Rapid Development: Swift but not Hasty

14 September looms imminent, but I feel confident that we will meet, if not exceed, our expectations. My client and I have established an extremely effective workflow with our screen sharing/conference call method.

Image via WikipediaThe first time I was involved in such a meeting, it was in a corporate conference room with a projector, a dedicated data line and a bunch of folks on each end of the line -- a one-to-one connection, even for the corner-office honchos, was just too expensive to consider.

Now, the screen sharing is free, and cell phones make better speaker phones than the dedicated desktop models we used back then. That's real progress, I suppose...

Speaking of progress, we made great headway duting yesterday's conference call. The look and feel, based on modifications to the selected template chosen in the previous meeting, was approved. We spent most of this session getting into high-level "function and flow" stuff, such as:

• Site participant roles - visitor (anonymous user, not logged in), member (non-paying, logged in user) and subscriber (paying member)
• Site staff roles - contributor (columnists & bloggers), editor (1st level content approval, layout & design) and publisher (final approval for posting content, full control over all layout & design elements
• Logical functions - such as "subscribers view posted video blogs immediately; members view with one-week delay; visitors view teasers only"

 The rest of the call focused on the first real consideration of the front page, more in terms of what will be there, than what it will look like. A rotating graphical element for latest news, blog post, etc - but done via JavaScript instead of the usual Flash animation.

This both minimizes page loading time (important to avoid losing impatient visitors) and enables the content to be scanned by search engines (important if you want any visitors in the first place).

Our brainstorming session gave birth to one fantastic idea which, again, is a challenge to deliver by launch date, but it's doable. We decided to have polls (as many sites do), but use the results of the poll to deliver focused content, links and associations to the viewer based on their responses, rather than just posting the results (as if anyone is really that interested).

Basically disguising surveys as polls. Genius. Drupal, powered by the modular capabilities we've installed beneath-the-hood, can do all that. The question, of course, is can we, by September 14th?

Stay tuned...

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For Rapid Development, Slow Down

Another conference call in our quest to a 14 Sep website launch. We've really established a successful workflow, which will server me well as a model for future client relations. One of the first things we established was the need for more meetings before actual launch day:

•  Look & feel, navigation, initial site layout - 22 Aug 
•  Roles & workflow; preparation for transfer to live site - 26 Aug

We quickly decided on the overall color scheme & font selection. The font, not a standard web font, will have to be imported - which means I will have to learn how to do that. More homework, but then that's why we're applying the Pareto principle with our conference calls.

The generous nature of the Open Source community provided us with a template acceptable to our end goals and compatible with our color scheme, boosting our progress and reducing the design effort by... well, about 80%.

Image via Wikipedia
Having done her homework, she provided two reference sites that gave me a good idea of her internal picture of the finished product we're aiming for.

The key thing I'm learning is that it's possible to not be in the same room, but to really be on the same page. In fact, the screen sharing sessions coupled with the telephone calls, with her on speaker phone and me wearing an earbud, actually helps us focus by removing visual distractions and eliminating the need to "shoulder surf" while attempting to share the same computer screen.

We're each in our own work environment, on our own computers. And we're both focused on the task at hand. With each "meeting", we get a clearer picture of how much work we've done (the demo site looks more like the finished product), of how much work we have left to do (the demo site doesn't work like the finished product) and how best to close the distance (we have a finite number of days until actual launch day).

Spending hours on the phone, taking the time to talk things through, being able to review the same computer screen together, is what enables us to get so much done so quickly. In many ways, the cell phone and screen sharing will end up being the real technological heroes.

That is, assuming we have cause to celebrate.

Back to work. More to come...

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Site Unseen

Many businesses pay a lot of money for someone to make a website for them. Yet from the huge number of poorly designed websites out there, it doesn't look like a good return on investment for the most part.

Not counting incompetence and outright fraud, there are still too many bad websites out there which were supposedly designed by professionals. In this age of free technology and even freer information, how can this be? As I venture into offering website design as a Small Business server, I've thought about this and came to the following conclusion:

Many businesses, especially Small Businesses, spend lots of money on two things which, while both useful, are not website design.

The first and more common is web hosting. These business owners or representatives will meet with someone who ideally should report to sales, who claims to assist in "site design". What they actually end up focusing on, however, are low-level technical concerns, like bandwidth, storage, and the programs available for the client building their own site.

Image by Getty Images via @These are all useful things, but they don't make a website. They are the components of a website -- good enough, if you can build your own website, which most Small Business owners and operators cannot.

