The secret life of gear

Minimalism is is and isn't isn't.

ITIL seminar

ITIL seminar this week. The material is looking pretty good - better than just reading the ITIL docs - as having a sense of business context makes some of the more dubious ITIL verbiage a little clearer on the reality side. Certification exam is set for Friday.

Artifactual

Today we started taking a look at IM's collection of docs. We'll be getting these sorted and put into a matrix of CMMI subpractices as artifacts. What I'm thinking is that an excel spreadsheet is a horrible way to do this, even in the short term, but it's a lower barrier to entry. • Definitely am going to have to figure out a way to make an intranet type resource, dynamic (web server) or not (web pages in a directory). Hopefully this will either be a satisfactory solution, or it will provide a starting point for making a move into a proper set of web apps.

Solar

Spent some time taking a look at the next three months. Looks like the timeframe for net-centricity is stretching out to be a long-haul initiative. • I think that at this point we're more interested in the as-is, so that if/when (?) we get around to the to-be, the customer will be able to make decisions based on a reliable impact analysis. • At any rate, we're now part of the EAC. Still waiting to get our project listed, and then we'll be on our way.

Time warp

Jomox T-Resonator came in the post today. Didn't get a chance to try it out yet. Photos and demo mp3s within 24 hours. [Well.. too tired to get to it yesterday -- still trying to figure out a comfortable setup for the gear, and need to wire everything to the mixer.]

Time for less R & more D

Applied for an enterprise architecture (EA) project to be created on the client's overarching 'EA central' environment. This 'EAC', as I will refer to it, is intended to coalesce the EAs from many organizations within the client's larger organization of which the client is a member. Coalesce, meaning to begin a process of sharing architecture features, forming common data definitions, encouraging reuse, etc. I'm beating around the bush with names here, because I don't think I should use the real names in a public blog. Anyway, we're pretty sure the EA we create will become our CMDB at least in terms of allowing the client to see which people/processes/tools will be affected by any changes in the organization during impact analysis. Not only that, but it will form a large part of the Process Asset Library (PAL) via a huge collection of OV-5s. I am going to be the EA's Chief Architect, which is a slight honor. Everyone joked that they only agreed to that because if something went wrong, I'd be the one to get in trouble. Hooray.

The final three months of the first contract term are here and planning begins today. I need to rework our informal DoDAF OV/SV hybrid to reflect the fact that our CMMI PAL will actually be a conglomeration of applications. What will happen, we're expecting, is that these apps will be stitched together so that they appear to be a single source by making a browsable front-end. So, the serious systems integration tasks are right around the corner. I'll post the OV/SV thing when I'm done - it is generic enough to publicize and I think it would be interesting to other systems engineers involved in ITIL, CMMI, and DoDAF.

Woodworking

Made a new home for 01v.