Comments on: Too Many Directions, Too Much to Think About http://etherealmind.com/too-much-to-think-about/ Network design, architecture, thinking, working. Tech. Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:43:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Anatoly Gavrilov http://etherealmind.com/too-much-to-think-about/#comment-1107 Anatoly Gavrilov Tue, 04 Aug 2009 04:50:22 +0000 http://etherealmind.com/?p=1616#comment-1107 I'm wondering what your implementation engineers think about your work. I've realised that it's hard to make a distinct line between design and implementation phase. May be some requirements were missed or implementation didn't go as planned and you have to implement a workaround which may affect your design. And I saw a lot of various interractions between design and service delivery people: Smart Designer with a lot of field exp(CCIE) + Dumb Implementators = Design include detailed configurations of the hardware with detailed physical layouts. Field engineers simply connect devices as described, put IOS and configs. In case of problem, design engineer log in remotely and investigate what's going on. Smart Designer + Smart Implementators = Designer starts giving more general configs, service delivery engineer can make IP allocation by himself, etc... Troubleshooting is done together. Usually smart field engineers go out from field work especially people with families as they don't have time for kids if they travel too much. Dumb Designer + Smart Implementators = Designs will be very high-level. Like cloud to cloud connected with one link without any details. Service Delivery will eat a lot of shit dealing with the implementation. Basically they have to make a new design (we can call it low-level, but it's completely different kind of job). It's very easy to talk to customers and draw clouds in Visio. But if there are no good implementation engineers, dumb designer will be screwed (or promoted to high management as it usually happens) Dumb Designer + Dumb Implementator = Fail! :) I’m wondering what your implementation engineers think about your work. I’ve realised that it’s hard to make a distinct line between design and implementation phase. May be some requirements were missed or implementation didn’t go as planned and you have to implement a workaround which may affect your design.

And I saw a lot of various interractions between design and service delivery people:

Smart Designer with a lot of field exp(CCIE) + Dumb Implementators = Design include detailed configurations of the hardware with detailed physical layouts. Field engineers simply connect devices as described, put IOS and configs. In case of problem, design engineer log in remotely and investigate what’s going on.

Smart Designer + Smart Implementators = Designer starts giving more general configs, service delivery engineer can make IP allocation by himself, etc… Troubleshooting is done together. Usually smart field engineers go out from field work especially people with families as they don’t have time for kids if they travel too much.

Dumb Designer + Smart Implementators = Designs will be very high-level. Like cloud to cloud connected with one link without any details. Service Delivery will eat a lot of shit dealing with the implementation. Basically they have to make a new design (we can call it low-level, but it’s completely different kind of job). It’s very easy to talk to customers and draw clouds in Visio. But if there are no good implementation engineers, dumb designer will be screwed (or promoted to high management as it usually happens)

Dumb Designer + Dumb Implementator = Fail! :)

]]> By: Ethan http://etherealmind.com/too-much-to-think-about/#comment-1106 Ethan Fri, 31 Jul 2009 21:05:22 +0000 http://etherealmind.com/?p=1616#comment-1106 <i>A good engineer knows technology. But the mental discipline and practice to gather, hold, sort that data, and then extract meaning from it and being able to comprehend a wide range of technology means you have a chance to be a great engineer.</i> Well said. Bravo. A good engineer knows technology. But the mental discipline and practice to gather, hold, sort that data, and then extract meaning from it and being able to comprehend a wide range of technology means you have a chance to be a great engineer.

Well said. Bravo.

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