Life

Life Lessons from an Angel

October 16, 2020 by 3 Comments

As I reflect on the 18 years that have passed since I first became a father (on this very day in 2002), I do so with incredibly mixed emotions and a deep sense of anguish that we cannot share the occasion with our beautiful son, Jake, who left our world after just 9 days, on Friday, 25 October 2002.

However, while there’s not a day that goes by that we don’t think of him and we yearn to hold him in our arms just one more time, we are comforted (and often surprised) by the things that his short life has taught us in the years since his passing, and I thought it might be nice (and potentially helpful to others) to share some of those lessons today in his honour.

Life is not over – it’s just very, very different

The loss of a child is something you will never, ever “get over” but it is something that you can learn to accept and live with, with the passage of time, while experiencing some enormously uplifting moments along the way. Not only will these moments keep you firmly grounded in life, but they can also serve to inspire the best in yourself and in others, in ways that may otherwise not have been possible.

Some of these moments that I recall and that I hold dear to my heart include beautiful remembrance ceremonies and anniversary Masses at Crumlin Hospital, Dublin, receiving a posthumous bravery certificate from the Irish Heart Foundation (our son underwent heart surgery less than 24 hours after his birth) and a Roll of Honour certificate from the Irish Kidney Association (I am proud to say my son was also an organ donor).

Our annual, overnight trip to Dublin to mark his anniversary has also become an extended family tradition which our other children and their cousins now hail as one of the highlights of their year.

The Japanese Maple tree that stands proudly at the bottom of our garden is also a constant, warming, living, breathing reminder of his place in our family unit. Be it the smile it puts on your face while cutting the grass or the happy sounds of your children playing nearby, or even seeing your own Father stand in silent prayer there at random moments throughout the year, these are all uplifting experiences that you learn to love dearly, and that enrich your now very different life.

Find the positives where you can – they do exist

A close friend of mine, with some personal experience in this area, was brave enough to say this to me a few days before Jake died and it took me several years to learn what it truly meant, and to accept how true it is. That is because, no matter how far you travel in life and how sorry you may feel for yourself because of what happened to you on that life journey, you will learn (several times over) that there is always someone less fortunate than you are, with no exceptions.

We were blessed with a perfect pregnancy, photographs and videos of our newborn son, living and breathing. We got to hold him, to smell him, to hug him and kiss him, multiple times over. Some of our extended family members got to meet him too, if only for a brief moment, and so we have memories, real memories.

Sadly, we have met many people that experienced a similar loss to ours, but with none of the memories we have to cherish. Oddly, we count our blessings for this.

Material things simply don’t matter – family is what matters

I like my home comforts, gadgets, cars and other material possessions as much as the next person, but I definitely find them far less important in my life on foot of the experiences of 18 years ago. Others I’ve met have conceded feeling the same way over time.

I don’t dwell on this and it’s not a major discussion point in my life, but I definitely find myself less motivated to spend time with (or on) material items. I guess it’s because these things are ultimately replaceable, if you know where to find them at the right price, which makes them ultimately less valuable in a human context.

However, the things that I now find most happiness, motivation and contentment in actually cost nothing. They are spending time with family, creating life memories for (and with) our children, but with a far deeper appreciation for why they are so important, valuable and irreplaceable.

We are therefore so especially proud of our first-born son, Jake, today for teaching us all so much about the truly important things in life, in his own special way.

Happy Birthday, son, and thank you!

General - Life - Multimedia

Reeling in the Tears

February 2, 2019 by

I recently came into possession of a rather curious looking spool of tape when going through some old things belonging to my Dad. This surprise discovery (which, amazingly, he never thought to mention when he was alive) was initially met with a mixture of curiosity and excitement, but then tinged with sadness as I remembered he is no longer around to ask about its origins or contents.

Of course the curiosity soon got the better of me and I felt I owed it to him to find out what was on it anyway, considering he had clearly safeguarded it for the better part of 50 years. I therefore set about finding a way to have it converted to some form of modern digital media.

