieve this item.

2 - Decide whether to build or buy.
Whenever I hear this question,"build or buy?". There is a lot of people that tend to think that buy is always better than build.

Build
More dificult, indeed
You'll have to hire programmers or outsorce the development.
Find out requests, testing, fight with end users(some times...) and etc...
To build chez nous, we have to have knowhow and competence (two things that are becoming endangered species)

Buy
Outsorce your headache.
"You'll have a product that will fullfill all your desires" (irony)

My advice. Don't gather a crowd to decide something like that. 3 peoples, maximum, must be able to decide such important thing like that. After all, companies are not democracies, ok?

3 - Design and test application
If you decide to build, you're gonna have to design and test. In my experience the most dificult thing, at least for us brasilians, is the testing stuff. We have serious problems when it come sto test things. Why? An anthropologist could discuss this matter more accurately than me.

ITILV3 - Day 3

Man, this haven't been a very good day, but let's move on.

Today the subject is very obvious.

Alert

An alert is a notification that:

1 - A set threshold value has been reached.
It means, I think, that when something bad is about to happen you have to find out a way to notify people involved.

2 - Something changed.
Let's assume that we are talking about a process. Every time a process changes, somebody has to be notified. Well, in Brasil, there will be a myriad of e-mails. Obama thinks that "he can change", we brasilians not only know that we can change but we use to change our processes every single day!

4 - Something failed.
No comments are necessary about this item.

That's all.

PS: Not very inspired today.

ITILV3 - Day 2

Access Management

Two major concepts: Identity and Rights

Access Management activities

1 - Grant the rights to access information or use services.

2 - Remove the rights to access information or use services.

3 - Manage the rights to access information or use services.

This is very intersting. But when it comes to services (I mean webservice for example),  the controlling of who can access what is not trivial at all. And the management of these rights can become a major headache. It's OK to say that we have to have total control of services access, but in daily basis, this activity consumes a lot of time and money.

Access Management is similar to two other processes:

1 - Information Security Managemement.

2 - Availability Management.
This makes no sense to me. What does it mean?

ITILV3 - Day 1

This is a study conducted by myself and for myself.

7 - Step improvement process.

Step 1 - Identify the strategy for improvement.
For me, the first step would be identify the problem. But then I realized that those are steps of improvement. I this fase of the process you already identified the problem. At least that's what I understood. Maybe I'm wrong.

Step 2 - Define what you will measure.
Again, for me, this should be step 1, but I'm not the owner of ITIL so, let's follow the "book".

Step 3 - Gather the data (measure)
Huummm, for me this should be step 2.

Step 4 - Process the data.
What does it mean, specifically?

Step 5 - Analyze the information and data.
OK.

Step 6 - Present and use the information.
To who are we going to present the information?

Step 7 - Implement improvement.
OK.

The order I think would be more reasonable is :

Define
Identify
Gather
Process
Analyze
Present
Implement

But the actual order is

1 - Identify
2 - Define
3 - Gather
4 - Process
5 - Analyze
6 - Present
7 - Implement

Going further, I could do something like that:

Id - De - Ga - Pro - Ana - Pre - Imp.

And for today, we are done!

JMeter - requisição SOAP/XML-RPC

Talvez você nunca tenha usado o JMeter. Então a primeira coisa que você tem que saber é que ele não é uma ferramenta exclusiva do mundo JAVA.
Se a arquitetura da sua empresa é baseada em serviços, você poderá utilizar o JMeter para testá-los. Não importa se eles estão feitos em .Net, Java, PHP, ou se estão hospedados no Websphere ou no IIS.

Aqui um pequeno exemplo de como fazer uma chamada SOAP/XML-RPC

JMeter  (http://jmeter.apache.org)
Exemplo de requisição SOAP/XML-RPC
Nome: [Nome da requisição]
URL: http[s]://hanabi.madadayo.com
Enviar ação SOAP: [aqui é o endereço soap]
====================================================================================
Para conseguir este valor é necessário adicionar uma requisição (SOAP)
Preencher o WSDL URL -> Ao carregar o WSDL, aparecerção os Web Methods.
Na linha do Web Methods, clique em configurar.
Na caixa texto do ação SOAP aparecerá algo como http://www.madadayo.com.br/tempura/misoshiro/IGohan/fazerPedido
====================================================================================
Dados SOAP/XML-RPC
[Aqui você coloca a requisição]
<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:v1="http://www.madadayo.com.br/tempura/misoshiro/v1" xmlns:arr="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/Arrays">
<soapenv:Header>
     [Seu Header]
  </soapenv:Header>
   <soapenv:Body>
     [Corpo da sua requisição]
   </soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>
===========================================================================================
Para descobrir o formato da requisição do serviço indico esta ferramenta
http://www.soapui.org/
SOAP UI by smartbear.

NOLOCK - Como é que é mesmo?

Vez por outra tenho essa dúvida

Sybase
SELECT * FROM [TABELA] NOLOCK

SQLServer
SELECT * FROM [TABELA_NOME] WITH (NOLOCK)

MySQL
SET SESSION TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL READ UNCOMMITTED ;
SELECT * FROM [TABELA_NOME];
SET SESSION TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL REPEATABLE READ ;

Oracle
No oracle quem lê não bloqueia quem escreve e vice versa. Este bloqueio é que obriga no SQLServer, MySQL e Sybase a utilizar o artifício do NOLOCK ou READ UNCOMMITTED.

Obs: Talvez já existam versões de Sybase, SQLServer e MySQL que não precisam mais de artifício para fazer o que o Oracle faz. Mas no momento desconheço tais versões. OK?

E HÁ!

Star Wars - The Old Republic - Movie

HBO's "Game of Thrones" - George R.R. Martin Interview with Walt Mossberg