The next common mistake is hiring a graphic designer as web builder. These guys are usually very helpful at creating logos, banners and a website's overall visual design. They may even create basic functions, like login, with a database back-end if you're really lucky.

But, again, this is not a website -- this is a collection of nicely designed web pages. Today's "standard" website should be more than pretty pages, sitting there. Successful websites must have function, and be as advanced as the space shuttle is from the original Wright Brothers' motor-powered glider. Pretty pages and a clever Flash menu simply won't cut it.

An effective modern website, without being fancy or complex, should

• Have fresh content, lots of it, and be easy to update
• Include all media -- sound, images and videos -- with no expert assistance needed
• Include the ability to create user profiles, login, post comments, upload media and create relevant content
• Allow website users to interact without outside intervention to "discuss among themselves", and create the premium content that will add real value
• Enable users and content to be categorized so that the right people get the right information

Neither web hosting services nor graphic designers masquerading as website designers can provide this level of basic functionality without the old-fashioned, 20th Century attempt to lock you down with customized code which is difficult to update and keeps you held hostage by the original programmers.

This is where Open Source stops being a geek buzzword and becomes relevant to Small Business owners and operators. Content Management Systems -- tech-jargon for "website building applications" -- like Drupal, Joomla! and Wordpress are free to download and are provided by most major web hosting services. Their value to the Small Business owner is not simply because they're free.

Because they are Open Source, it means the knowledge of configuring them, and building working websites is widespread, and standardized. Built on a modular model, functions are easily added not by hiring another programming specialist, but simply by plugging in and configuring the appropriate module for the required feature.

Features once the work of high-priced consultants are now easiliy and affordably provided. Provided, of course, that you hire the services of an actual website designer -- someone who will consult with you, get to understand your business, your workflow and your needs, and create a website that doesn't just display pages and pictures, but one that is the ideal online resource to serve you customers, and represent the best efforts of Your Small Business.

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Rapid Development

14 September.

It helps to have a deadline. An internal sense arises that helps steer me away from false starts and time-wasting fascination with useless details.

As a techie, it's easy to waste hours with the "gee whiz" aspect of things that won't actually be used in this phase of the project. A deadline helps set a time limit on mental wandering.

I just recently completed the second conference call with the online magazine publisher who is my website client. Our first conference call, last Tuesday (10 Aug), I used the free "DimDim" screen-sharing service (I do not name these things) to show her the prototype Drupal website, and a variety of themes so we could get a baseline of the "look and feel" she desires.

This week, she e-mailed me PDF samples of her magazine for an idea of the fonts and color scheme, and we discussed various aspects of the behind-the-scenes pre-construction concerns such as:

• What information would we collect from people who visit the site?
• What content will be visible to everyone?
• What "premium" content will only be visible to those who sign up and log onto the website?
• How will the site integrate with social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and twitter?
• How will we catalog and categorize user information and site content so that we can cross-reference information, and present customized views to each user?
• How will the website communicate with off-line site members (email/SMS/twitter/et al)?
• Can/will there be Google Apps integration?

and so forth. A dozen plus years of corporate IT support taught me that to successfully complete complicated projects quickly, the 80/20 rule means

80 percent of the effort is the work done in the first 20 percent of the project

It's all in the advanced planning. Drupal, like Joomla! and Wordpress, give Small Businesses the ability to do nearly anything that can be done with a website, cheaply and easily. Cheaply and easily, that is, if you plan what you want the site to do first, then determine what information and configuration you'll require to accomplish that.

This means you do the heavy lifting -- database mapping, form building -- before you worry about things like appearance and layout. Once you make sure everything works properly, you not only can take your time arranging it, but you'll find it's easy to arrange things when you're not inventing them at the same time.

By taking this top-down approach, we ended our call with a series of milestones mapped to the calendar:

• Look and feel final conference - 18 Aug
• Soft launch (moving site to production server) - 28 Aug
• Meet with site editor & content contributors - 1 Sep
• Content freeze and performance shakedown - 6 Sep

A pretty aggressive schedule, but the only way we can actually launch a site that doesn't exist yet is to determine precisely the tasks and sequence of actions required, and strictly adhere to a no-nonsense schedule. Which you don't tend to do when the due-date is months away, or more.

It helps to have a deadline... or so goes the theory...