I began by contacting a friend who had recently converted some vintage video reels of the same shape and size, and while he was able to confirm that I was in possession of a Reel-to-Reel Audio tape, he did not himself possess a suitable playing device and neither did any of his hobbyist friends. Fortunately, The Force is strong in this one and so we kept trying.

I then decided to try my luck on the I Am Waterford Facebook page (home to some 20,000 Waterford natives) and was greeted with a delightful array of helpful suggestions, a sizeable majority of which were directing me towards one person, Gary Burns (Audio Visual Technical Officer at Waterford Institute of Technology), who later chimed in himself and offered to do the conversion for me.

As we both live in the same town, I was able to hand over the reel the following day, and within a few days of that I found myself downloading an audio file with the contents of the reel in all its crackly glory – all 35 minutes of it!

Naturally, the anticipation at this point was sky high and indeed, I took a quiet moment to prepare for an emotional reveal. After all, no matter what was on this reel, it was put there for a reason and that reason alone represented an insight into a part of my father’s life that I knew nothing about until that very moment. I consider myself very lucky to have that opportunity, as those in my position will no doubt understand.

So what was on the reel, I hear you ask? Well, I had given this some thought during the previous few days and thought it might have been a recording of him (or his family) singing or playing the accordion, or perhaps a recording of someone describing some of the video reel footage I’d converted some years earlier.

In the end, it was actually none of the above and instead was a collection of 14 songs recorded from the radio, ranging from 1969 to 1974. There were occasional hints of the voice of Brendan Balfe along the way (a popular RTE Radio presenter at that time), so I’m assuming it was his radio show that was being recorded.

Here is a full catalog of the extracted from the reel, which was derived after several hours of painstaking listening for recognisable lyrics, against a backdrop of electrical noise and melodic crackling. I’ve linked each one to a YouTube video of the original song for you to enjoy also:

  1. No Matter How I Try (Gilbert O’Sullivan @ 1971)
  2. Goin’ Down (Jeff Beck @ 1972)
  3. Sing a Song of Freedom (Cliff Richard @ 1974)
  4. Soley Soley (Middle of the Road @ 1971)
  5. Softly Whispering I Love You (Congregation @ 1972)
  6. The Sunset Years of Life (Slim Dusty @ 1965)
  7. Cotton Fields Back Home (Credence Clearwater Revival @ 1969)
  8. Big Strong Man (The Wolfe Tones @ 1970)
  9. You Can Get It If You Really Want (Desmond Dekker @ 1970)
  10. I’ll Take Care of Your Cares (Frankie Laine @ 1967)
  11. I Will Follow You (Dana @ 1970)
  12. Sweetheart (Engelbert Humperdinck @ 1971)
  13. Banquet for the World (Freshmen @ 1970
  14. Which Way You Goin’ Billy (Poppy Family @ 1969

Apart from the curious variety in musical styles (and fashion), I was actually rather impressed with the coolness of some of the tracks, especially Jeff Beck and Credence Clearwater Revival. He certainly kept a few of those guilty pleasures quiet for all the years that he instead lauded the dulcet tones of Foster & Allen!

All in all, this was a thoroughly enjoyable, albeit very emotional, few days that, thanks to the help of people I had never even known one week before, is now set to become part of a new chapter in our family memorabilia that I hope will last for another 50 years, and more.

Thanks Dad, and thanks Gary!

Aerogear - Cloud - General - Red Hat - Technology

Building a Cloud while in the Clouds

July 18, 2018 by

So you’re heading to the US for some business meetings with your Chief Architect then you get upgraded to business class where there’s free WiFi and you’ve got 6 hours to kill. You options are watch movies (seen them all before), drink wine (a given) and/or have an in-flight hackathon to test out the quality of the WiFi.

And so we did just that and went ahead and provisioned an instance of the latest Aerogear Mobile Services powered by OpenShift Origin, resulting in very own cloud platform built in the clouds!

Indeed, the Internet connection was spotty at best but in between the spottiness, our installer script did run to completion…

…and we did (eventually) get the all-elusive OpenShift Console with the Mobile tab in all it’s beautiful glory.

