What social media relationship management really looks like!

Please Note: I am NOT a social media guru, or any of the other meaningless titles the no-hopers give themselves on Twitter. I’m just a geek who can spot the obvious, especially when it’s pointed out.

Post-Mortem of This Morning’s Outage

At 07:53 PDT this morning the site was hit with an abnormal number of SSH connections. The script that runs after an SSH connection is accepted makes an RPC call to the backend to check for the existence of the repository so that we can display a nice error message if it is not present…

This is the a post from the GitHub team about a recent problem that affected many of their customers (of whom I am one).

As you can see from the comments attached to the above post, GitHub’s strategy of open communication pays dividends in providing

• Positive customer feedback, even when there is a problem
• Customer loyalty  — everywhere on the web (just do a Google search) GitHub customers, including me, are happy to recommend them

Now obviously GitHub offer a great product as well, but the point I want to make is that social media is all about transparency and authenticity. It’s not rocket science but I shudder to think about the number of organisations wasting money and falling at this basic level.

Incidentally, GitHub’s message content  is appropriate for their customer base — who are a right bunch of geeks. Yours should be appropriator as well.

How I would change netbook hardware

I’ve been using my ASUS EEPC 1000H for 10 months now and there are some obvious changes that could improve the form factor which no one seems to be implementing. So here is my $200 worth

• Remove the speakers — it’s hard to get decent sound anyway. I’m mobile so I don’t want disturb others and I always use headphones. Use the space for something else
• Use a trackpoint instead of a trackpad. Takes up a lot less space and is harder to accidentally hit when typing
• Try and make the screen a little taller so that it can display 1024×768. There are just enough applications that don’t work at 1024×600 to make this important
• Improve video playback — the form factor makes a great mini-TV but sometimes… Would this be a simple matter of improving the graphics card?
• Ship with 2Gb already!
• Oh .. and don’t bother with fingerprint scanners, there are more important things.

I’m happy enough with my EEEPC that it’s my main computer (but I have a big screen and keyboard to use with it, and I don’t use tools like Eclipse)

How to survive the emotional pressure of working at home

When you work from home there are various things you need to do to look after yourself:

1. Identify what you need to stay sane and make sure work out how to find or do it
2. Set up networks of friends on services such as twitter or facebook. Spend a limited of time each catching up with them — but be careful not to let it affect productivity too much.
3. Make sure you get out off the ‘office’ for coffee breakfast or lunch. I like to go to a local coffee shop
4. Join various groups relevant to your professional or personal interests and consider attending group meetings. IT people based in Melbourne can find a list at Perl Net
5. Set boundaries to help you switch off from work and do something else. Having an private office and defined office hours can help
6. Make sure that the people you live with understand when you are work and can’t be usually expected to join in other activities
7. Be flexible and break the schedule and work practices sometimes. After all flexibility is the main reason to telecommute

He also helps to create a decent working environment (space, light, furniture, storage, IT systems). I made some notes on this

What is Application Lifecycle Management?

The analysts and tools vendors have been talking about Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) for many years now and I think they have (of course) been somewhat self serving in their definitions. ALM seems to  include whatever product category they have in the current price list and then promising their integrations’ would be managements answer to cost and governance issues. I hope to say more about integrations in the future, but I’d like to look at the scope of ALM for now.

If you ask vendors and consultants (including me) about ALM scope you’ll get answers such:

• Requirements engineering
• Software Configuration management
• Dependency Tracking
• Change control and work tracking
• Test management
• Software development tools and process
• Software building and processes
• Deployment
• Process Governance

Depending on the vendor you might even get more traditional: Project and Program Management;  Project and Application Portfolio Management/Analysis; and Service Management activities thrown in as well.

The usual sales pitch is that everything is managed via a common tooling and provides a common repository. The major, and often single, selling point of this approach is improved governance and business oversight of the SDLC.

However I think it’s useful and important to look at the definition of ALM from a customers perspective rather than as analysts or vendors.

It seems that a more pragmatic approach is to describe ALM as the methods, processes and tools that support the management of change for software systems — with particular, but not exclusive, emphasise on the SDLC. In this context it does not matter if we are using Agile or Waterfall approaches, we chose the best tools and processes for our particular situation. This of course implies that in eighteen months time we may need to re-tool.

