Jan29
Well, I started this three part post back in September, then got caught up in other things, and never quite got around to finishing it. I thought for a while of taking the Douglas Adams approach to trilogies: “Check out these two blog posts, giving a whole new meaning to the term ‘Three Part Series.’” However, finding myself to be a posterchild for the Language Action Perspective, I felt that...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on
Friday, 29 Jan 2010 11:41.
Jan27
I’ve attended a couple Microsoft Project 2010 events as of late, but of yet, I haven’t seen this functionality getting much play. On first glance, I think this could be one of the most compelling new features added to Project: the task level Active field.
Usage Scenarios
Scenario #1: The project manager has been requested to calculate the cost and schedule impact of a potential change order....
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on
Wednesday, 27 Jan 2010 07:58.
Jan26
The ITSMf Houston mailing list autospammed me the other day inviting me to an interesting upcoming event on Service Portfolios presented by Reginald Best, a Deloitte consultant - and if my memory doesn’t fail me from a brief conversation in Austin two years ago, a fellow Buckeye-in-exile.
The event is on 2/11 and will be at the BMC offices in Westchase. Free event, free food, good content. I...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on
Tuesday, 26 Jan 2010 06:53.
Jan25
I’ve had a couple of ITIL conversations as of late…mostly centering around the question of what exactly it is. I’ve given the standard response as to British government best practices on IT operations supported by a vibrant collection of user groups around the world. That never seemed to resonate.
Then I was chatting with an ex-oilfield equipment sales representative, and I was trying to fin...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on
Monday, 25 Jan 2010 06:59.
Jan21
Continuing with the BI thread, I was demoing dynamic reporting using SharePoint 2010 Visio Services during a recent Project Server BI spiel in Houston. What struck me with the crowd, which was primarily from the oil and gas industry, was the interest in the Visio timeline. I must admit, having used Microsoft Project for so long, I kinda forgot how many folks still use the Visio timeline view ...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on
Thursday, 21 Jan 2010 01:12.
Jan19
This is another posting from our BI presentations last week in Houston and Dallas. This is the first part of creating a dynamic Visio report, with the second part coming out later this week. For that post, I plan to tackle the question of creating a dynamic Visio timeline linked to project data. In the meantime, this is the prerequisite information on how to modify the Office Data Connector ...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on
Tuesday, 19 Jan 2010 06:45.
Jan18
Thanks to everyone for turning out to the Project Server 2010 BI Reporting presentations we did this week at the Microsoft offices in Dallas and Houston. As per request, I am posting the slide deck of the Houston delivery (which has only several minor modifications from the Dallas version):
PDF Version
If you’d like to chat about the presentation or arrange an on-line presentation for coll...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on
Monday, 18 Jan 2010 10:09.
Jan16
From the RedMonk Blog comes the the Operations Unconference, OpsCamp, in Austin on 1/30.
…where attendees propose, discuss and debate issues related to operations and monitoring. Proposed topics include Automation, Monitoring, Configuration Management, Cloud Technologies, Agile Infrastructure, DevOps, Infrastructure as Code, ITSM/BSM or Visible Ops.
http://www.opscamp.org/austin/2010-01-30
...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on
Saturday, 16 Jan 2010 07:10.
Jan16
Saw this on Clarke Ching’s blog, and yep, it’s true. Tony Rizzo is giving away copies of their single project Critical Chain add-in to MS Project:
http://www.pdinstitute.com/AllFramePages/FP_Critical_Chain_Software.html
Get ‘em while they’re hot. Note that as far as I can tell, the requirement is that you install the 30 day trial version of the multi-project add-in (cc-mPulse) to get the si...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on
Saturday, 16 Jan 2010 07:08.
Jan12
One of the top client requests I often see is document automation. Many clients have bits and pieces of reusable content that they wish to automatically populate into PowerPoint or Word documents. Ira Brown of Project Widgets did an impressive webinar the other day on using macros to automatically move data from MPP files to Office files. Continuing on the BI thread this week, here’s how you...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on
Tuesday, 12 Jan 2010 07:40.