Wednesday May 07, 2008

Demand Rational Troubleshooting at Sun ? I am fortunate to work in the Global Services Organisation at Sun, but due to co-location I work on the same floor as the Solaris RPE group.

These engineers are very skilled at solving problems, however, because they are specialists in their area they really need a good problem description, we call that a Problem Statement and beyond that some good information about the facts around the Problem Starement, we call that a Specification.

Over the last few weeks, I've been contacted more by Service Account Managers and Client Execs about SGRT and what we can do to help our customers.

On this blog Jim Moore, talks about demanding Rational Troubleshooting. It's a good view from the pointy end of fixing difficult problems, but the Troubleshooting process applies at evey level of Technical Support.

If you want to demand SGRT is applied to a complex problem, feel free to ask, or engage me. I'd be happy to facilitate.

Mark DOT Hayden at Sun DOT Com (2008-05-07 05:03:51.0) Permalink

Tuesday May 06, 2008

More teaching SGRT, seeing a common need.

As Global Program Manager for the Sun Global Resolution Troubleshooting method also known as KT Resolve outside of Sun, I get the opportunity to teach on a regular basis.

Last week, I had the pleasure of teaching in Sheffield to a mixture of Sun staff and staff from the company we partner to support a very large NHS project. I was supporting another Program Leader who had not taught in around 2 years, and we have a policy of co-teaching to ensure the quality of our instructors remains high. In this case, the PL in question did a great job, and is teaching the rest of the class this week, without me :-)

Our troubleshooting programme can be deployed in any area of the company, and it's a delight to see after 2 days the students find their way using the process to solve some complex issues. In this particular class, the students brought 3 very real and live problems they had been struggling with, and made some good progress in understanding more about the problem they were facing. So I left Sheffield with a good feeling, as I always enjoy teaching this class, and seeing the high quality work the students delivered.

As our longest serving PL says, here understanding the problem you are working on, gets you at least halfway to solving it.

During the 2 days I was teaching, I was contacted by other colleagues who understand what SGRT can do for Sun and our customers, to see how we can help companies who we have a business relationship with define their problems better. Their common need was that the teams they have collaborating, across the world, often do not fully describe the problem they have, making the job much harder for the team responsible for solving the issue. It also makes the Time to Solve much longer.

I'm back to Sheffield in 2 weeks to teach another group, and I'm sure we'll repeat the success.

(2008-05-06 03:09:01.0) Permalink