Month: September 2008

When the Windows Task Manager isn’t enough…

Then you’ve got to switch to the Process Explorer! I was having some problems with undocking my office Lenovo notebook from the docking station because Windows insisted that my dvd drive was in use when I was very sure that was not the case because there was no DVD disc in the drive at all!

Suspecting that it was a problem with an errant process, I downloaded and launched Process Explorer and found the culprit quickly. Just by searching for the “cdrom” handle, I found out that it was (tada!) Microsoft Search Indexer that was causing me grief. Turning off the service and disallowing it from starting automatically solved my problems.

The kindergarten concert no-show

On the day when there was to be a kindergarten concert, my parents brought me to the hawker centre near “Kim To” for dinner. However, the timing was a bit off and we had to rush for the concert as I had to perform with my class.

We arrived slightly late and by the time we rushed to backstage, the entire class was already assembled on stage. I didn’t feel ready to perform so I just decided not to go on stage.

Videos for user training

In the course of managing and planning for projects, you will inevitably need to cater for training the users to use your system. What usually happens is that you will not be able to get all users to attend the training for the rollout of your spanking new system as they have their daily work to handle. You will either have to conduct multiple training sessions in order to reach all your users, or you will instruct a few users and leave them to pass their knowledge on to their colleagues.

Both choices are not very ideal. The former is not a conducive use of your time, while the latter is not a reliable method — let’s say your users can retain 80% of their knowledge (which is already obscenely optimistic…). At first glance, this may not seem to be a bad thing. However, note that these same users are expected to pass on their knowledge, and they may not have the proper presentation or training skills. If their colleagues have an 80% knowledge retention as well, then the end result is only 64% of what you originally taught!

Through my experience, one feasible way to improve knowledge retention and facilitate training is to use a screen capture software like CamStudio. You can take screen captures of various system scenarios and upload them to a corporate website where users can download and view if they need a refresher in the future. Although this may seem to be time-consuming, it is an invaluable resource especially if you are rolling out a brand new system that no one has seen or used before.