We all know that building snowflake networks is bad, right? If it’s not a repeatable process it’s going to end up being a problem down the road. If we can’t refer back to documentation to shows why we did something we’re going to end up causing issues and reducing reliability. But what happens when a snowflake process is required to fix a bigger problem? It’s a fun story that highlights where process can break down sometimes.

Reloaded

I’ve mentioned before that I spent about six months doing telephone tech support for Gateway computers. This was back in 2003 so Windows XP was the hottest operating system out there. The nature of support means that you’re going to be spending more time working on older things. In my case this was Windows 95 and 98. Windows 98 was a pain but it was easy to work on.

One of the most common processes we had for Windows 98 was a system reload. It was the last line of defense to fix massive issues or remove viruses. It was something that was second nature to any of the technicians on the help desk:

1. Boot from the Gateway tools CD and use GWSCAN to write zeros to the hard drive.
2. Reboot from the CD and use FDISK to partition the hard disk.
3. Format the drive.
4. Insert the Windows 98 OS CD and copy the CAB installation files to a folder on the hard drive.
5. Run setup from the hard drive and let it complete.
6. When Windows comes back up, insert the driver CD and let install all the drivers.

The whole process took two or three phone calls to complete. Any time you got to something that would take more than fifteen minutes to complete you logged the steps in the customer trouble ticket and had them call back when it was completed. The process was so standard that it had its own acronym in the documentation – FFR, which stood for “FDISK, Format, Reload”. If you told someone where you were in the process they could finish it no problem.

Me, Me, ME

The whole process was manual with lots of steps and could intimidate customers. At some point in the development process the Gateway folks came up with a solution for Windows ME that they thought worked better. Instead of the manual steps of copying files and drivers and such, Gateway loaded the OS CD with a copy of the image they wanted for their specific model type. The image was installed using ImageCast, an imaging program that just dropped the image down on the drive without the need to do all the other steps. In theory, it was simple and reduced call times for the help desk.

In practice, Windows ME was a disaster to work on. The ImageCast program worked about half the time. If you didn’t pick the right options in the reload process it would partition the hard drive and add a second clean copy of WinME without removing the first one. It would change the MBR to have two installations to choose from with the same identifiers so users would get confused as to which was which. And the image itself seemed to be missing programs and drivers. The fact that there was a Driver CD that shipped with the system made us all wonder what the real idea behind this “improved” process was.

Because Windows ME was such a nightmare to reload, our call center got creative. We had a process that worked for Windows 98. We had all the files we needed on the disks. Why not do it the “right” way? So we did. Informally, the reload process for Windows ME was the same as Windows 98. We would FFR Windows ME boxes and make sure they looked right when they came back. No crazy ImageCasting programs or broken software loads.

The only issue? It was an informal snowflake process. It worked much better but if someone called the main help desk number and got another call center they would be in the middle of an unsupported process. The other call center tech would simply start the regular process and screw up the work we’d done already. To counter that, we would tell the customer to call our special callback voicemail box and not do anything until we called them back. That meant the reload process took many more hours for an already unhappy customer. The end result was better but could lead to frustrations.

Let It Snow

Was our informal snowflake process good or bad? It’s tough to say. It led to happier customers. It meant the likelihood of future support calls was lower because the system was properly reloaded instead of relying on a broken image. However, it was stressful for the tech that worked on the ticket because they had to own the process the whole way through. It also meant that you had to ensure the customer wouldn’t call back and disrupt the process with someone else on the phone.

The process was broken and it needed to be fixed. However, the way to fix the broken process wasn’t easy to figure out. The national line had their process and they were going to stick to it. We came up with an alternative but it wasn’t going to be adopted. Yet, we still kept using our process as often as possible because we felt we were right.

In your enterprise, you need to understand process. Small companies need processes that are repeatable for the ease of their employees. Large companies need processes to keep things consistent. Many companies that face regulatory oversight need processes followed exactly to ensure compliance. The ability to go rogue and just do it the way you want isn’t always desired.

If you have users that are going around the process you need to find out why. We see it all the time. Security rules that get ignored. Documentation requirements that are given the bare minimum effort. Remember the shutdown dialog box in Windows Server 2003? Most people did a token entry before rebooting. And having eighteen entries of “;lkj;kljl;k” doesn’t help figure out what’s going on.

Get your users to tell you why they need a snowflake process. Especially if there’s more than one person relying on it. The odds are very good that they’ve found hiccups that you need to address. Maybe it’s data entry for old systems. Perhaps it’s problem with the requirements or the order of the steps. Whatever it is you have to understand it and fix it. The snowflake may be a better way to do things. You have to investigate and figure it out otherwise your processes will be forever broken.

Tom’s Take

Inbound tech support is full of stories like these. We find a broken process and we go around it. It’s not always the best solution but it’s the one that works for us. However, building a toolbox full of snowflake processes and solutions that no one else knows about is a path to headaches. You need to model your process around what people need to accomplish and how they do it instead of just assuming they’re going to shoehorn their workflow into your checklist. If you process doesn’t work for your people, you’d better get a handle on the situation before you’re buried in a blizzard of snowflakes.