Posts

This is the third and final post in a series of posts to break down the questions from my Queries on Queries talk. The full talk is available here. Is your solution reusable? Migrations feel like one off processes, but teams that migrate once usually migrate again. Have you ensured that as much of your solution as possible can be reused? Do you have a shared library of migration tools that your whole team can access? When you create new functionality are you thinking about ways to make it usable in your next project? ...

This is the second in a series of posts to break down the questions from my Queries on Queries talk. The full talk is available here. Is your work repeatable? You will need to do this more than once. Is your process designed so you can run it over and over without error? Can you easily erase test attempts and start over from a clean slate? Do you have the capacity to do all the practice runs you need to complete your project successfully and on schedule? ...

This is the first in a series of posts to break down the questions from my Queries on Queries talk. The full talk is available here. Are your tools good enough? Our migrations live and die by our tools. Are your tools built for the scale of your project? Do they empower you to do your best work or impede rapid progress? Would a new tool serve you better now or in the future? ...

Last week I gave my Queries on Queries talk, intended to help you improve your data migration process, as a webinar for Attain Partners. It’s a revised and improved version from the last time I gave it. These questions aren’t like the old Joel Test (which is still useful) where the right answer is “yes”. These questions are designed to point you in a direction but allow you to change your answer over time. I generally answer this questions with a paragraph not a word. Use these questions as a challenge to make you and your team better. ...

A good set of notes is how we build a memory of what happened. Good note taking is important in nearly any white collar job, particularly consulting. If we have a long conversation with a client and have to re-ask them about all the details, they will rightly be annoyed. They may demand to know what they paid for the first time we talked. Why we take notes In school we are taught to take notes. Teachers expect students to remember information to pass tests, write papers, and other evaluations of learning. Too often teachers will try to convince students to take notes in specific way. They may make note taking into an assignment and assessment of its own. My wife sees college students who decide that they don’t need to take notes because she does not grade them. These students do not do well. These students missed the point of taking notes. The form of the notes is not important, but the existence of them is. ...

Sorting is a basic part of any computer science program. My sister and I are currently engaged in helping my parents move. As part of that effort I am spending sorting things, which has reminded me of another place where it can be useful to apply things you learn in one field to another. Bucket and Radix sorts are basic sorting approaches taught in any good algorithms class. The process involves sorting like items into buckets, and then resorting items, either within those buckets ( bucket sort), or by their next property ( radix sort). ...

Last week I was part of a webinar for Attain Partners talking about Salesforce data migrations. One of the questions the moderator, Eric Magnuson, asked was the three lessons I’d learned doing data migration work. The answers I chose weren’t so much from my first data migration projects, as from more recent projects. Those early migrations were tiny by my current standards. Back then, I was mainly the consumer of migrated data. When I did migrations they were small and manual. The intellectual process was similar but the scale meant I had lots left to learn about large data projects. The lessons I chose are focused on what I wish I knew when doing the migration for clients with vastly larger data sets. When I became the producer of migrated data. ...

This week I learned that I am now a Salesforce MVP! I know that I was nominated by at least Chris Pifer, Samantha Shain, Paul Ginsberg, and Cassie Supilowski. I appreciate their support, and also everything they have taught me over time. They are an august group. Two are Rock Star Admins and two are existing MVPs (three now, as Sam is also in the 2023 MVP class). It is my a privileged to know, work with, and learn from all of them. ...

Major Sidney Freedman was often the perfect psychiatrist at the perfect moment – all consultants wish we were as effective as Sidney. Major Freedman, most often referred to as Sidney, was a recurring character on M*A*S*H who comes to the 4077th a few times a season. Sidney always seems to know what his patients need; he has the perfect thing to say, while being compassionate to whoever he’s there to help (including himself). ...

Sometimes we learn best from counter examples. Col. Flagg was an recurring character on M*A*S*H. He was a CID man with Army Intelligence, and spent much of his time bloviating about his suspicions about everyone while threatening to kill people for fun. Flagg seemed to have taken every piece of tactical advice he was ever given to absolute extreme. It leads him apply his most aggressive techniques – like threats of torture, or attempts at bribery – to every situation he encounters. ...