SW2008: is 45 hours too much?

I track time spent on various projects using a tool called Timebox. I
have an IT project that I use as a catchall for tasks that involve
software installation, debugging, etc. Time spent writing up and
sending SW problems is included and is the major contributor. From Jan
1 to Mar 1 which is two months I have racked up 45 or so hours on this
project. That is a whole week of lost time. To be fair, about a day
was spent rebuilding my machine after a power supply/hard drive
failure. Still that amount of time is unacceptable. On the other hand
I didn't include all the time spent remating assemblies.

Do any of you peeps keep track of time spent fixing instead of
producing?

TOP

 

Lucky you, sort of, perhaps.
A modem going bad can be a real mess. Hard to identify
the problem (or even that you have one) (til it dies) and it
can mess with everything else on the bus and OS settings
as well as random files it seems.

 

Let's see, January had five weeks, February had four. That makes nine
weeks total with one week plus spent debugging, if you wan't to call
it that. 1/9th was 11.1% the last time I checked (88.9% uptime). If
you figure the burden rate for my time is $50/hour that amounts to
$2,250 for the downtime. If this story repeats itself for the rest of
the year that amounts to $13,500 for the year in lost productivity.
BTW the downtime includes installing service packs. The real issue is
that the kinds of problems I see do not necessarily occur
consistently, but crop up in certain models. So I can't really be sure
at the start just how long a job will take.

If you are seeing 97% uptime then that means $3,000 for the cost of
the down time during the year if you use SWX 100% of the time, 40
hours per week. You probably don't use SW the full 40 hours per week.
As I calculated the 88.9% uptime assuming 45 hours per week SW usage
let me be more realistic and say that I am using SW 25 hours per week
with other duties and meetings intervening. Then 45 / (5*25) = 36%
downtime. This really isn't stellar performance.

TOP

 

I would say that the only thing that makes it acceptable or
unacceptable is your own assessment of it. What is it compared to the
alternatives (including nothing at all)?

Matt Lorono
http://sw.fcsuper.com
http://www.fcsuper.com/swblog

 

I would say that the only thing that makes it acceptable or

So just accept it, right Matt? While were at it let's all accept this
pathetic situation as well:

http://machinedesign.com/ContentItem/68359/HowwasthatmodelbuiltSoftwaretellsall.aspx

Journalists, Bloggers, Users... it makes no difference.

Jon Banquer
San Diego, CA

 

I do have an alternative. We also have UG. I might be able to justify
the learning curve.

I'm wondering if I am experiencing what others are seeing. Matt, do
you track time spent installation/configuration/fixing/debugging
problems with SW? Things like assembly mates, installation problems,
command manager problems and the like. If you aren't tracking the time
you can't say much.

If 2008 gets stable towards the end of its release cycle I will have
an alternative which would be to stay with 2008 till another release
gets to an acceptable level. If 2008 doesn't get stable then I have to
consider switching. Obviously the cost of switching is high because of
proprietary file formats and the lack of interoperability. I can
ameliorate some of the cost by skipping service pack installs. Since
3.0 didn't seem to fix any of the problems I am having I can wait till
4.0.


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Which also has patches released from time to time for
UG, the OS & the specific hardware. But they also do
ISO 9000 certification .... and lots of testing upfront.
Is your hardware on their certified list? It may well run
fine on other hardware but ...
Plus, they have new releases too.

The old adage was that yu need one full-time sysadmin
for every 50 MS boxes & one for every 200 UNIX boxes ..
you probably need more now for MS I'd guess.
Plus you need somebody to support the applications
IMHO.

 

You might contact UG's translator support group in (last I knew)
St. Louis. They may have tools, if you go that route. Their support
group (good folks) can advise.