We also needed to get very creative in order to share the screen shots (which involved USB-C cables and several other travel accessories that only an Architect and Director would have) despite physically sitting beside each other, but such is life. And for good measure, we also published this blog article from the air!

So what have you done to test your in-flight WiFi and how was it for you?

Red Hat - Travel

Reflections of JavaSI ’17

October 23, 2017 by

Summary

I travelled to beautiful Portorož, Slovenia last week to speak at the JavaSI ’17 conference. This was a most enjoyable experience and it was a special honour to be asked to deliver the keynote address on my very first visit there. It was also my first time to visit Slovenia, which was equally enjoyable and also every bit as inspiring as the main event.

The JavaSI conference (organised by OpenBlend and SIOUG) itself took place over 2 days with day 1 consisting mainly of talks and day 2 comprising of a number of technical workshops. The time keeping was excellent throughout and all of the sessions were very well attended, which was no surprise considering the high quality of the content and the presenters.

The Venue

The conference was held at the Hotel Slovenija in the beautiful resort of Portorož, which is situated on the western seaboard of Slovenia, on the Adriatic Sea. Slovenia is approximately the same size as Northern Ireland but has just 40km of coastline.

The Talks

My own talk was entitled, “Mobilising Your Enterprise: A strategy for modern app dev in the enterprise, with a mobile twist“, and provided some real-world insights into the strategies being used by enterprises when designing, developing and delivering modern applications, as well as an overview of some the mobility solutions built on and powered by the Red Hat Mobile Application Platform.

Some of my other highlights from the conference included:

  • “Using MicroProfile APIs to build cloud native applications”, by Heiko Braun (Red Hat).
  • “EnMasse: Open sourcing the messaging and IoT”, by Paolo Patierno and Ulf Lilleengen (Red Hat).
  • “One click to rule them all – Continuous Delivery for everyone in 45 minutes”, by Christian Klingbacher (Altran Concept Tech GmbH).
  • “A Quick and Dirty guide to Kubernetes”, by Mitja Bezenšek Outfit7 Ltd (creators of the Talking Tom & Friends games).
  • “What’s coming in JDK9”, by Tomaž Cerar (Red Hat).
  • HELP! A Beatles Tribute, who entertained the attendees during the social evening.

Beautiful Slovenia

I was also fortunate to be able to sample some of Slovenia’s cultural treats during the same trip, including the beautiful port of Piran (the western-most tip of Slovenia) and Lake Bled (below), including it’s famous Bled Cake (a.k.a. Kremsnita).

Overall, this conference was extremely well organised, very well attended and one that I would highly recommend.

Life - Photography

How nature outsmarts your Smartphone

September 20, 2017 by

There is no doubt that modern technology is getting smarter, smaller and cheaper all of the time, and the modern smartphone is to the fore in how most humans (that own one) access these advancements in technology.

However, it’s also refreshing (and a reassuring in a strange kind of way) to know that such humble and innate everyday objects, found in the most non-technical and un-advanced parts of our world, can still outsmart us all!

The Joint Photographic Experts Group – JPEG

A significant majority of modern smartphones (and digital cameras) use the JPEG image file format to store the photographs taken by the device. This file format is named after the Joint Photographic Experts Group, which published the first version of the specification in 1992.

The file format was famed for introducing 3 main features:

  1. The possibility of more than 16 million different colours for each pixel in the image.
  2. Varying levels of image compression, reducing the size of the files and making them ideal for use on websites.
  3. An ability to store additional meta data (known as Exif data) inside the image file (e.g. date, time, location, shutter speed).

Digital Compression

By recognising repeating patterns of colour within an image, the JPEG compression algorithms are able to reduce the size of the file containing that image, usually without any significant (or noticeable) loss in image quality. However, with the ever-increasing storage capacity of smartphones, digital cameras, memory sticks and computer hard drives, how many of us ever really take any notice of the size of image files that we are dealing with?

Nature’s Patterns

As it happens, I did just this on foot of a recent family occasion in our back garden where I took rather a lot of photographs featuring grass (plus family members, of course). While syncing the photos to my computer later that evening, I noticed that it was taking much longer than usual so took a closer look when the transfer was complete.

