Jowo’s Loony Plate
My brother’s reaction to this plate–”You always said you don’t like the funny plates”–deserves some comment.
Archive for the 'Bureaucratic Whimsy' Category
I spent a career as a gummint bureaucrat. I have stories.
Most identities are disguised for all the usual reasons. Some details have been elided or adjusted for similar purposes.
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Filed under
Bureaucratic Whimsy
Life's Stories
Rant
Posted on
April 12th 2004
(in)Frequent Meetings
Worth a look: Jeanene Sessum , who’s still figuring out what she’s about, finds herself in a client’s conference room, remembers when meetings dominated of her days, compares the experiences, then talks about perspectives. And cookies. Wonderful stuff.
Filed under Bureaucratic Whimsy Posted on April 8th 2004
Bottleneck
Alice and I giggled at her. We three live in this space. And we all take blood pressure meds.
Filed under Bureaucratic Whimsy Posted on March 31st 2004
The Joy of Numbers
Except that the consistency is, itself, interesting. This program took about three months to ramp up, but found its natural customer base very quickly and they’re very loyal to it. We offer a half-dozen ways to handle renewal transactions, and all of the others generate more income, but for this one set of customers we’ve found the right way to interact. That’s interesting, and worth knowing.
Filed under Bureaucratic Whimsy Posted on March 31st 2004
Margie Wins One
IT’s renewal policy clearly assumes all contractual relationships are inherently unstable. The short-cycle renewal process assures that we’ve got current information about the actual staffers supporting our products. I’ve known support teams where such caution was appropriate, but such precautions are not always appropriate. Margie’s case was that the policy needs more nuance, and she convinced ‘em. How this will work out for the rest of IT’s customers remains to be seen, but she’s got a commitment through the end of our vendor’s contract. Good work.
Filed under Bureaucratic Whimsy Posted on March 29th 2004
UCE: gone?
They haven’t told us about it, but about a week ago IT apparently put a spam filter on our email system. I know this because only one piece of true junk made it to my mailbox last week–down from 80 or so the week before. I certainly don’t miss the unsolicited mail, but I’m a little wary because I don’t know how the filter works, and I don’t know what mail it stops. Odds are pretty good I’ve been cut off from some email source I value–but who knows what that is? I’m a little concerned, as I said, but apparently not enough to follow up….
Filed under Bureaucratic Whimsy Posted on March 29th 2004
Stitchings
It’s an unholy mess, but we make progress. I wouldn’t say we’ve got a strategy, exactly, but we’ve got a consensus that we need to get to this place, and that there are tools which can help build the department we envision. We’ve made some mistakes. We’ve learned that you can’t just buy stuff and expect it automatically to work with everything else, and that IT’s not blind to the shortcomings of the legacy systems. Systems have both inertia and entropy, and neither ever works to our advantage. The endeavor’s worthwhile, and needs to be made. Our customers–Michigan’s citizens–deserve our best efforts.
Filed under
Bureaucratic Whimsy
Semi-Geekery
Posted on
March 25th 2004
Siebel Sorts
Meantime, we’re still waiting for upper management to decide how to implement the upgrade. We have a couple vendors’ bids in hand, neither of which is particularly attractive. We expect this to be resolved within a month. There’s every reason to expect my role to be reduced to Subject Matter Expert. That’s OK.
Filed under
Bureaucratic Whimsy
Life's Stories
Semi-Geekery
Posted on
March 24th 2004
From the Ground Up
In my experience, absolutely no bureaucractic entity (yuck, jowo–don’t talk like that!) is truly created from the ground up. There’s always an organizational context, a political context, legacy data, system integration issues, staffing issues–and it’s impossible (and rarely desirable) to remove those contexts and continuities from the new organization’s environment. On the other hand, the usual object is to move the organizational focus, which is nearly always gainful (and painful).
Filed under Bureaucratic Whimsy Posted on March 18th 2004
Deep inside Siebel
There’s something wonderful about the Siebel architecture. I’m pretty sure I don’t like Tom Siebel, and I’m generally hostile about his sales staff, but the product he sells is a delightful place to go (yes, I think of programming environments that way). Siebel Tools is a marvelous construction, both complicated and obvious; remarkably well thought out and well laid out. While the design approach is unexpected and very complex, the execution of the design is simply sweet.
Filed under
Bureaucratic Whimsy
Semi-Geekery
Posted on
February 26th 2004