More to come

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FREE is the new GTD

Image by philcampbell via Flickr

Image by Régis Gaidot via Flickr

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

I have always attended business networking events as an essential part of my Small Business growth strategy. They are a marvelous source of innovation, inspiration and comraderie.

There are also, of course, the occasional cash-paying business prospect. But much of the value is, well... free, but it's also priceless. Recently, I've learned from these meetings that barter is an effective method of exchange, given the right partner in the trade.

One of the members of a Small Business networking group I attend monthly has an online magazine that's going from quarterly to monthly. She wants a new website built, using the Open Source web building app "Drupal". I've worked with Drupal, and certainly appreciate the challenges and benefits of working with this platform.

So she will get a cutting-edge website, and I will get the experience of building one, and a reference site for future paying clients. Of course, while she is leveraging my expertise, I am basically providing professional services for FREE. Even if we accept that the skills developed in real-world conditions will eventually have commercial value, how can I afford to do the actual work, while also having to service my paying clients?

That's where the value of Open Source technology proves itself. From the start, I have saved literally hundreds of hours by downloading a pre-built Linux server running a Drupal website from Bitnami, and run it in my free virtual computer environment provided by VMware.

No additional hardware cost. In addition, I've leveraged the efforts of installation and configuration experts, for FREE! And all this is just the start of how free technology makes this barter more than a fair trade for me.

In upcoming posts, I will journal my efforts from prototype to live website. I will explore the actual software and technology used in my Open-Windows blog.

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Your data IS Your Business: Dynamic data

In my previous post on data protection, we discussed the three types of Small Business data:

• Dynamic data
• Active data
• Archive data

There are different methods required to best protect the different types of data your Small Business depends on. Note that I said "protect", and not "backup" you data. Backing up your data is the most important part of protecting it. But steps must be taken before and after backup to make sure the process actually provides protection, and not just repeated activity.

Before backing up your data, you must determine two things: 1) which data will you backup? and 2) how frequently will you backup that data? The answers vary depending on which of type of data we're considering.

After backup, the most important questions are: 1) how long will you keep that backup? and 2) how many different versions of this backup do you want, and why? These questions, no doubt, are answered differently, based upon the type of data being considered.

Dynamic data, being the most important, comes first - it's what your Small Business is working on right now. Today's email correspondence, the document that will become an email attachment as soon as it's completed. Even your web browser bookmarks have a greater business impact than you might realize. It's "Dynamic", after all: you must have the current version of whatever document, diagram, link or bookmark you depend upon for your Small Business to compete and function effectively.

The fact that is often overlooked by Small Businesses is that dynamic data not only has to be backed up, but backed up dynamically. Last night's version of a file you've been working on for hours is no help if your computer's disk dies, or you corrupt or overwrite the file. Scheduled nightly backups are fine for protecting active data, but to protect your dynamic data, you need more frequent backups.

The problem with this suggestion is that you are simply not going to perform  six, eight, ten or more backups a day... you're too busy running your business, and the backup process is too complex and involved to justify the distraction and disruption. Fortunately, this issue has been confronted by the huge mega-corporations' IT departments, given a name - Continuous Data Protection - and more importantly, they've given us a solution.

What you need is a program that will backup your dynamic data either at regularly scheduled intervals throughout the day, or as the data actually changes. Or one that does both, like IBM Tivoli CDP for files. Now, while I do prefer to recommend Open Source software when it provides the best solutions for your Small Buiness, sometimes, the best solution is a commercial product.

With IBM Tivoli CDP for files, you can:

• back up all your dynamic data, both on a schedule and whenever it changes. 
• backup to as many as three different locations, for extra protection. 
• start protecting your data instead of spending hours learning how to setup the program.

It has a simple, web-based interface, making it easy to add files and folders to its intelligent set of defaults, identify which data is being backed up, how much space is available in your backup locations and, most importantly, to retrieve the proper version of any backed up file when you need it most -- usually, in the middle of a tense situation, when you don't have the time to struggle with a complicated retrieval process.

Most importantly, it's affordable - only $44 per machine. Set up properly, you can save all of your important data to a folder shared between several PCs, then protect that one folder with IBM Tivoli CDP. And then just work,  knowing that your most important data has the best protection you can provide.

Next post, I'll cover the four "before and after questions" raised at the beginning of this post, and show you how a product like Tivoli CDP can be used to answer them. Until then, be well.

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Your Operating System is smarter than you are...