Furthermore the methods tools and processes of project management (PM) are much more mature and there is no real need to include them in this evolving segment — they have their own. Obviously PM will have an influence and impact on ALM and we need to design our ALM approach to dovetail with it. I realise that most vendors will not agree with this.

I have come to the conclusion in order to ’sell’ ALM into the teams that will use it we need to ensure, front and centre, that ALM provides a ‘better/faster/more’ improvement in daily productivity. That should be the primary focus of what is delivered.

Governance, audit etc should be secondary attributes and natural site affects of using ALM (important though they are of course and usually the primary sales message).

So at a practical level we need to be able to provide teams and their specialists with the best tools they need to do their job. Additionally we need to provide a supporting layer of data flows, events and data repositories to

1. Assist teams with traceability
2. Provide the tracking and management visibility to effectively steer the ship

So the point of this post is to plead with vendors to stop selling a one size fits all tool suite with deep integrations and start enabling shallow API and effective integrations to allow a truly best of breed approach for customers software purchases. It’s a shame that ALF project is shuting down.

What a young developer needs to know

(Updated 5/Oct/08 and 11/Nov/08)

I occasionally ponder on what skills and knowledge a novice who wants to become a skilled developer should acquire. In no particular order here is a suggested list of things to consider:

• Basic accounting: This is useful from both an IT perspective — a lot of IT systems are used for financial management; and from a general work perspective because it helps with your future in business
• Version control concepts and tools
• Waterfall Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC): Requirements, design, building, testing, release
• Agile SDLC such as XP and/or Scrum
• How to use a command line
• Basic compiler architecture — the 7 phases of compiling
• Data representation: Number bases (binary, Hex, BCD); character sets; XML markup
• Basic algorithms: Sorting, Linked lists etc, recursion,…
• Important design patterns
• Testing and quality as a substantial stand alone topic
• Programming in at least three languages: C (or Java, C++, Ada etc), Perl (or Python, Ruby etc) plus one other (e.g. Lisp, Haskell). At least one needs to be an OO language and OO programming should be a familiar habit. Perl does not count as OO for this discussion.
• How to use a word processor and spreadsheet
• Basic SQL, RDBMS architectures, 1st, 2nd & 3rd Normal forms and basic DB schema design
• TCP/IP networking and basics of http, email, ftp, etc. Needs to include conceptual understanding of DNS and related security issues
• Basic IT security concepts
• Basic IT System Management
• Personal task and work management (e.g. GTD or GSD, suggested by Sinewalker)
• Maintaining personal work records in a  log book

Further topics

• More advanced RDBMS use and schema design
• Embedded systems
• How to use LaTeX or Docbook
• Application engineering for quality (maintenance, extensibility, performance etc)
• OS design
• Requirements engineering
• UML

Further suggestions anyone?

How software developers can make customers life hard

For the benefit of all you young developers out there who are being steered into a life of developing useful and valuable software I’d though offer a few hints and tips on slowing thing down a bit for your customers to increase support revenue:

• Make error messages cryptic or generic e.g. “Error writing file”
• Do not document the underlying architecture, diagnostic features or data formats
• Make sure that products require significant setup after installation or, better still, each time they used in a new project (excellent way to increase consulting revenue)
• Make the product appear flexible and powerful by doing the same thing different ways in various places

Social networking services — one year on

Updated Nov/08 — added link to Twitter Tips and Silk Charm post

Some of the problems of Social Networking « Alec the Geek

issues with this type of online social networking

It’s actually more than a year since I first blogged about social networking and the world of web 2.0. The web, and the practices that surround it, have moved on so I thought I update my thoughts as well. By a strange coincidence, just as I was starting this post I came across crazeegeekchick’s thoughts on how to use social networking — well worth reading before you carry on.

Generally social networking has been a huge consumer of my attention and time; and to be honest I don’t think the medium given me a very good return on my investment, except as a learning exercise.

