chrsburr's WebLog

So Long, this blog is officially closed

2005-08-15T19:15:00Z

I have been quiet for quite some time and I apologize to both of my readers for going dark. I have moved on to a new position as Product Unit Manager of the MSN Internet Access Engineering team, this is an exciting new role but I'll talk about it more when I start posting to my new blog at http://spaces.msn.com/members/msniaandme/. The purpose of this entry is to close the book on the last 4 years of my career.

What an incredible 4 years it was. When I joined what was then called the Windows Integrated Scenarios Test team our vision was that we would replicate customer environments (to the server) and run thousands of test cases against those environments. While we were somewhat successful at this we quickly learned that there was a better way to achieve the same or even more significant results. We changed our name to the Enterprise Engineering Center (EEC), built a big beautiful lab and began to focus on working closely with customers by bringing them to Redmond. When customers came to the EEC we built replicas of their environment and tested side by side with them. This was a great success for the EEC and Microsoft as we learned so much from our customers. Customers also benefited because they were able to work through deployment snags and get help from the people who designed and built our products. The EEC is as strong as ever and will continue to be for a long time to come.

This entry however is really an opportunity for me to thank our customers for teaching me so much. Not only did I learn a ton about our products and how they are deployed but working closely with customers also changed my whole outlook on what it takes to develop a product that meet customers needs. I plan to take these learnings with me to my new group and deliver products and services that not only satisfy but delight our customers! So to the hundreds of customers that have visited us over the past couple of years, THANKS!

So Long!

Fingerprint Reader - Thanks for the inspiration

2005-03-02T05:30:00Z

So I’ve had my fingerprint reader for a while now, it’s been pretty useful and I find many more uses for it everyday (seems to have no effect when I point it passing cars). However I have to say that after reading TBB’s post about the LED being on 24x7 I couldn’t stop staring at the darn thing and had to turn it upside down while it’s not in use. Thanks TBB J!

On the bright side the little red lasers (ok LEDs) blaring in my eyes got me thinking about getting Lasix surgery again. I have been considering doing this for a long time but never really got past the early procrastination stage. This time however I decided the go through with it and had the “treatment” done last week. While this procedure worked great for me I’ll stop short of recommending it because it is not without risks.

The procedure was pretty uneventful but my wife and kids swear that they could see smoke coming out of my eyes as the laser did it’s magic, I guess I am not surprised because I could smell burning hair (I guess burning eyeball and burning hair smell the same). The laser time is about 30 seconds per eye and the surgeon spends about a minute slicing open your cornea and putting in back in place when the laser is done. The procedure doesn’t hurt at all. Next day I was seeing 20/20 and except for a few halos around lights at night (which will go away) all is well.

So here’s to the fingerprint reader and it’s persistent little LEDs, thanks for the inspiration.

Microsoft Fingerprint Reader

2005-02-03T15:56:00Z

The other day I heard a strange series of noises coming from Bryce’s office so I popped in to take a look. Turns out he was messing around with his new Microsoft Fingerprint Reader, looked super cool. Bryce had a second one that he “loaned” me so I could try it out too. Since I always strive to be as “cool” as Bryce I jumped on the opportunity.

I hooked up the device and quickly had it reading my fingerprint, set up as easy and while I really appreciate the ability to take an imprint of all 10 fingers, I figured two would be enough especially since I don’t spend too much time playing with powertools these days.

Mapping fingerprints to logins was a snap, I did this for several web sites that require credentials as well as my email requires credentials cause I use (RPC over HTTP). All was good. I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t use this device login or unlock my computer but I find it quite useful anyway. Turns out however if you use fast user switching, which I do on machines at home, the reader can be used to switch users based on fingerprint. I haven’t tried this yet because all my machines at work are domain joined.

Later that day Ken stopped by and noticed the device took a careful look at this and said “I bet I could crack this”. I quickly put my hands under my desk and said, “yeah I’ll be watching my fingers carefully, and by the way no knives allowed at work!” but Ken (being the creative genius he is) had other ideas (clearly he watches CSI)., something about lifting a print and latex, etc.. Ken loves a challenge so I wouldn’t be surprised to see him attempting to lift a print from my reader sometime in the near future. I am however still secure because my machine is locked and can’t be unlocked with the reader and the settings that are necessary to map the are safely secure behind a gold old fashioned password.

Spyware and my sons’ machine

2005-01-26T05:39:00Z

For several weeks (ok probably months) my son has been complaining that his machine being slow and I have been planning on rebuilding it. I typically do this once or twice a year because he downloads and installs so much sludge that it’s nice to give the machine a fresh start.

So last weekend I decide it’s time to take the plunge but before doing so I decided to look around at his machine and get a sense of what he is up to. I’ll tell you, his web browsing experience was horrible, it felt like dial up. I didn’t know why the machine was performing so poorly but I had read about our Anti Spyware product in someones blog so I decided to give it a try.

