Copying Data from Project 2010 to Word is Actually Worse than 2007

In Project 2007, copying data from Project to Word was quite painful, resulting in some funky formatting that was hard coded to whatever colors, fonts, etc. you had in your project file.  In addition, when you copied dates, the default format was 9/8/2010 12:00pm which unless your plan is VERY time sensitive is not typically want you want to show in a word document.

So in Project 2010, the Microsoft team seems to have fixed some things but broken others in an effort to improve these problems in 2007.

So take this dummy project plan I created:

I want to move this into Word so that I can include it in a Statement of Work, Project Charter, etc.  What I want is this data in a simple table – I don’t need GANTT charts or anything else…just a basic list of tasks and durations.

So now if I copy this into Word, this is what I get:

Not a bad representation of the plan – certainly better than the output in Project 2007.    However, the biggest challenge here is the indenting – Task 1.1, 1.2, etc. are indented using 4 Spaces instead of a TAB, a proper Word paragraph indent, etc.  If you want to change the size of the indent in word, you’re now stuck with doing a search and replace for 4 spaces and either replacing them or converting them to TABs or Word paragraph indents.

In Excel, there is a further problem – date formatting.  In Excel, the same plan looks like this:

Again, not bad and certainly an improvement over MS Project 2007.  However, let’s suppose that you want to change the date format to a simple date without the day in it, e.g. 8-Sept-10.    In order to convert the cell into a proper date, you have delete the "Wed " from the dates for each day of the week.  Then you can format your dates anyway you like in Excel.  In addition, you have the same problem with indents as Word – indents are handled with 4 Spaces instead of real indent marks, making them tough to remove.

So from my perspective, while the formatting is prettier when copying data from MS Project 2010, its actually less useful and harder to convert to something I can manually format and change in Word or Excel myself.  This is ultimately what is needed – if you are copying and pasting into another document, you will want to use the parent documents fonts, indenting, date formatting, etc. and not Project’s default settings.

Another Apple IPOD Touch OS - A New Set of Weird Bugs

I have now upgraded my IPOD Touch to IOS 4.0 and already I have experienced some odd bugs:

1. The default Wall Paper is a picture of rain hitting a glass window - not really a bug, but my first instinct was to assume that my IPOD had been dumped in water or had been exposed to humidity and it was warning me!

2. The genius mix (which I have blogged about previously as a major source of bugs) seems to at least work, but the genius database makes some odd choices...it put Glenn Miller into my "Classic Rock" mix and Madonna into my "Indie Rock" mix for example.

3. When you upgrade your OS, it backs up your existing media, wipes your OS and then restores your media through a sync. I had 26 images on my IPOD from my vacation and the restored pictures are there but they are now super pixelated low resolution!

Zachman vs. TOGAF – Enterprise Architecting for Change

In the past several years, I have been working with the Zachman Framework for classifying and organizing architecture artefacts.  Zachman is quite popular as a framework in large enterprises such as governments, big banks, utilities, etc. because it is seen as a comprehensive way to manage the architecture process. 

In the past year or so, I have been switching over to TOGAF which is a competing EA framework.  In comparing the two frameworks, I have found it to be fundamentally more useful in my line of work for a simple reason – TOGAF is a process for managing architecture change, while Zachman is a taxonomy for capturing the current  state of an enterprise (exhaustively seems to be the goal).

Roger Session’s wrote a good article comparing various EA frameworks, and I agree with his conclusion – Zachman is really a taxonomy and TOGAF describes processes.

The TOGAF process is described by the Architecture Development Method (ADM) :

The ADM has some interesting features that make it more relevant to evolving enterprises:

1. The ADM is fundamentally iterative, both within a single cycle and through repeated iterations of the full cycle. 
2. TOGAF provides a prescription for storing, classifying and managing architecture artefacts and solution building blocks at various levels of detail and maturity, promoting an incremental approach to enterprise architecture.
3. Along with the ADM, TOGAF prescribes many tools for capturing requirements, defining/designing architectures and implementing governance practices. 
4. The process is explicitly business and stakeholder focused – there is a recognition that architecture has to have a business purpose and not just be for its own sake.
5. TOGAF explicitly allows borrowing from other frameworks, adapting and tailoring the framework to suit the needs of the business, etc.  So if you still want to use your Zachman Grid, you can continue to do so.

Zachman, in contrast, is about capturing state in a structured way.  It provides no guidance on HOW to do architecture design, HOW to introduce change or HOW to improve the architectural maturity of an organization.  It simply provides the model for storing architecture artefacts.

Zachman also has no guidance for incorporating processes into an architecture state – there is no spot in the grid for defining change management processes, operations processes (e.g. ITIL), project management processes, etc.  TOGAF in contrast compliments these processes quite nicely:

In my work, I am finding TOGAF to be an effective framework for working with stakeholders through strategic planning and architecture work, especially for organizations who are actively transforming themselves.  It allows me to define a process for managing the architecture change in a structured manner through an iterative change cycle.  Stakeholders see a PROCESS that involves them through change and growth in their organization’s maturity. 