What I discovered then lead me to take a number of other photos of nature scenes the following day, underpinning my theory that nature was clearly outsmarting my smartphone in a variety of very interesting (and surprising ways). Here is what I found.

The Evidence

Each of the following photos were taken using the same smartphone, using the same unmodified Camera app, over the course of 2 days. For the most part, they are shown in order of size (smallest to largest) with some exceptions along the way.

Part Ocean, Part Sky, Part Rocks – 1.5MB

Clearly, the proliferation of grey/dark colours here has lead to a very high level of compression, resulting in a much smaller file.

Very Cloudy Sky – 2.4MB

This very consistent pattern of grey yielded a very high compression rate also, but with perhaps with slightly less dark colours causing a marginal increase in file size.

Semi Clear Sky – 2.6MB

Surprisingly, this quite different skyline (with a lot more blue) was only marginally larger than the very cloudy scene above, but it still compressed very well due to the consistency of regions of blue, grey and white throughout.

Part Sky, Part Ocean on a Grey Day – 3.4MB

With around 60% of this shot featuring some random sea waves, the level of compression achieved is slightly less than others.

Rippled Water – 4.2MB

While featuring a mostly blue/green hue, the degree of randomness to the ripples prevented a higher level of compression here.

Beach Stones – 5.2MB

So now it begins to get interesting, with nature fighting back. This scene features a large selection of pebbles and stones, of differing shapes, sizes, colours and orientation. Overall, quite a random scene which is duly borne out in the largest file size so far.

Plant Leaves – 5.3MB

There’s quite lot of the same shade of green in this shot, which should yield good compression, but the random shape, size and orientation of the leaves is clearly confusing the compression algorithm, resulting in a larger than expected file.

Cliff Rock Closeup – 5.7MB

Large rocks are normally quite uniform in their colour but a couple of thousand years of being battered by the elements is bound to introduce some character in the form of random edges, wear & tear as well as other inclusions, all reducing the amount of compression the camera was able to achieve.

Forest Ferns – 6.6MB

This scene features predominantly green elements of generally the same shade. However, the size, orientation and varying shape of the leaves and branches across the full spectrum of the shot result in a very confused (and highly random) panorama for the camera.

Regular Garden Grass Closeup – 7.2MB

Surprisingly, the most ordinary patch of grass (somewhat close up) causes the most havoc and lowest level of compression for our camera, with the utter chaos that is the size, shape, length, colour, orientation and depth of the blades of grass resulting in the largest file size. The camera even struggled to retain it’s focus in the outer regions of the shot (see top left), further proving that nature always has the upper hand.

Pebble Dashed Wall – 6.2MB

For good measure, I also sampled this man-made creation with a reasonably high degree of randomness. While the colour and dispersal of the pebbles was most definitely random, the camera did still manage some level of compression, most likely based on the consistent colour of the background cement.

Disclaimer

The level of scientific analysis conducted during this impromptu experiment was minimal at best and no pixels were harmed during the gathering of evidence herein. But you’d be amazed what other surprises mother nature is likely to throw up so get out there and discover your own flavour of randomness!

General

More Effective Meetings with Google G Suite

June 13, 2017 by

There are plenty of spirited articles that outline techniques for more effective and efficient meetings. But assuming you’ve done the basics that the theorists recommend, how can modern software tools help you squeeze that little bit of extra time and effort out of your meetings?

In this blog post, I’ll show you some simple tips on how to use Google’s G Suite (a.k.a. Google Docs) to reduce the running time of your meetings, efficiently identify and assign actions, as well as ways for attendees to get more value from the meeting and track what actions were assigned to them (at this and other meetings they attended).

And please don’t be tempted to give up after reading the first 1-2 items, thinking you know this stuff already. Trust me, the rest of them will be worth it.

Google G Suite

Originally named Google Docs, G Suite is the current name of Google’s web-hosted productivity software offering. Along with the usual Email (Gmail) and File Sharing (Drive) services, it also comes with a variety of “office” software products, including (but not limited to) Docs, Sheets and Slides, each of which support a wide range of very neat collaboration features.