I downloaded beta 1 and let it rip, I stepped out for a couple of hours and upon returning was shocked to find that 32 spyware programs were found on the machine! Some were rated as more critical threats than others but I decided that since I was probably going to rebuild the box anyway I’d just clean them all.

Cleaning took a long time, but upon completion I immediately noticed much better performance on the machine, so much better in fact that I didn’t rebuild the machine. My son is says, "it’s like getting a new machine".

I realize that spyware can be malicious especially since my son runs as admin and he has basically granted unknown code the right to do anything it wants on his machine, scary enough. But in this case none of the actual spyware programs were really malicious but the shear volume of programs running had brought this machine to its knees.

Morale to the story is to run some type of anti spyware program as soon as you can. Microsoft’s version can be found here.

My blog is sick, but it ain't dead

2005-01-17T19:06:00Z

If you have read my blog of late you’ve probably noticed that I haven’t exactly set the world on fire with riveting content. There are a few reasons (excuses). First and foremost I am not a very interesting person or at least don't have a lot of interesting things to say. Secondly I am not much of a writer and finally my series of blog entries on values has been much more difficult for me to write than I ever anticipated. In fact I have taken a fascinating and powerful process and managed to make it seem boring and pointless.

That said, I won’t give up and will not let this blog die. Bear with me.

Setting Shared Values – Step 1

2005-01-07T05:22:00Z

Please note that while this process worked for my team, I am not implying that this is a best practice. Instead I am simply documenting our experiences with this exercise.

I guess the first thing that you should do is read or listen to Managing by Values by Ken Blanchard and Michael O’Connor. While a brief read, this book gives you a good framework for walking through the process of setting shared values and gives you some insight into what you might expect from your people. Keep in mind though that once you get your team rolling on this you’ll find that the process is rather organic and your team will likely go off in directions that you didn’t anticipate. Let this happen, it’s kind of fun to watch.

After reading the book the next thing that you need to do is create “discussion groups”. These groups should be around 8 people in size, I’ll use a hypothetical group of 32 as I document this process because the math is easy.

Here are some things to think about when creating groups.

In order to create the right groups you need to know your people pretty well, if you don't then you'll have to get help from your managers in setting up groups.
Each group should have a nice mix of managers and individuals as well as quiet and vocal people. Ideally if you have a manager who is strong willed or vocal you would match them up with your must courageous and vocal person so that their penchant for dominating discussions can be offset.
While this won’t be completely unavoidable try to limit the number of manager/direct report pairs in your groups.
Realize that groups will merge as you work through this process so group balance is important. If for example group 1 is extremely strong willed and vocal but group 2 is quiet and weak then group 1 will dominate discussions and group 2 will feel that they are not really part of the shared values process.
Groups of 8 need to be further divided into duos, then quads. When setting up duos, never have a manager paired with someone in their organization.
Each of these four groups will have a group leader. Ideally this leader won’t be a manager but someone who naturally steps to the head of the team due to natural leadership skills. Don’t earmark a group leader until the discussions get rolling because you might be surprised who steps up. Instead just structure your groups so that there is a person who you expect to step up in each group. As you observe discussions you may be surprised as to who took a leadership role, I certainly was.

Now that you have your groups set the next thing to do is schedule group meetings get this process rolling. Frankly this is the step where I have struggled the most but in my next entry I’ll at least be able to talk about some of the mistakes that I have made.

Setting Shared Values – Step 0

2004-12-16T20:37:00Z

In my last post I promised to outline the process that our team went through in setting and attempting to live by shared values. However in thinking about writing this I came to the conclusion that there are a few things that need to be in place before undertaking this exercise, so I’ll start there.

Your team must be behind you. Before beginning this exercise it is important that a significant number of team members are willing to follow you, even though they might be skeptical about what you are about to undertake. This isn’t to say that your team needs to be blindly loyal but you’ll need some slack because there will be plenty of doubt from the masses as this will this exercise will be unlike anything they have ever done.

You must already have set a clear vision for your team. Without a clear vision and clear goals setting values really won’t help. Make sure that each and every person in your org understands your vision as well as you do. There may be times when your vision is not clear, if this is the case be real, don’t try to sell a cloudy vision or a vision that you don’t believe in.

Your leaders must be committed - This exercise will take some time. For a team of 44 we spent 5 hours per person in meetings. In addition as the process gains steam there will be plenty of hallway conversations and additional ad hoc meetings. The leaders in your org must allow this to happen and understand that they may lose a bit of productivity for a month or so.

Your leaders must be humble – When we went through this process we made the decision to ask all leaders and managers to participate in the exercise. At the time I felt that this was the only way to make it stick. I was wrong about this because the people who steps up and drove this exercise were generally not the people who I looked to for leadership (this changed as I watched them during this exercise). The leaders in your org must be humble enough to participate at a peer level with all individuals on the team while not dominating the process.

Don’t plan to control this process – When we started this process we initially thought that I would be driving and controlling it, however we quickly learned that this was simply not going to happen because the discussion groups took care of themselves. I was quickly relegated to scheduling meetings then staying out of the way. This was an exercise “of the people” which is one of the reasons it was so successful

On building a team

2004-12-15T21:21:00Z

I have been struggling to come up with something interesting to talk about in this weeks post but when I read Ken Hiatt latest post @ http://blogs.msdn.com/kenhiatt, I was inspired and began to look at things a bit differently.

The first thing I realized was that an interesting blog entry does not have to be about technology. This realization helps me quite a bit because while I hate to admit it my days of being a techno-geek are pretty much over. Don’t get me wrong I still have surface knowledge about more things than the average person; it’s just that I don’t have enough depth about any particular product or technology to write a lot compelling blog posts.

The second thing I realized is that while my posts won’t be technology based there are interesting aspects of my job as a middle manager that if explained properly could be at least entertaining and at times maybe even useful to some.

My final realization from Ken’s post is that our efforts to become a true team have been successful. I get to see teamwork happening every day but to hear a team member say that “this is the best “TEAM” that I’ve ever worked with” means a lot to me.

Building a truly cohesive team has been a trial and error effort for us but I believe that we found the final magic ingredient about this time last year. For the longest time I believed that clear vision, goal alignment and clear and consistent communication were all you needed to achieve optimal team health. One day however I read a book called Managing By Values written by Ken Blanchard and Michael O’Connor and realized that it’s not just what you accomplish that is important but how you behave while accomplishing something is even more important.

In the next few posts I’ll talk about how we came up with shared values, how we are learning to live by our shared values and also attempt to illustrate some of the subtle (and not so subtle) differences living by values have made. I hope someone finds this interesting.

Bloggers - they're everywhere

2004-12-11T03:26:00Z

Boy have things changed for our team over the last few months! As late as September we had a total of 0 blogs and many people secretly wondered what this whole blogging thing is about. Today however there are at least 7 blogs and at least 10 people who are contributing content. This is pretty cool for a team of a <40 people.

If I look across the hall from me I see Linda Apsley who is frequent contributor to the MWCC (Microsoft Windows Customer Connection) Weblog. Right next door is Bryce Milton who not only started the EEC team weblog, but also maintains his own weblog. A couple of doors down sits Jeremy Collins who has just launched his personal blog. Matt Wagner and John Cressey sit right around the corner from Jeremy. Matt has created a personal blog, John has just launched his EEC Lab Team Blog. Across the hall from Matt and John sits Mike Langowski who started the MWCC team blog. At the far end of my hall you’ll find Jeff Swift who is also a frequent contributor to the EEC team blog and And last but not least way down in the corner of our building sits Ken Hiatt who has launched his personal blog, which is appropriately titled “The Far Corner of the EEC”.

Blogging seems to be pretty addictive, in fact I sit wondering why I am writing this but I just can’t seem to stop. I guess the illusion that someone out there cares what we have to say is enough to keep the posts coming.

EEC Tour Video on Channel 9

2004-12-01T05:14:00Z

The much anticipated (at least by me) video tour of the Enterprise Engineering Center is now up on channel9. Jeremy Collins and Scott Napolitan were gracious enough to do the walking tour and Robert Scoble of course was behind the camera. Good stuff, worth watching for those who are curious about what it is the EEC does.

An interesting day of meetings

2004-11-23T04:47:00Z

Today I spent several hours meetings. This is a common occurrence for me but today was a little different. The meetings were about Quality, Community, Accountability and value proposition, pretty standard topics around here and generally the thinking around these topics has been focused on better engineering for some time now. However, positive change seems to be afoot as the customer was at the heart of the all new initiatives that were proposed. The themes were;

Quality - Drive quality into the planning and design phase of our product cycle and allow customers to validate our plans.

Community - Drive developers, testers and PMs into the community so that we can not only help our customers but learn from them as well.

Value Proposition - Ensure that the marketing value proposition is understood and accepted by the customer and the development teams.

Accountability - We are accountable to our customers.

I don't know what will happen with some of these initiatives (except community cause my teams owns this for Windows Server) but its great to see that we are serious about taking customer focus to the next level.

My favorite office prank

2004-11-16T05:41:00Z

At Microsoft window offices are handed out strictly based on years of service at the company. Years ago when I was on the Publisher team we had a guy named Randy who was the next in line to get a window. For several months Randy remained the next in line but each time Randy was just about to have his office move scheduled we would hire someone else who had been with the company longer than he had and thus prevent him from acquiring the window office that he so desperately wanted.