Last week, I paid my friend Billy in Weehawken, NJ a visit, to help him with his computer troubles. Since he installed iTunes last year, his Windows Vista laptop could not access his CD/DVD drive.

Now, it often failed to power up, igniting the sytem lights and spinning the fan before abruptly powering down. It took the "three finger salute": Ctrl-Alt-Del, to break this vicious loop and finally boot normally.
Since I had the Windows 7 Ultimate Release Candidate 1 and activation keys, I suggested he upgrade.

My experiences with Windows 7 have been quite positive, and all my business clients have avoided Vista at my advice. On the strength of my recommendation, he decided to take the plunge.

I brought a 250 GB external hard drive, intending to use DriveImage XML to image his hard drive, in case of any problem during the upgrade process. As this was his only computer, I didn't want to risk leaving him stuck in limbo, his former operating system gone but the new one not yet in place.

But the onboard CD/DVD was offline, and the BIOS of his HP laptop recognized USB floppy and USB hard drive as boot devices, but NOT USB CD/DVD. And I had left my Ultimate Boot CD for Windows bootable USB key across the Hudson, in Manhattan.

So we figure we would trust the good folks in Redmond, and proceed with the upgrade in full faith it would succeed as planned. It took a reboot or two to realize that there was a slightly counter-logical pre-stage

• CANCEL the upgrade, 
• REBOOT once and then
• RESTART the upgrade.

User account settings are captured and stored during that first phase; after that, it was the typical boring process of progress bars, check marks and the blur of files being expanded and transferred.

And then... the absolute worst case scenario occured. The pet beagle knocked out the power cable -- although this was a laptop, my friend had removed the battery to cut down on a little heat, since he ran the laptop pretty much all day. So, one second the upgrade was 85% complete and the next second, the screen was black.

While Billy restored the power I smacked myself for this ridiculous oversight, and held my breath. Normally, this power crash would have rendered this computer inert, require a reformat and complete reinstall, if not completely ruined.

When we pressed the power button, instead... was the typical post-BIOS Windows boot screen, with two options. The boot option that immediately caught my eye was the second, which read "Windows 7". I wondered: "Was it possible that we could simply pick up where we had left it?"

No, it wasn't. But after a couple false starts, I reconsidered the boot options, and selected the first boot option: Windows Rollback. As I had hoped while holding my breath, waiting for the power to be restored, Windows after XP has gotten a lot smarter. The upgrade process left the Vista install unchanged until it was 100% complete. The rollback was so exacting, the boot cycle errors even returned.

It took another several hours, since we had to start again from the beginning. But the grill was hot, the drinks refreshing, and the upgrade completely successful. It transferred his applications, his desktop icons, even his wallpaper photo - a shot from the stage of CBGBs, back in the day.

Not all change is good, but I can attest that the Windows upgrade system has definitely improved since the days it took a stack of floppies and a lot of luck.

Now, it seems, it can even survive catastrophic user error...

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Your Data IS Your Business

Even if your firm or organization doesn't "do computers" by trade, computers are probably more important than you realize to your Small Business.

A lot of key information that was once kept in metal filing cabinets and on cardboard Rolodex cards is now more easily and accurately stored on computers.  Large amounts of information - data, in geek-speak - are stored primarily - if not exclusively - on your Small Business computers. E-mails. Electronic documents of all kinds: contracts, proposals, invoices, resumes, receipts. Contact information for clients, vendors, and other business associates.

To avoid finding yourself and/or your Small Business exposed to the sudden loss of critical, irreplaceable data, you've got to determine what is important data, and make certain you protect it. A blog can't identify all of your critical data for you, but it can help you discover what the three main categories of business data are, and get an idea of the best methods for protecting each.

• Dynamic data
• Active data
• Archive data

In short, there's the information you're working on right now (Dynamic data), the information you consume and create in the course of working (Active data), and finally the information your store for reference and compliance purposes (Archive data).

Dynamic data is stuff like: your email Inbox; the draft of a proposal to a potential client; digital photographs newly transferred from your camera or cell phone for business purposes. This data may be so new, it isn't in it's finished state. Should you lose it, you'll most likely be unable to reproduce or precisely recreate it.

Active data is more stable, but no less important. It's information like your central contact list - with all the important names, addresses, emails and phone numbers (you do have one, yes?); templates for the often used documents that are particular to your Small Business or tradecraft; your QuickBooks company file(s), financial spreadsheets, bank account information; access information for the essential online accounts - URLs, login IDs and passwords. Digital scans of physical items and documents.