1. LinkedIn has become an online list of business contacts. But of limited use because I can’t add my own notes to profiles. I have had some networking activity — but to be honest it has not made a huge amount of difference to my working life. I think now the number of people on the service is becoming so large anyway that it’s becoming less useful, but I hope I’m wrong
   Updated 13/Nov/08 — You can now add notes to your LinkedIn contacts
2. Facebook has become pretty pointless. I don’t have time to become a zombie and most of the other stuff I do use is not terribly useful. e.g. I just became a facebook fan of Gordon Ramsay — but so what? Nothing happens much.
3. Blogging gives me a certain amount of satisfaction and I often refer back to my old blog posts for information. I also know that a few people have found help from ramblings so I count the blog as a success. However it’s rare for me to get over 100 readers a day so it’s not a huge success
4. Lifestream (twitter, jaiku,identi.ca). This is very distracting and I need to find some way to stop keep looking at my friendfeed stream. However on the positive side it does provide me some of the support that I miss being a solo worker. It’s probably a good idea to whittle down my ‘posse’ to as few as 10 people to reduce the noise; question is which 10 — I’m generally pretty choosy who I “friend”. Problogger has a site introducing Twitter, and by extension most of the other micro blogging site, and Silkcharm also posted some suggestions
5. Geo Location (e.g. brightkite, dopplr). I am just so over that. In Australia it’s hard to use anyway because we have limited network coverage and I don’t have an iPhone. I keep thinking they a potentially huge personal security issue as well
6. I have accounts on delicious and flickr which I find useful. Delicious in particular has proved very useful professionally and personally.

As I mentioned earlier the major upside is that I now think know a lot more than the general population about this stuff — perhaps I can become a media pundit? Easier than doing real work, talking of which…

UUCP email is perfect for OLPC?

I sometimes wonder why people with poor or limited network connections don’t still use UUCP email. It can be configured to use precious bandwidth during off-peak times, handles slow networks and unreliable communication. This would seem to be the perfect piece of infrastructure to be rolled out with the OLPC project. If your network does not have a wired connection to the world is even works over HF radio.

All you have to remember is that email is not an instant messaging medium.

Enterprise 2.0 — What a waste of time!

A increasingly amount of words, and now money, is being expended on Enterprise 2.0 (E2)

E2 is an extension of some of the ideas from Web 2.0 (W2)— the concept of a network of connected people making a self sustaining community that generates ideas, information and value. In addition the ever present threat of Gen Y and Gen C employees unable to contribute to the business except in a connected web of goodness that provides inclusion, exploits the power of the group, … and all the other nice warm fuzzy words

However at the end of the day organisations need to survive by fulfilling customers needs and wants effectively. It’s often hard to see how the totally immersive nature of the W2 experience translates into value for E2.

Let’s look on the positive side first:

1. An E2 enabled organisation may be able to attract and retain better quality individuals in the gen Y workforce
2. E2 may provide better mechanisms for a team generating new ideas and hence business improvement
3. Team work may become faster and more effective because of improved communication

However reality could be a little different:

1. All that high quality talent spends all day communicating in a E2 connected world they actually don’t get much work done. Capable people are only as valuable as their deliverables and at some point rubber has to hit the road, so can they please stop twittering and do some work?
2. Everyone, both as individuals and as a team, can spend so much time navel gazing that no improvement of any value can be implemented.
3. Communication paralysis can stop decisions being made. Everyone is so busy communicating it becomes unclear what needs to be done and no one is able to cut through the chaff. It’s a great way of avoiding responsibility.
4. In certain organisations the tools of W2 may present a significant security risk.

So what is the bottom line on E2? I suspect it’s probably just a big waste of time… Remember that business value comes from three things:

1. Doing it better and faster
2. Managing the business more effectively
3. Saving costs

If you cannot see E2 helping your organisation directly with those basic things then why bother?

I’ve found the santized version of my favourite sound bite

Lessons Learned From A 911 Call « The Sales Wars

Assumption is not a replacement for intelligence

Generally I say “Assumption is the mother of all fuckups!”, but I’m pleased to have an alternative to use in front of the kids

All you developers will belong to us

Linux.com :: Why Microsoft cozied up to open source at OSCON

The company [Microsoft] wants to lure those developers back. Its open source play is aimed squarely at them, and at independent software vendors (ISV). They mean potential sales, and Microsoft has embraced the open source development model in order to tempt them away from the open source platform and over to the Windows platform.

A fairly insightful article on why MS turned up at PDX for OSCON last month. Given the huge market developers could have for any applications they develop using the MS ‘Open Source’ model this has to something that is taken seriously. The pleasing thing is that MS now sees OSS as such a threat — however now that the communities have Redmond’s attention it is going to be a tough battle for mind share.