After many months the time came when Randy was in fact scheduled to move into his Window office. Randy however made a huge mistake, he took a vacation the week of his move!!

I don't remember whose idea it was to do this but a bunch us got together to plan a prank to eliminate Randy's window. We thought about removing the door and sheet rocking over the office but we didn't think we were quite qualified to pull this off. Instead we decided that we would simply eliminate the window. That evening we went down to the local Home Depot, purchased a few supplies, got some beer and pizzas and went to work. By the end of the night you would have never known that there was ever a window in the office.

Randy came in the on the Monday following his vacation, sat down in his chair, put his head on his desk and simply said "<a word I can't post here>" and went about his business while we laughed our buts off. He was a great sport about it, left the wall up and didn't even flinch (too much) when people walked in to his office and said "hey nice view" or "boy I bet that fountain would look cool from here". We stayed in that building (building 25) for several more months and when we finally moved to another building we left the former window office for facilities to deal with. The best part about our move though was that our new office space had fewer window offices available and old Randy still didn't get his window.

Randy is in a window now but some days, when I am feeling nostalgic, I think about getting the old team together and repeating our prank just to remind old Randy that we haven't forgot the fact that he attempted (a lame attempt at that) to get revenge during our move to building 17. His utter failure was hilarious but I guess that's for another entry.

Halo 2

2004-11-09T20:22:00Z

I Don't have an overall impression of the game yet cause I only had about 30 minutes of play time before coming to work today.

I Got my copies at EB games in Redmond. My wife (Elena) being the great wife that she is was willing to get a number and stand in line just so that my son and I could see first hand what all the excitement was about. She happened to draw #1 so she ended up being given some cool stuff along with getting us our coveted copy of Halo 2.

Elena said that it was a pretty exciting event, 600 people lined up to by a video game at 12:00 midnight, she was amazed at how jazzed people were. Eb games was a gracious host providing pizza, cow chip cookies, etc… to those who waited.

I hope the game lives up to the hype!

UltimateTV

2004-11-08T21:24:00Z

Let me preface this by saying that I am a pretty reasonable guy, I don't get overly upset when things aren't going my way and accept failings in both people and stuff pretty well. Let me also say that I once loved my UltimateTV way more than my TiVo and that the TiVo was relegated to the bedroom while UltimateTV occupied the center of my TV viewing universe in the living room. The UI and feature set of UTV always felt more comfortable to me and I enjoyed features like PIP and the ability to watch programs in a small window while viewing the guide.

Problem is that there is one place where I have no tolerance for failure and that is in my living room, especially on the first weekend of the football season! My story is long and painful and reliving it will be excruciating for me but since it is related to technology and I promised to blog about my experiences as a home user of technology here goes.

This all started sometime in the summer. I returned from a long vacation only to find that my Ultimate TV box had somehow reset itself (losing all the programs I had saved of course) and was stuck in a loop downloading a software update that I didn't request put apparently had to have. Apparently the download was fairly large so it kept failing due to my flaky phone line, eventually the download was successful and it appeared that I was up and running.

A week or so later I noticed that one of the two tuners was working but being the slacker that I tend to be around the house I didn't do anything about it and just accepted the fact that I would be OK with 1 tuner.

A few weeks went by and football season was about to start and of course it was time for another update for my UltimateTV. If I would have had a choice I would have never accepted this update because past experiences led me to believe something terrible was about to happen, and of course it did. This update was never successful and after a few days I got so frustrated that I removed the box and tossed out the back door onto the patio. I have to say though that the device held up pretty well incurring only a few small scratches.

I then went out and bought a new TiVo box (a demo unit from circuit city, which leads me to another story that I'll blog about) got it up and running and have grown to accept it's limitations and marginal guide performance. At this point all I have to say is TiVo please don't update my software, it works well enough!!!

The next step for me is moving to media center because I really love what this product can do, what I am waiting for though is for someone to make a dual tuner, HDTV, DirectTV ready media center PC.

My Vonage Experience

2004-11-04T18:38:00Z

I have had Vonage for several months now and am pretty happy with it. Seems reliable enough and I really like the ability to get voicemail and configure call forwarding online. Of course for a guy like me a couple tin cans and a string would be good enough cause I simply detest talking on the phone.

I did have one problem with the downstream devices not getting a signal from the Vonage device but rather than messing around and trying to figure it out I just put a dumb switch in between my cable modem and the device. This way if my wireless router has problems my phone works and vice versa.

What's funny about this and every other hardware device (or piece of software for that matter) is that as a home user I have literally no patience for failure where as at work I will spend hours and hours trying to get to the bottom of an issue. Had the dumb switch not have worked I would have thrown the Vonage device in the trash and stopped the service.

I'll have to talk about my experience with Ultimate TV in a future entry, but for now I'll say that football season is not a good time to mess with my TV viewing experience by forcing a patch down my throat!!