There are, of course, similar offerings from other vendors but I’ve not used those as much as G Suite. But enough about thats, let’s get your efficiency up!

1) Sharing

Because Google Docs are stored in the Google Cloud (and not on your local laptop), more than one person can access them at the same time. And in terms of what these people (a.k.a. collaborators) can do, they:

  • Can View – people can see/read the contents of the document but cannot change it.
  • Can Comment – people can see the contents of the document, can make comments on that content but cannot make changes to the document itself. Their changes need to be reviewed (and approved) by the document owner.
  • Can Edit – people can edit the document directly themselves, or make comments on content created by others.

So assuming that you’ve already/recently created a Google Doc to track your meeting(s), and assuming you’ve outlined a very basic agenda therein, the first thing you should do is share that document with the others attendees, giving them Edit access.

That way, they can add their comments/updates ahead of time and give a verbal update during the meeting instead. Not only will this be a more engaging experience for them and others (allowing for a more focused discussion) but it will also save the chairperson the time of having to minute their verbal update, which will keep the meeting moving along. This could also give the chairperson just enough time to record actions relevant to those updates there and then, also saving them time after the meeting.

Once the meeting has concluded and once you’ve made any final adjustments to the notes/actions, you should then share the document to the final, wider audience with Can Comment access. This will automatically alert them that the meeting notes are available for review, but also allow them to ask any follow-up questions they might have but without consuming the time of all the original attendees – just the document owner.

2) Comments

Anyone with Can Edit or Can Comment access to a Google Doc can select sections of text and make a comment about them. These comments are then recorded in the document for others to see (or respond to). The document owner is also alerted (by email or mobile alert) when a comment is made in one of their documents.

It’s also possible to reference another collaborator when making a comment in a document (assuming they have access to the document). This can be done by referencing their email address (with a plus symbol before it) in the comment body. In this case, that collaborator will also receive an alert (as will the owner).

Once a comment thread (or discussion) has concluded (i.e. the question has been answered), the document owner can Resolve the comment, after which it will no longer be visible. It will always be recorded in the document history but only visible to the document owner thereafter.

3) Introducing Action Items

This is where it begins to get really interesting, so thanks for sticking with us until now.

In more recent updates to G Suite, Google enhanced the commenting functionality so that when referencing another collaborator you have the option to Assign the comment as an Action Item to them. The difference between this and an ordinary comment may not be entirely obvious yet, but keep reading and you’ll see the value shortly.

4) Auto-Assignment of Action Items

In order to initiate a regular comment (or Action Item) in a document, you first need to select some text, choose the Insert, Comment menu option, address the intended collaborator and tick the to option to Assign as Task. That’s a lot of typing and clicking, when you’re otherwise trying to listen to meeting attendees give verbal updates and transpose those into appropriate notes and actions (for them or others).

Fortunately, G Suite has a very clever feature that can help (subject to certain conditions). If the document owner (or another collaborator with Edit access) phrases an update to the document in a certain way (e.g. “John to follow up with the Sales team”) and the document has been explicitly shared with someone called John, then G Suite will automatically attempt to assign that piece of text as an Action Item to John (prompting you first of course).

This is not only another excellent time saver but another reason to share the document ahead of time (to the right people). It’s also a strong incentive to be more prescriptive and succinct in your narrative as the meeting chairperson.

5) Revealing and Reviewing Your Action items

So you and your colleagues are a few weeks into your new G Suite regime and you’ve personally chaired a good few meetings and attended several others. And in doing so, you know you’ve amassed a sizeable number of action items but have no idea which documents they’re in or how to find them (since your last browser restart did not preserve your open tabs).

So give this a try instead:

  1. Go to your Google Drive home page.
  2. In the Search box at the top, enter the criteria: followup:actionitems (or click the Search Options, scroll to the bottom and select the Follow up drop-down menu and select the Action items only option).
  3. Voila! You now have a list of all Google Docs where there’s an action on you (including ones not owned by you).

Note that this does not work for ordinary comments – you need to be sure that the original comments were Assigned as Action Items in their respective documents.

You’re Welcome!