My old URL is now obsolete

Before Yahoo Mail became a big deal, it didn’t have its own URL (its currently mail.yahoo.com).  The URL was www.yahoo.com/r/m1.  This URL hasn’t been promoted or used for about 10 years now but it still worked.  My brain’s automatic typing reflexes simply remember that URL as a habit.

As of this week, it finally died!  Now when I without thinking type www.yahoo.com/r/m1 I get this error message:

I guess it will take me a while to remember mail.yahoo.com as a replacement…

New Details on SharePoint 2010 from Microsoft

Microsoft has released a new site on SharePoint 2010.

In the site, you will find information on SharePoint 2010 for developers and it professionals.

There are some interesting announcements in video format here that are worth exploring.   In the developer video, they show SharePoint integration into Visual Studio 2010.  There are a few new bits in here:

• Manifest editing tools in Visual Studio
• Solution Package Designer in Visual Studio
• New web part editor for Visual Studio
• LINQ will now support SharePoint lists. 
• Developer Dashboard will help by providing diagnostic information when developing web parts in SharePoint.

Will Google Chrome OS Be Any Different than LINUX, BEOS, Network Computer, etc.?

It was widely announced that Google will be releasing a new operating system called the Chrome OS that will be initially deployed to NetBooks but will hopefully compete with Windows on the desktop.

Yawn…shades of 1995 when Java OS, Oracle OS, Network Computer etc. tried to do the same thing.

If you want a OS replacement for Windows on your NetBook, you can get it today – its called LINUX!  Acer, Dell, etc. all have Net Books that will come with LINUX today.  And if you want to run Google’s browser, you can download it for free.

Can you even call Chrome OS a new operating system when you’re just repackaging LINUX?  KDE and GNOME aren’t operating systems, so why is Chrome? 

"The operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no Web," the blog post said. "So today, we're announcing a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome--the Google Chrome Operating System. It's our attempt to rethink what operating systems should be."

Huh?  Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS, and LINUX were all designed with the web in mind. 

COREL had the same vision in mind when they created COREL LINUX.  They had WordPerfect, CorelDraw, etc. (even at the time much more sophisticated applications than Google Spreadsheet is today) and they couldn’t sell any more office licenses because Microsoft had a lock on the desktop and was killing them in the office market.  So they made a big splash (and almost killed the company) investing heavily in desktop LINUX, the supposedly Windows killer. 

BE Operating System was an entirely new OS developed in 1991.  Unlike the Chrome OS or Corel, it wasn’t a rehash of LINUX with a new set of apps thrown on top of it.  It was an entirely brand new operating system from the kernel upwards.  It had the same ambitious target – replace Windows with a better operating system.  It had a niche following originally as a replacement to the Apple Operating System (since the BE OS initially only ran on Power PC Chips and not Intel) and then as a Windows replacement.   The company could not gain enough market share and eventually was bought out by Palm.

The same reasons why these operating systems didn’t survive will cause major challenges for Google.  I found this table from Microsoft to challenge the proposition of the Network Computer:

	PC	Network Computer
Operating System	Windows	Proprietary / Incompatible
Mobile Support	Excellent	None
Applications	> 100,000	Limited / Incompatible
Development Tools	Choice	Limited to Java
Device Support	Thousands	Proprietary / Incompatible
Device Model	Windows	None / Incompatible
Manufacturers	2,500	Few
Networking	Choice	Requires high speed net
Availability	Now	Limited
Printer Support	Thousands	None
Scalability	Excellent	Poor

With using LINUX, Google can solve some of these issues (scalability for example).  But even OS X for example has less third party support than Windows and far less partners and applications and it is fairly mature.  Google will have none of these advantages.

Challenges with Sharing Excel Workbooks in SharePoint

In Excel 2007 (and 2003), you can share a workbook.  This allows users to simultaneously update the same file:

This feature is used in many enterprises for collaboration, especially in departments such as Finance or Planning where there are lots of shared figures, budgets, plans, etc.

There are some interesting features that allow for some rich collaboration scenarios simply within a single Excel file:

• Each time that you save the shared workbook, you are prompted with the changes that other users have saved since the last time that you saved the shared workbook. If you want to keep the shared workbook open to monitor progress, Excel can update you with the changes automatically, at timed intervals that you specify, with or without saving the workbook yourself.
• When you save changes to a shared workbook, another person who is editing the workbook might have saved changes to the same cells. In this case, the changes conflict, and you are prompted with a conflict resolution dialog box so that you can choose which changes to keep

When moving to SharePoint as a document management platform, this feature is no longer supported:

More than one user cannot simultaneously make changes to a shared workbook that is stored on a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 site. If you want to store your workbook on a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 site, you should do so only after the collaboration effort through sharing is complete.

Document libraries by design only allow one person to edit a document at the same time.  In addition, they support check-in and out to provide locks on documents during the editing process.  When a user grabs a file for editing from SharePoint, they edit a file on their local machine and then when done it is saved back to the central document repository. 

Excel Services allows for running of Excel files within the SharePoint server, but only in read only fashion.  Excel Services is great for read only dashboards, charts and graphs but isn’t a collaboration service.

For more information on the different options for Excel collaboration, see Microsoft’s article on the subject.