Let’s keep doing what we do and stay frosty.

Application Lifecycle Management safe in China!

I am glad to report that voga.com.au has not been blocked by the great Firewall of China. Anyone in China who needs assistance with their software process can safely get hold of services and help from your truly. I’m sure the doom mongers are feeling a bit foolish now?

With thanks to Alexia Golez

How not to live by your own rules (or are you *really* listening Steve Ballmer?)

Bill Gates’ 4 golden rules at Microsoft – Jun. 20, 2008

Gates’ 4 golden rules

Fortune Magazine reports on Bill Gate’s supposed four core beliefs that Microsoft lives by, you can read them at the above link. However, as an outsider, I think there may be a little self delusion going on.

1. “Think of software as a utopian tool” — unfortunately it’s very hard to understand what this rule means in terms of the companies behaviour and sounds a lot like hand waving. Are MS telling themselves they need to keep looking for new markets? How does an employee use this rule to guide what they do?
2. “Let the engineers rule” — given some of the  buggy software has been shipped all too frequently by the Redmond giant  it often feels to me that it’s the accountants and product managers who actually make the decisions with little regard to the reality the engineers are facing. If that is not the case then the suggestion would be that the engineers more  focused on the value of their share options they should be, hence software going out the door before it’s ready.
3. “Institutionalize paranoia” — Given the pressure that MS has faced over the last few years from legislators, the Internet, Apple and Open Source software then this has to be a clarion call for survival, as it should be in any commercial organisation. File this under “Motherhood and Apple Pie”
4. “Invest for the long term” — makes good sense for any organsation that can afford it, but Sharepoint is still a piece of crap even after all that long term investment. Being cash rich helps of course, but the investment needs to be nimble; long term; and contantly reviewed. Does Microsoft meet those objectives?

Elsewhere Fortune reports that MS will ’soon’ be starting a campaign to fight against the highly successful Apple Mac ads. However the Apple ads have been running for two years now — this is hardly the ‘agile’ business response of an alert, “paranoid’, organisation. Thirty years ago I suggested the fall of IBM and the idea was considered risible; well I believe, and have for some time, that the same thing is happening again. Just wait a little…

[Updated July 2008 after internal Oracle articles implied this was a less than professional piece. Many thanks]

Take 2:What I add to Windows that helps make it better

(Updated 28/Aug/09 with Open Source Windows site)

Essentials to make Windows almost bareable « sinewalker

a list of what free software to install on top of Windows, and what adjustments to make, so that at least I don’t feel like I’m wearing a straight jacket

Some excellent ideas and suggestions from Sinewalker here and there are more at Open Source Windows. I posted my own list of Windows essentials back in 2002 and I’ve been thinking for some it’s time to tidy the list up a bit since the world has moved on, so here goes:

Software development related:

• Vim
• Eclipse
• VMWare Server for testing and building
• JDK (Java Development Kit)
• Strawberry Perl
• Cywgin (includes shell related stuff, X server, ssh et al, svn, git, etc). I use chere to add an “Open Bash Here” feature
• BOUML UML tool
• Apache James email server (for testing, not real email)
• WinSCP so I can access remote development systems

Desktop and Misc

• Pidgin IM Client
• Freemind mind mapping software
• GNU Cash for Windows (still testing this)
• CDBurnerXP
• Docbook
• 7-Zip
• Putty
• PDF Creator
• Firefox with the del.icio.us bookmarking and scribfire blogging extensions
• Launchy
• Filezilla (for ftp sites the login process is easier in Filezilla)
• OpenOffice
• Thunderbird email client with the Lightning plugin
• Open Workbench project planning — claims to be Open Source, but the important bits aren’t

Security

• Updated Nov/2008. Free AVG ClamAV anti virus
• Spybot Search&Destroy malware tool

All of these tools are free of charge and many are Free software, which helps with the budget. However please consider a donation if it’s asked for and you can afford it.

In addition I change the default XP theme and use Windows 2000 as it takes up less screen space (or least it feels like it does) but use the ‘modern’ start menu.