Red Hat - Travel

Reflections of Red Hat Summit 2017

May 10, 2017 by

I returned from the annual Red Hat Summit last week, which was as exciting and inspiring as ever. This year the summit returned to Boston and was held at the highly impressive Boston Convention & Exhibition Center (BCEC), which is located in the Seaport District of Boston.

The summit took place over 3 days and we were treated to an astonishing array of sessions from Red Hat developers, staff, customers and partners, with each one being better than the next.

It was also an excellent opportunity to see a series of presentations from several members of the Red Hat Mobile team, including two from myself; a Lightning Talk at the main DevZone entitled, Application Health Monitoring from the Inside Out and a breakout session on Cloud Solutions for Enterprise Mobility.

There were numerous other highlights but some of my personal favourites were:

  1. A new partnership between Red Hat and Amazon Web Services;
  2. The launch of OpenShift.io, a hosted developer environment for creating and deploying hybrid cloud services;
  3. The launch of the industry’s first Health Index for container images;
  4. The story of Easier AG (a Swiss medical company) and how Red Hat’s Innovation Labs helped to make their ideas a reality, which all started in our home office in Waterford.
  5. Attending a baseball game at Fenway Park to see the Boston Red Sox in action, live!

I’m already setting my sights on Summit 2018 and am very much looking forward to the year ahead preparing for it.

Photography - Technology

A case for more Open Source at Apple

April 17, 2017 by

Open Source Context

I’ve been involved in the software industry for almost 30 years and have long been an admirer of open source software, both in terms of what it stands for and in terms of the inherent value it provides to the communities that create it and support it.

I’m even old enough to remember reading about the creation of the Free Software Foundation itself by Richard Stallman in 1985 and couldn’t be happier to now find myself working at the king pins of open source, Red Hat (through the acquisition of FeedHenry in 2014).

And while in recent years it’s been reassuring to see more and more other companies adopt an open source strategy for some of their products, including the likes of Apple and Microsoft, it’s been equally soul destroying having to live with the continued closed source nature of some of their other products. Take Apple’s Photos app for iOS as a case in point.

Apple iPhoto

Some time around 2011, I took the decision to switch to Apple’s excellent iPhoto app for managing my personal photo collection, principally due the facial recognition and geolocation features but also because of the exceptional and seamless user experience across the multitude of Apple devices I was amassing.

Then, in late 2012, I undertook a very lengthly personal project (spanning 9 months or more) to convert my extended family’s vintage photo collection to digital format, importing them to iPhoto and going the extra mile to complete the facial and location tagging also.

The resultant experience was incredible, particularly when synced onto my iPad of the time (running iOS 6). Hours at a time were spent perusing through the memories it invoked, with brief interludes of tears and laughter along the way. What was particularly astonishing was how the older generations embraced the iPad experience within minutes of holding the device for the very first time. This was the very essence of what Steve Jobs worked his entire life for, and for this I am eternally grateful to the genius he clearly was.

Apple Photos

However, since then, with the launch of subsequent releases of iOS I have never been able to recreate the same experience, for two reasons.

Firstly, the user interface of the iPhoto app kept changing (becoming less intuitive each time, proven by the lessening magic experienced by the same generation that previously loved it so much), and secondly, it was replaced by the Photos app outright which, incredibly, has one simple but quite incredulous bug – it cannot sort!

Yes, quite incredibly, the Photos app for iOS cannot sort my photos when using the Faces view. If you don’t believe me, just Google phrase “apple photos app sort faces” and take your pick of the articles lamenting such a rudimentary failing.

A Case for Open Source

“So what does this have to with open source?“, I hear you ask.

Well, trawling through the countless support articles on Apple’s user forums, it seems that this bug has been confirmed by hundreds of users but, several years later, it is still not fixed. If this was an open source project, it would have been long since fixed by any one of a number of members of the community I’m sure would form around it, and potentially even by me!

So c’mon Apple, let’s have some more open source and let’s make your products better, together.

