Top Tip for managing project politics

When I started my first (and last) official project management position someone gave me some useful advice, which I pass on here.

Project politics is very important and you have two choices

I have Subversion based CM Building working

As mentioned previously I have been trying to get a Configuration Management based build running. I am pleased to say that today I have managed to get it working. Here you can see the result of a build — the Subverion revision has a property BFL (Built From List) that displays the files used to build the program. It show’s all the source file’s, including their revision number and last modification date.

So what is a good University education?

The BBC reports good things about Mickey Mouse degrees.

However at the risk of seeming rather curmudgeonly, I have to say that the problem is not that specific undergraduate courses are poor but that the whole academic system seems to have removed the most valuable parts of the tertiary education process. Namely the teaching of research techniques and core concepts. Most of the graduates I recruit or work with are not widely read.

The current ethos seems to be to present students with prepared learning material, heaven forbid the little dears should have to visit the library, and make sure that the ‘clients’ are not unduly challenged by the assessment process so that they remain as ‘happy customers’ –education delivered with the integrity of McDonald’s. Perhaps all degrees should be in Hamburgerology

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My CD’s are wearing out

My much used copy of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is wearing out. The CD keeps skipping and the surface looks pitted and worn . It was one of the first CD’s I ever bought. Does this imply that CD’s have a shelf life of about 20 years or do I just not take enough care?

Anyone want to buy me a Christmas present?

Keeping a log book

Andrew discusses the use of a ‘laboratory’ style notebook for software development. His suggestions are excellent, but should really be taken further, especially for junior developers.

A developers log book should record a variety of information

POMs crumbling

To celebrate my new citizenship Australian are hammering England on the cricket field. Ever since I arrived in Australia eight years ago I made sure I passed the Tebbit Test and much to the surprise of my Australian friends and colleagues I have been a firm Australia supporter.

I also follow the state religion, Australian rules football (footy), and support the Western Bulldogs — because someone told me they were from the wrong side of town and a bit rough. Intrestingly footy is not a popular in NSW or Queensland where they follow the rugby.

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Going back to a Filofax

For a number of years I used a Filofax as my diary and notebook, then I used a PDA with MS Outlook and embraced GTD, that worked very well. Since I migrated to Linux the PDA integration broke so I became all trendy and got myself a notebook and embraced GSD, which worked really well for 4 months.

However I now have a few problems:

• My daily task list and schedule has reached into the space for my project notes (which advances from the other end of the notebook)
• The scheduling does not work so well, as I mentioned a few weeks ago
• All my notes for current projects are stuck in my current notebook, which is a problem when I have to move active projects to a new notebook
• I have no space for addresses

My proposed solution is to resurrect my Filofax, but in a much simpler GSD style. It will have a diary (I will initially try one day per page for today’s next actions lists etc.), an address section and then just lots of quadrille paper for projects, designs, action lists, notes etc. Specialist options, for financial records for instance, are also possible. I will also try and use heavier paper this time, it makes a difference to writing.

Becoming an Australian citizen

Today we had our application for Australian citizenship approved. It’s a pretty painless affair:

• Fill in an on-line form
• Pay some money
• Get someone with a professional qualification to sign a form saying they know who you are
• Go to any interview and list the four duties and seven privileges of being a citizen
• Attend a citizenship ceremony

We have yet to attend the ceremony, that should happen in the next few months.

The Australians seem very patriotic and attach a lot of importance to the concept of nationhood. However I feel an little uncomfortable about the whole patriotism thing and I have been thinking about it quite a lot about it ever since I came Australia.

I think my discomfort stems from the the fact that I was brought up in Europe where many of us still have group memories of the fascist movement, its promotion of extreme patriotism (I’m being simplistic here) and the misery that brought to the world. If a view is promoted that a certain country is ‘better’ then there is a slippery slope to denigrating other countries and peoples. This issue is discussed with a little more rigour on Wikipedia.

So given all this why I am becoming an citizen?

• I want to take part in the political process here
• My children can get jobs with the government should they wish
• Citizen’s do not need to pay A$125 every 5 years to renew their re-entry visa’s
• The queues for Australians are generally shorter at the local airport

An easier way to calculate C source dependencies

Those who follow the single makefile approach outlined by Peter Miller in his excellent paper Recursive Make Considered Harmful may be interested in the -MT option to the GCC preprocessor, introduced after Peter wrote the paper.