Don’t create slides when you should be writing documents

Presentation Zen: “Slideuments” and the catch-22 for conference speakers

insisting that presenters submit their “PowerPoint slides” for inclusion in a future conference booklet or future download from the conference website, conference organizers force their speakers into a catch-22 situation. The presenter must say to herself: “Do I design visuals that clearly support my live talk or do I create slides that more resemble a document to be read later?”

I think Garr is being rather charitible. At work I am increasingly being given slides deques when I should be getting documents and it seems to be for the following reasons:

• If I write a document then that will require the generation of substantive content. However people don’t expect many words on a presentation slide
• Slide deques aren’t proper documents so I won’t have to place them under document management
• I know I’ll need to stand up and present this stuff sometime so I’ll write the material once (see above)

So how do you fix this?

1. Plan and structure your document (if PowerPoint works for you here fine)
2. Write the document using the appropriate text or word-processing tools
3. Create the presentation from the structure and content of the full paper

Thanks to Claudine for sending me to the original article

Bloody hell! Yet more marking drivel trying to sound like meaningful English

Rebel Virals

Remember: a strong seeding strategy will not only ensure upfront buzz, but will phase activity to sustain momentum over time.

Don’t these people learn to use English properly in between making videos at art college during their multi-media marketing ‘degree’?

Death is too good for them!

The role of psychological testing in recruitment

I was catching up with an school friend over Skype last night and discussed her work on the psychology of workplace recruitment and how effective personality tests are in the recruitment process. I’ve never been happy with such tests for a variety of reasons:

1. The state of the art is not sufficiently advanced to understand the complexities of the human personality
2. The testing I am familiar with attempts to reduce what complexity it can measure to a few simple axis for comprehension by an untrained recruiter (i.e. people like me)
3. There seems to be no published consensus on the quality of testing
4. The tests I have seen are culturally biased as they demand a good understating of the nuance of English language. In the last set of interviews I did I interviewed over 15 candidates, only two of whom had English as a first language
5. The tests are expensive to purchase and administer

So in my next post I’ll look at what I do instead of personality testing to try and create some rigour in my recruitment process.

My new software engineering methodology — BDALAP!

I think I can unite the Agile and Waterfall communities united around a common software engineering approach.

I give you “Big Design As Late As Possible” (BDALAP).

BDALAP recognises that certain design decisions are a) complex and b) have far reaching implications. They therefore require careful consideration and the use of such techniques as modeling and documentation. However we really would like to understand more about the problem and issues we are trying to solve first before we commit ourselves to a significant decision

A good example of this is the design of a database table schema which has implications all over a system and impacts how the system may be extended in the future. Other examples including communication of cooperating processes.

So in the first instance we can dummy them using such things as program data structures (it’s easier to modify the code than a RDBMs database schema). Later on an effective data schema can be created based on a more complete understanding of the system under discussion

I realise there is a bit of hand waving going on here and it’s not exactly original, but that does not need to be a problem or stop me becoming the BDALAP pundit.

I believe the usual way to implement this type of thing:

1. The BDALAP website and blog
2. A few journal articles on BDALAP success stories (must show that BDALAP was the sole reason for success and how it overcame ALL obstacles)
3. A BDALAP conference (I’d like somewhere pleasant — Nice in France?)
4. A BDALAP consultancy that can charge the same rates as an Actuary
5. The BDALAP patterns book
6. The BDALAP anti-patterns book

That should get me on the gravy train — anyone else want to come for the ride?

Look Ma! I’m an (honorary ) Gen Y member

Why Gen Y Is Going to Change the Web – ReadWriteWeb

There’s some contention over where exactly Gen Y starts and stops – some say those born 1983-1997, others think 1982-1997. In this week’s Entertainment Weekly, Gen Y is defined as “current 13 to 31 year-olds” and BusinessWeek says they can be as young as five. Regardless, we know who they are – they’re the young kids of today, the most digitally active generation yet, having been born plugged in.

When I have a working laptop at home I drive my wife mad as I surf facebook and post on Jaiku whilst watching TV. I always want to put information on Wikis (with open slather for everyone to update it) when my colleagues don’t understand the benefit and I’m posting here when I should be working on something else. I’m a man 25 years before my time!

Or perhaps I can just tell people I’m 22 years old?

Citing out of print books is a bit useless!!

The utility of the SWEBOK is somwhat diluted by the fact that many of the references it cites appear to be out of print!

– Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells