lizardsis

June full of events

2008-06-23T17:39:00.000+02:00

I came back from the HP Munich training mentioned in previous post that first week of June and later I went to Prague for the conference organized for my client's team. It was nice to participate in that and to meet face to face people I cooperate everyday with. Previous week I attended second part of ITIL training -Service Delivery but out of 5 days I came only for one day - another one I became sick with flu so I ended up at home fighting with the sickness.Seems that one month flights, conferences, trainings overwhelmed me :) but it was worth the try.

HP Project and Portfolio Management training in Unterhaching(Munich) HP-Mercury training center

2008-06-02T19:34:00.003+02:00

This week I am on another training (this month is crazy regarding that) organized by HP&Mercury in Unterhaching(Munich). I like the fact that after each theoretical module there is an associated exercise so I can practice what you learnt. One doesn't get bored quite easily. A user of PPM - Project and Portfolio Management can compare proposals, projects and operational activities against budgets and resource capacity levels to achieve alignment with business needs (the sentence from marketing materials). One feature in favour of Microsoft EPM is that budget planning is more emphasised in that application. PPM seems to be more budget oriented - so during tool selection business needs should be considered accordingly.
There is an event called German Girl Geek Dinner in Munich - I have already been to such a meeting in Barcelona where I met many interesting woman with IT managerial positions from Grupo Intercom. I like the idea so much but I am wondering who in Poland will organize such a meeting as to my knowledge there hasn't been any organized. Do I need to ping Microsoft?
Maybe someone from them already proposed it :)

ITIL Service Manager Service Support training

2008-05-28T20:59:00.002+02:00

I am currently attending ITIL Service Manager Service Support course organized by CTPartners - Polish Exin accredited training provider. It lasts 5 days (40 hours) and the biggest advantage of that is the opportunity to meet people from other companies which implemented or would like to implement ITIL. I am wondering if there is any ranking of companies in Poland that introduced ITIL.
I think the least mature processes in majority of companies are configuration and problem management. By the way - any idea if there is any tool that discover by itself problems among incidents? Of course after such automated discovery the manual verification would be necessary but still it would be helpful for problem manager.
ITIL foundation certification is more popular in Poland than ITIL Service Manager one. Still the numbers in UK and Holland regarding ITIL certification is incomparably higher.

Up to date ITIL aligned tools

2008-05-21T12:32:00.002+02:00

Due to the commnents to previous post I wanna share with up to date document on ITIL /ITSM supporting tools mentioned in pmit.pl : "The Forrester Wave: Service Desk Management Tools, Q2 2008". Enjoy reading!

ITIL aligned tools

2008-05-20T15:07:00.001+02:00

ITIL based organization uses ITIL aligned tools in order to streamline IT service processes and manage the IT service life cycle. The most famous are:

HP OpenView Service Desk
CA Unicenter ServicePlus Service Desk
Peregrine ServiceCenter
Remedy IT Service Management

Personally I have experience in working with HP OpenView Service Desk but the biggest weaknesses of that tool are lack of advanced knowledge base (third party tools are needed) and advance reporting (with proper time calculations).
Microsoft is working on ITIL aligned tool - Service Manager as part of System Center products. However, it will be available in 2010. Too bad for MOF :)

Job aids and MOF 3.0/4.0 mapping

2008-05-19T08:41:00.002+02:00

Using the link in previous post you will access document with appendixes. One of them is:
Appendix B: MOF 3.0 to MOF 4.0 mapping
It seems that in MOF 4.0 some new processes/phases are emphasized like policy and project planning. Still some terms from previous version have their counterparts.
Discussion about MOFv4 vs. MOFv3 (top 5 value props) can be viewed in technet forums.
Another appendix to the document mentioned is:
Appendix C: Job Aids
Those Job Aids are templates and examples that can be tailored to meet the needs of specific organizations and activities. Especially useful in an organization that wants to introduce service management with MOF.
Here is the content of Job Aids:

Manage
Change Management Forward Schedule Template
Request for Change Template
Risk Template Tool
Plan
Operating Level Agreement Template
Operations Level Agreement
Privacy Policy Sample
Service Level Agreement Template
SIP Service Catalog Sample
Deliver
Functional Specification
Migration Plan
Site Deployment Project Plan
Test Cases Workbook
Test Plan
Test Specification
Training Plan
Vision Scope
Operate
Incident Management Ticket Template
Operations and Services Description Template

Microsoft MOF blog link: http://blogs.technet.com/mof/default.aspx

Microsoft Operations Framework 4.0

2008-05-16T10:14:00.002+02:00

If you are working within Service Managemenet department in an organization which specialises in .NET solution, you may find Microsoft Operations Framework (version 4.0) useful: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc506049.aspx
Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) consists of integrated best practices, principles, and activities that provide comprehensive guidelines for achieving reliability for IT solutions and services.

When the practice comes with the client

2008-05-09T19:27:00.003+02:00

Few years ago when I was in Cyprus I learnt a lot about recruitment techniques, while building the most famous recruitment portal in Cyprus and Turkey. I realized that whenever you try to satisfy the client you need to learn not only about his requirements regarding the desired output but also investigate his market sector, sphere of activity.

Though, the biggest advantage of working within different projects is broadening knowledge about various business types. Due to that one has the opportunity to improve diversity of work experience.

My work has concentrated on designing, development, management and support systems, applications associated with real estate, HR, IT asset management and project&portfolio management. There are still many more to explore and that is my main goal - to learn more about different areas of business while achiving the high level of expertise in known ones.

ITIL in Poland/ MOF vs. MVP and links

2008-05-03T23:39:00.003+02:00

ITIL in Poland is dominated by CTPartners - they even influenced Microsoft to sponsor ITLife. But it is true that they are professionals who don't share the pure theoretical knowledge- at least the training I participated in was more practical.
I was searching for MOF sessions in MVP global summit but unfortunately there is no MVP category for frameworks (or I missed sth). Usually the category is associated with MS product and as ITIL is not invention of MS and can't be sold - what is the advantage of supporting that? None. I agree but it is a pity!
Nevertheless, you may find the links below useful while learning ITIL:

and many more.

Short Madrid trip and books

2008-05-03T23:11:00.003+02:00

Yesterday I came back from trip to Madrid. In the last six months I went there 3 times. Incredible? I love the city. I visited majority of museums - I like the most Museum del Prado and museo de arte Reina Sofia, saw flamenco show in Florida Park (Retiro Park), walked through Gran Via and downtown many times. I could visit those places many times wondering when I would get bored. Never?
Spanish people are more imaginative and take more pleasure from life. During my stay in Warsaw (3 years) I met majority of people I know at job. In Spain each day I met and talk with people everywhere. There is no hidden reason of why they want to talk with you. It is in the culture. Even poor people look happy. Richer countries are cleaner as well.
I took two books: "Eat, love and pray" by Elizabeth Gilbert and "The universe in a single atom" by Dalai Lama but honestly I read maybe one page of each one. Majority of time I spent talking and watching/reading/listening to Spanish. I wanna share the books I read with you as you may suppose that IT prof should only be surrounded by IT books. It is not explanation but as I have read lately many itSMF books (I had to pass ITIL foundation exam somehow :)) I decided it was high time to read something different. Still there is Emotional Intelligence waiting for me...with its first biological chapter.
Long time ago I decided to read books in English versions. Even the book could be the nightmare I can at least learn some new words. By the way that is how my English improved - not by some school lessons.
The golden rule for learning languages is to read books you can't understand and watch movies in original versions. Soon or later you will understand something. And you need to do that based on your own decision - not that someone else urged you to do so. I based my English lessons on "Friends" ;) and my students loved that.
Now I read Hola and Telva understanding maybe 10% of that. It is fun as soon or later... ;)
What is left - the thought of going again to Madrid. On Monday I go to London ..

Back to this old blog

2008-05-03T22:28:00.006+02:00

I decided to come back here as there were problem in modifying the design of aspweb.cz.
My aversion to writing new posts came from too much unwanted comments and people pressure that as I am MVP I should be involved in everything/everywhere. I prefer to do things according to my way not others:)
As you may notice I am not MVP anymore. I resigned from renomination as well as my input in polish communities in the past year was not comparable to what I did in the past. It is all as it was supposed to be.
Nevertheless, I participated in MVP Global Summit in Seattle. Some photos may be found at facebook.com - great stuff if you are not familiar. I liked the summit a lot. I met a lot of people and enjoyed partying with Polish MVPs: Noise (Robert Stuczynski), Sebastian Wilczewski and Grzegorz Tworek.
I attended many sessions but most of all I liked MS Project ones - they were organised to limited group of people and I joined it by occasion. That was really professional meeting - program managers received feedback from technology triggers (cool name for MVPs, right?). It is always better to meet in a small group than with a bunch of people not eager to share opinions/communicate. Microsoft changed the tactics - they organize more open sessions, are willing to receive information from people. They learnt that it counts.
This year shopping spree was associated with iPhones - majority of MVPs bought it - including me :) I think that MS company store trips were even less popular than Apple University Village ones.

Explanation

2005-08-23T09:57:00.000+02:00

It seems there is not much text on this blog. The reason is I started to write more onmy home page lizardsis.aspweb.cz and I became one of the editors of developers.pl where I have also my blog. Many pages, many thoughts. Here are images.

2005-08-22T21:09:00.001+02:00

The stairs

2005-08-22T21:09:00.000+02:00

Developers.pl/MS/SDJ

Inside Siedem grzechow

2005-08-22T21:08:00.001+02:00

2005-08-22T21:08:00.000+02:00

Michu, Marcin i Artur

Michu i Marcin +rose

2005-08-22T21:07:00.000+02:00

2005-07-04T23:51:00.000+02:00

Sitting at night, trying to write another application

2005-07-04T23:49:00.000+02:00

Some people are in Germany.

2005-07-04T23:45:00.000+02:00

Business, business all the time

2005-07-04T23:44:00.002+02:00

Get ready to rumble..

2005-07-04T23:44:00.001+02:00

Talking and drinking.

2005-07-04T23:44:00.000+02:00

Let's eat sth.

2005-07-04T23:42:00.000+02:00

Don't sleep when you drink beer. It may end up in a bad way.

2005-07-04T23:41:00.000+02:00

Peace to all of you.