Archive data is the information you may no longer actively use or consult, but still need to have readily available. Tax and other financial information. Old emails, completed To-do list and calendar information. Old contract agreements. Former employee data.

None of this information (except the QuickBooks files, of course) are specific to any program. Or any particular computer platform - Windows, Mac or Linux - for that matter. ALL of this and more make up the vital, mission-critical data most Small Business don't even realize they depend upon. Until it's damaged, or it disappears.

In the next post, we'll discuss how to protect your Small Business from exposure to such risks by learning how to identify the data in each category, and adopt simple methods to protect against loss or damage.

See you soon.

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What is a Backup?

I have several Small Business clients who "back up" their data by attaching large USB hard drives to their computers, and copying key files and folders to them. While this is an excellent way to archive or synchronize data, they are surprised when I tell them this is not really a data backup. Of course, they then ask me to explain the difference?

• Archiving - is when you make a complete copy of a folder and all its contents, usually to a tape, CD or DVD, and then store it for reference or future retrieval.
• Synchronizing - is when you have two folders, usually on different machines, and you take steps to ensure that every file and subfolder which is on one machine is exactly duplicated on the other.
• Backup - is when you store files and folders for protection against accidental deletion or alteration. In backups, you usually save multiple versions of the same files and or folders, allowing you to "roll back" to the way the files or folders were at a particular date or time.

Archiving and synchronizing save copies of files and folders.

• Archiving saves many copies of the same files and folders 
• Synchronizing saves only the most recent copy of every file and folder.

Backups save versions of files and folders. Think of backups as the perfect combination of archiving and synchronizing.

• Like synchronizing, you always have the latest version of the files and folders you backup. 
• Like archiving, you have every version of every changed file and folder in your backup list.

• Unlike synchronizing, you have every version of each file and folder, not just the most recent. 
• Unlike archiving, you have only the versions of files that have changed since your last backup, not multiple copies of identical files.

In the "copy to large external drive" scenario above, archiving takes up too much space, since full copies of the entire target folder is required. Synchronizing lacks the ability to access previous versions of the target files -- if a file is infected with a virus, then synchronized, you now have two versions of a bad file, and no good file to recover with.
A backup would allow you to select an uninfected version and copy it over the infected file. This is why we consider proper backups to be a key part of data protection, along with a good antivirus and firewall  program .

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Back that @$# up!

It's the single biggest technology mistake Small Businesses make.

They use email. They surf the web. Computers are cheaper than ever, so everyone in the office has a pretty decent one. And more (though still not *most*) Small Business computers have an anti-virus program running, and some sort of firewall, on the computer itself, or at the Internet connection guarding the entire office.

So while a greater number of machines are protected against intrusion or infection, few are protected against failure. Hard drive crash. Power surge. Even accidental deletion of irreplaceable data.

Image via Wikipedia
Given the past few years, it's easy to get caught up in, well... fear - especially when credit card companies and government agencies are routinely compromised.

But let's be practical: your Small Business is in much greater danger of a critical computer dying because of mechanical failure or human error, than it is of being damaged irreparably by a malicious program.

Your data IS your business: it's the reason your Small Business even has any computers, unless you make them or repair them. Creating, storing, sharing, and manipulating information - "data", in geekspeak - is what computers do for all businesses, regardless of their size or trade.

We're all doing a better job protecting our data *from* - identity thieves, viruses and worms, prying eyes. But how well are we simply protecting our data?

Anybody out there that has ever had the hard drive of an essential computer die understands completely the importance of data protection. And even those of us who haven't actually experienced this can easily imagine the disaster this could be. Yet, time and again, the important information upon which Small Businesses depend is left to chance, luck and the hope that nothing goes wrong.

It's a shame, but the number one way I meet new Small Business clients is potential data loss situations. The smaller the business, the more likely they have no backup at all.

Fortunately, most of these cases have been "near misses", but I dread the scenario when I have to tell a Small Business owner there is nothing I can do, because the disk is dead beyond restoring, and they have NO BACKUP to retrieve data from.

So what's the problem. More usefully, what's the *solution*? In my experience, the problem is two-fold: understanding what to backup, and finding a way to backup data that isn't so complicated that you eventually stop doing it.

These factors aren't that tough to resolve, given the proper experience and insight. Both of which I will share with you in the next few posts which, when finished, should help you actually back your stuff up.

And avoid that fatal, OM%G disaster...

peace

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