Author Archives: Jeanne Boyarsky

18 minutes from alarm to door. A business process engineering exercise

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Someone was showing me how to categorize waste in business process engineering (BPE) and mentioned an example about listing every little thing you do getting ready for work in the morning.  I think the idea is to think about every little step and look for waste.  While I’m a morning person, I don’t like to get up earlier than I need to for work.  And that morning person bit starts about an hour after I wake up.  Here’s a stab at the exercise:

My morning ritual

  1. minute 0 – alarm rings, hit snooze, sit up, shut alarm and stand up (the point of hitting snooze isn’t to go back to sleep, it’s to stop the ringing so I can collect myself.)
  2. minutes 1-2- pee, wash hands
  3. minute 3 – turn on radio to CBS 880, take juice and milk out of fridge, put box of cereal on table
  4. minutes 4-5 – drink juice and make bowl of cereal while listening to “traffic and weather on the 8’s”.  Also listen to news headlines if got up at :25 or :55.
  5. minutes 6-9 – finish breakfast
  6. minute 10 – wash dishes
  7. minutes 11-14 – brush teeth, wash up, brush hair
  8. minutes 15-17 – get dressed
  9. minute 18 – grab watch, BlackBerry, id and keys.  Take out Metrocard.  Put on backpack and go.

Assumptions:

  1. I wake up via the alarm.  If I wake up on my own, I am a bit more leisurely about getting ready or check my e-mail on the iPad during my extra minutes.
  2. It’s not my “female time” of month.  It takes another couple of minutes then.
  3. I wake up on the 5 (:05, :15, :25, etc)

Human interaction

I’m only able to be this fast because I don’t have to get ready at the same time as anyone else nor be responsible for another person/pet.  When I lived with my parents, my father and I got ready at the same time.  It took a little longer, but we had a system where neither of us would need to be in the bathroom at the same time.  That bathroom always had someone in there and was definitely the critical resource!

Waste

I suppose having breakfast at home is a form of waste.  I value eating breakfast to be alert over saving a few more minutes.  Other than that, I think I’ve tuned this process to get rid of all waste.  See any?

oracle certification – linking existing pearson/prometric accounts

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Oracle has switched to PearsonVUE and is asking candidates past/present to migrate their history from Prometric.  I have an existing PearsonVUE account from my Spring Certification.  The steps were straightforward enough and *almost* matched the documentation.

  1. Go to the Oracle transition site
  2. Click my account
  3. Login to your existing PearsonVUE account resetting the password as needed.
  4. It asks to enter your Oracle information. (I got an error here.)  I choose the “more information” link to recover from the error.  Oracle is in pulldown now.
  5. Enter your Oracle testing id.  This is your Prometric id and was e-mailed to you on May 16th.
  6. Click save
  7. Click confirm

It now says

Your request to add Oracle Certification Program has been forwarded to our Testing Program team. If you provided a valid email address, we will notify you when your request has been processed. This typically occurs within one business day. You can also return to this site and check if Oracle Certification Program has been added to your list of Testing Programs.

Thank you for your interest in Oracle Certification Program.

is two people pairing better in a training class?

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This girl and her coworker are pairing together in this class. She said to the instructor pairing is pointless. Her partner in crime said its distracting and silly.

Someone e-mailed me this story suggesting it would make a good blog.  I feel for both sides of the story here so I’m going to present an argument for both points of view.  I bet the e-mailer didn’t see that coming!

Pair programming on a project

On an actual task, I think pair programming is great.  It is faster, higher quality, both people know the code and provides a great way to learn from each other.  In a $5,000 training class, I have mixed feelings.

Pros – why two students per computer in class rocks

I’ve never actually done this so it is more hypothetical.

  1. You get stuck less because there are two minds.
  2. You go down less dead ends completing the labs faster.
  3. Your partner can point out when you aren’t getting something or doing it the longer way.
  4. One person can explain to the other when it takes longer for one person to grasp a concept.
  5. You can learn tricks from the other person like how to use the IDE better.
  6. You don’t have to ask the instructor for help as often – which is a big benefit if a lot of people in the class have questions.

Cons – why two students per computer in class is a waste of time

  1. I want to make as many mistakes as humanly possible while in class so I don’t on the job.
  2. I want to get hands on experience *doing* each step rather than just watching.  I’m a tactile learner and I’m going to retain more by doing.
  3. I want to gain experience with debugging/troubleshooting in a controlled setting where the instructor can bail me out as needed.
  4. I think faster than the average person and always finish labs very early.  I want to use that time to explore the subject matter rather than have the whole lab take longer.
  5. Sometimes asking the instructor a question sparks a good discussion.
  6. Sometimes I want to try something that isn’t strictly covered in class so I can ask the instructor/expert when I get stuck.  Can’t do this with a partner.

The ideal in my mind

Having one computer for each student and asking the person next to you when you have a question.  Benefits:

  1. Frees up the instructor for the hard questions
  2. Lets you see the mistakes of two people rather than just your own
  3. Gain practice trying to explain things

What do you think?  Do you prefer pairing with someone else in class?   Ultimately, I think it depends on the learning style of both people.  For my style, having my own computer is more conducive to learning a technology.