Re: Where's Jeff Middleton when you need him!
- From: "Jeff Middleton [SBS-MVP]" <jeff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 09:55:08 -0500
I am indeed in contact with Jim about his project. What isn't necessarily
obvious to anyone else is what the time frame involved here was. I wasn't so
much missing as Jim's email might suggest, let me explain.
- I received an email at 3:38 pm yesterday (my time) from Jim (who is in
UK). I responded to it at 7:24 am today. That's under 2 business hours my
time.
- As I said, Jim is located in UK, I'm located in US Central time. From his
perspective, he emailed me and posted here on another thread at the same
time...at what I believe is 8:38 pm his time. My reply to him would have
arrived just after noon his time. That's under 5 hrs business time his local
time.
- Jim's purchase on Sunday was 12:21 pm my time, or about 5:21 pm his time
Sunday, but basically he had the documentation in hand for about 24 hrs
before he started posting problems here in the MSNEWS group asking people
here for help.
I'm not really sure how to set better expectations on either support
turnaround or how quickly someone can digest a rather large project concept
like Swing Migration in such a short period of time.
I realize that people would like to have a magic bullet with all this
automated somehow, foolproof and free from variances. I don't discount that
doing a migration project can be frustrating work, particularly if you have
deadlines that are very pressing. This is why I generally recommend to folks
to allow themselves a week or two for the preparation of the new server in
advance of the deployment date.
For anyone who has ever replaced an SBS server by any methodology, you
probably should anticipate that the scope of the project is going to be a
pretty significant technical task. I'm not sure why there is this impression
that any approach (including Swing) is somehow so "easy" rather than
"predictable outcome limited to work at the server". We are talking about
replacing the most complex server suite that exists...and why anyone thinks
that can be trivialized I just don't understand. Swing brings the issues to
a narrow scope of construction that can be done offline without impacting
production operations, it can be done in advance, and it can be learned in
the course of your first real project without putting the customer at any
significant risk. That doesn't mean you should assume you won't have
setbacks.
Finishing a project in 1 day the first time you lay eyes on the
documentation isn't realistic. Finishing it successfully when you take
advantage of my support and an adequate amount of time is a realistic
expecatation.
I build in direct email support with every Technician Kit purchase because I
think it's an essential part of the value I can provide. I also established
support discussion groups on SBSmigration.com to provide a resource to Kit
owners and subscribers to use in asking questions, researching new project
variations for their needs, and troubleshooting problems during a project.
The discussion groups on SBSmigration.com are not public because it allows
me to ensure that conversations remain accurate without being force to deal
with spam, or deleting volumes of inaccurate information like what appears
in the guesswork of public group discussion on a project this scale. I
moderate the entire discussion and post on every thread that needs an
answer. And yet, I still request that first time attempts use the direct
email support through me as the most efficient way for me to help them
succeed.
As such, the key to getting a really good experience in doing a Swing
Migration is to allow enough time to both work the project with efficient
use of your time, allow time for requesting and receiving support, use all
of the troubleshooting information that comes with the kit, and take
advantage of the audit and supplemental documentation and group discussions
on the SBSmigration.com site. All of this is available as part of the value
in the Kit.
In this case, as far as I can tell, none of these resources were used before
Jim started posting about his frustrations here....and all of this in
literally less than 12 hrs from his first email here or to me, all that
after 5pm his local time, and without really allowing a realistic
expectation on how quickly support could be provided.
I take feedback constantly from my customers on how to improve my support
and to the degree I can incorporate a different approach or improve the
documentation, I try to do that. What I cannot promise anyone is that if you
don't try to learn the project in a realistic time frame, and anticipate
that the first time you do this you might stumble, you should think that
through a bit more. People who have completed a Swing project are far more
likely to do the next one and the one after that without needing support,
only the documentation updates I provide. People doing their first project
need to be realistic about how much you can learn about a really big project
in a short time.
- Jeff Middleton SBS-MVP
YCST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Jim" <jim@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:jo7j439r8kf4p5joqimsuo6n0rfuq6kaq4@xxxxxxxxxx
Arrggghhhh!!!!
This Swing migration is going from bad to worse. I'm now on my fourth
install of Windows 2003 SBS.
I've sent emails to the support address, but no response.
Definitely the worst $200 I ever spent.
Jim
.
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