This switch allows the target name to be explicitly defined, multiple times if required, instead of being derived from the source file name. An sample command to be inserted into the makefile (instead of using depend.sh in Peter’s example) is

$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -MM -MG -MT $(OBJ_DIR)/$(*).o -MT $(DEP_DIR)/$(*).d -MF $@ $<

Notice that I keep my dynamic dependency files in a separate directory to the source code.

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OSS is now cheaper as well

This article reports that on low to medium size applicationso OSS databases can be perhaps twice as cost affective as their commercial brethren. There a breif mention of where the current OSS offerings as lacking (system management, XML support).

Considering how complex a modern RDBMS is then this is still considerable eachievment. I look forward to commercial applications, such as Serena Dimensions, being shipped on an OSS database in the future

A Girl’s Guide to Project Management

Thanks to Kate I found A Girl’s Guide to Project Management, a blog by Elizabeth Harrin, which has some excellent resources. I look forward to trawling through the posts over the next few days. There are even some references to Australian material… .

On a separate note, do some women find it easier to be better project managers because they might have better developed social skills than many men? Or is that just sexist claptrap?

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Open Source for Non-Geeks

My colleague Simon, who is self confessed suit-compliant human, was pleased to be able to install our Open source product without problems in an hour on our server.

I think this illustrates a trend that has been evident for some time — Open source software is now ready for the mainstream and can be used by anyone. To be sure there are bad examples of the art, however that applies across the whole software industry unfortunatly.

Can world domination be far away? .

How to get the most value for your consulting dollar

Mr Angry makes some comments about employing contractors. A few weeks ago I made a presentation at the OSDClub on how to get the greatest benefit from using consultants. i.e. paying project budget for outsides to perform services for you. As it was very much a personal perspective I would be very interested in people’s comments, just click the mind map on the left to see the full size version

What was also interesting from this exercise was that I used the mind map, instead of the usual slides, to present my views and the novel format for the material meet with great approval. The mind map was created with FreeMind

Having GTD Next Action block

When you are unsure what the Next Action is consider making it “Write a short scope list for this project”. This may help you see what the next action is.

However keep your scope short and sweet!

You have to pay the piper sometime

Matthew Taylor is reported on the BBC as saying that people

wanted “sustainability”, for example, but not higher fuelprices, affordable homes for their children but not new housing developments in their town or village.

He unfortunately has hit a nail right on the head, there is a price to be paid for everything we want.

Pop Culture is not the same everywhere despite US TV shows

I just read Scott’s new blog entry, luckily Wikipedia came to my rescue and explained what ‘Drinking the Kool-Aid‘ means

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The KISS principle, NOT!

A lot of the things I have been writing about in the last few weeks that relate to process re-enforce my strong belief in the KISS principle (Keep It Simple Stupid!). The story that Britan has apparently wasted US$ 24 Billion speaks volumes about our ability to over commit time and time again on outrageously large projects:

In 2002, the British government embarked on a $12 billion effort to transform its health-care system with information technology. But the country’s oversight agency now puts that figure at $24 billion, and two Members of Parliament say the project is “sleepwalking toward disaster.”

That someone decided to approve this in the first place is either:

• Hubris
• Stupidy
• Proof that the more over ambitious and ridiculous your proposal then the easier it is to get a huge budget

The world is mad!

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Sun’s view of the OSS business model

Rather than go to bed at the proper time last night I reviewed Sun’s announcement around the Open Source Release of Java. Besides the the actual release of the software there were two messages that came across very loudly about how Sun see Open Source working for their business. This is how I interpreted what they said

Outsourcing for Success

I’m up at the Sydney Gartner conference where I heard an interesting presentation from Kate Carruthers from Westfield about IT outsourcing. Kate’s main message was to concentrate on the basics.

• People (culture, training, support)
• Process (approriate and good enough, matched across boundaries, project and requirements managment)
• Platforms (systems, applications, architecture, tools)

The Business IT disconnect…

How many times have you heard the phrase “IT needs to learn how to connect with the business and correctly address it’s needs, until then we will continue to have failed projects etc etc.”, or similar?

Now this is quite true — unless IT is delivering services and software that helps the organisation survive and prosper then we deserve all the opprobrium that is heaped upon us.