• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

This view of service management...

On the origin and the descent of managing services. We put meat on the bones.

  • Kanban eLearning
  • Services
    • Kanban Software Solutions
    • Consulting & Coaching
    • Training & Seminars
  • Posts
  • Events
    • Events – Agenda View
    • Events – Calendar View
    • International Service Management Calendar
  • Publications
    • Our Publications
    • Notable Publications
    • Quotes
  • About us

Configuration Management at Home

2 April 2014 by Robert Falkowitz Leave a Comment

About two months ago I acquired my third laptop in about six years. My first laptop started having a series of troubles on the day that I left for Hong Kong – and the day that volcano in Iceland erupted, causing the airspace in Europe to be closed for more than a week. It was extremely difficult to make travel arrangements to get home without a computer at hand.

Anyway, that laptop was in for repairs at least three times during the following year. I finally gave up when the hinge (and also the power switch) were broken in an airplane when the person in front of me suddenly reclined, catching my machine between the shelf that the top of the seat in front of me.

I replaced that laptop with one having a much sturdier and more rigid case, which eliminated many of the problems I had had with the first one. But it took me nearly a week to reconstruct the new machine, installing the software, getting all the plugins, migrating the data, migrating the software configurations, templates, etc. So I decided to keep scrupulous track of all the software and configuration changes on that laptop. I created my own CMDB for that purpose and recorded every single component installed and tracked all the versions, their upgrades, downgrades, and uninstalls. All configuration changes to the machine itself and the to the OS were also tracked.

There were nearly 1’000 changes made in two years of tracking. That worked out to several mythical man-days of effort to keep all that information recorded.

As my second laptop grew older, it tended more and more to overheat and to crash as a result. I started to use various cold packs to try to keep it operating, but this was extremely inconvenient. Video applications were the worst; a Google Hangout would crash the machine in about three minutes.

Prevented from doing my work correctly, I had to acquire a new machine. I was pretty much an expert in migrating to new machines by that time, so the whole process took about 2 days, plus the time required to back it up to my online backup services (and that takes forever, given my low speed ADSL connectivity). Then I asked myself if it were worth the trouble to manage the configuration of the machine with the same detail as the previous one.

In the end, I decided against it. I never had to use my CMDB to resolve any incidents. I never had to use it to confirm that a change, such as installing a new application, had all the prerequisites installed. I did not have to consult in migrating to my third laptop. I never had to consult it to manage any software licenses.  Of course, the needs for configuration management in an organization are quite different, so I am not recommending dispensing with a CMDB. But it turned out to be overkill for my work at home. Vive la différence !

Summary
Article Name
Configuration Management at Home
Description
Management IT configurations in home installations
Author
Robert S. Falkowitz
Publisher Name
Concentric Circle Consulting
Publisher Logo
Concentric Circle Consulting

Filed Under: Configuration management Tagged With: at home, CMDB, configuration management, laptop, overheating

Subscribe to our mailing list

Click here to be the first to learn of our events and publications
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Phone
  • Twitter
  • xing
  • YouTube

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Kanban eLearning

Kanban training online

Recent Posts

  • The Three Indicators
  • Visualization of Configurations
  • How to increase visualization maturity

Tag Cloud

priority lean management Cost of Delay incident kanban board flow cause adaptive case management context switching ITIL process metrics lean automation knowledge work service request problem statistical control chart value stream service management tools change control manifesto change management knowledge management kanban flow efficiency process definition incident management tools waste service manager rigidity manifesto for software development Incident Management agility impact risk bias Service Management urgency agile resource liquidity
  • Kanban eLearning
  • Services
  • Posts
  • Events
  • Publications
  • Subscribe
  • Rights & Duties
  • Personal Data

© 2014–2021 Concentric Circle Consulting · All Rights Reserved.
Concentric Circle Consulting Address
Log in