Yesterday, in my What does a Microsoft Dynamics consultant do? post I started explaining the job of an application consultant. As promised, today I’ll explain what duties an application consultant has in each of Sure Step phases.
Each phase of Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step methodology is equally important in an implementation project. You could argue that analysis is the most important, or that design is the most important, or that operation is less important. I’ll paraphrase Scott Adams here and ask: how one phase can be more important if each of them is completely necessary? Well, except for Diagnostic phase.
I promised to myself not to post technical stuff on this blog. But as Seth Godin said not that long ago, never’s not such a long time. And also, why shouldn’t I share a piece of useful advice if I have it. So here it goes.
Have you ever started a lengthy NAV batch job, and then wondered how much longer it is really going to take? Me too.
Never trust the customer 🙂 We were sure that the server had last service packs applied, that’s the first that we asked of the customer IT, and got a definite answer that “But, of course!”. So we didn’t really think this might be an issue. Then we noticed that SQL Server build number was 1399, while my laptop was running 3042. This reads: customer’s top-notch server is still on SQL Server 2005 RTM, my laptop is on SP2. There may hide the culprit.
So – a lesson learned: check the versions yourself, check them first, no matter what they say to you.
BUT STILL – did SP2 really bring such a huge performance improvement? Any experiences anyone? I’ve found out that there are some improvements with performance, but on such a huge scale? I mean, it is still three times faster on four times weaker hardware. This should call for a 12-fold improvement in certain operations, quite a feat 🙂
I look forward to this evening, when we have SP2 upgrade scheduled – I really can’t wait to see if this helps. I hope so, otherwise, we don’t need technical consultants on this project – we need exorcists!