General - Red Hat - Technology

A Simple Model for Managing Change Windows

February 16, 2017 by

One of the more common things we do in the Cloud Operations team at Red Hat Mobile is facilitate changes to environments hosted on the Red Hat Mobile Application Platform, either on behalf of our customers or for our own internal operational purposes.

These are normally done within what is commonly known as a “Change Window”, which is a predetermined period of time during which specific changes are allowed to be made to a system, in the knowledge that fewer people will be using the system or where some level of service impact (or diminished performance) has been deemed acceptable by the business owner.

We have used a number of different models for managing Change Windows over the years, but one of our favourite approaches (that adapts equally well to both simple and complex changes and that is easy for our customers and internal stakeholders to understand) is this 5-phase model.

Planning

The planning phase is basically about identifying (and documenting) a solid plan that will serve as a rule book for all the other elements in this model (below). In addition to specifying the (technical) steps required to make (and validate) the necessary changes, your plan should also include additional (non-technical) information that you will most likely need to share externally so as to set the appropriate expectations with the affected users. This includes specifying:

  • What changes are you planning to make?
  • When are you proposing to make them?
  • How long will they take to complete?
  • What will the impact (if any) be on the users of the system before, during and after the changes are made?
  • Is there anything your customers/users need to do beforehand or afterwards?
  • Why are you making these changes?

Your planning phase should also include a provision for formally communicating the key elements of your plan (above) with those interested in (or affected by) it.

Commencement

The commencement phase is about executing on the elements of your plan that can be done ahead of time (i.e. in the hours or minutes before the Change Window formally opens) but that do not involve any actual changes.

Examples include:

  1. Capturing the current state of the system (before it is changed) so that you can verify the system has returned to this state afterwards.
  2. Issuing a final communication notice to your users, confirming that the Change Window is still going ahead.
  3. Configuring any monitoring dashboards so that the progress (and impact) of the changes can be analysed in real time once they commence.

The commencement phase can be a very effective way to maximise the time available during the formal Change Window itself, giving you extra time to test your changes or handle any unexpected issues that arise.

Execution

The execution phase is where the planned changes actually take place. Ideally, this will involve iterating through a predefined set of commands (or steps) in accordance with your plan.

One important mantra which has stood us in good stead here over the years is, “stick to the plan”. By this we mean, within reason, try not to get distracted by minor variations in system responses which could consume valuable time, to the point where you run out of time and have to abandon (or roll back) your changes.

It’s also strongly recommended that the input to (and outputs from) all commands/steps are recorded for reference. This data can be invaluable later on if there is a delayed impact on the system and steps need to be retraced.

Validation

Again this phase should be about iterating through a predefined set of verification steps that may include examining various monitoring dashboards, running automated acceptance/regression test tooling, all in accordance with two very basic principles:

  1. Have the changes achieved what they were designed to (i.e. does the new functionality work)?
  2. Have there been any unintended consequences of the changes (i.e. does all the old functionality still work, or have you broken something)?

Again, it’s very important to capture evidence of the outcomes from validation phase, both as evidence to confirm the changes have been completed successfully and that the system has returned to it’s original state.

All Clear

This phase is very closely linked to the validation phase but is slightly more abstract (and usually less technical) in nature. It’s primary purpose is to act as a higher-level checklist of tasks that must to be completed, in order that the final, formal communication to the customer (or users) can be sent, confirming that the work has been completed and verified successfully.

 

Red Hat - Waterford

A new era begins for Red Hat in Waterford

December 12, 2016 by

As the year that was 2016 draws to a close, we embrace and celebrate the dawn of a new era for Red Hat in Ireland with the opening of our brand new offices in my home city of Waterford on Monday, 12 December 2016.

This is an immensely proud moment for the entire Red Hat team in Waterford, especially so for those involved in the FeedHenry acquisition from October 2014 which has lead us to this wonderful occasion.

It is also fitting that the new offices are the first to feature the trademark We Are Red Hat internal branding in the Irish language, which translates as “Is Sinne Red Hat”.

So to the management, staff, families and friends of the growing Red Hat community in Waterford, take a bow and enjoy the celebration and delights that this day will bring.

It is everything that we have worked for and is no more than our wonderful city deserves.