jpreardon.com » Management

Evidence Based Scheduling

jpreardon — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 18:20:29 +0000

Joel Spolsky explains Evidence Based Scheduling (EBS), in detail, at Joel on Software. EBS, which is included in the latest version of Fogbugz, predicts ship dates based on individual developers’ historical accuracy in making estimates. Nice.

Web Design Survey Results

jpreardon — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 17:16:37 +0000

A List Apart has released the results of their web design survey:

In April 2007, A List Apart and An Event Apart conducted a survey of people who make websites. Close to 33,000 web professionals answered the survey’s 37 questions, providing the first data ever collected on the business of web design and development as practiced in the U.S. and worldwide.

A List Apart also provides the anonymized, raw data from the survey. If you’re up for it, you could make your own fun charts to justify a raise to your boss.

via Vitamin News

Sometimes "beta" Isn't Good Enough

jpreardon — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 16:16:21 +0000

When armed guards need to be stationed at the Human Resources office, it may be an indication that something has gone terribly wrong with your project. This is precisely what happened at Arizona State University after they rolled out a new Oracle application to manage their payroll (requires wsj.com subscription, sorry). According to the article, this was the result of ASU’s new approach to managing technology projects. Part of this new approach includes admitting that there will be problems up front, then working through them with some help from the people using the problem software. In other words, release early and often.

In many cases, that isn’t a bad approach, but a line needs to be drawn somewhere. When people don’t get paid, they get upset–rightfully so. In the end, one could label this project a success since they are now cutting paychecks at a lower error rate than they had with the old system. But, over the course of several botched pay cycles, enough animosity has been created towards the IT department that it will be difficult to overcome. Asking one of those who had difficulty paying their bills how successful the project was is unlikely to produce a positive response. This won’t make rolling out the next project any easier.

So, if armed guards may be a necessity, think twice before applying the beta tag to a project that should really be more rigorously tested.

WordPress 2.3.2

Tracking Time Off the Easy Way

jpreardon — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 10:42:57 +0000

Dealing with a group of people’s time off can be a headache. Spread that group across several locations and that headache quickly turns into a migraine. There are hundreds of applications to help with this which range from the very rudimentary to the overly sophisticated. WhosOff, a free web application, looks to have hit the sweet spot here. It is easy to use, but also includes more advanced features like time off approvals. Since it is web based, it is simple to deploy and has the added benefit of allowing the whole team to see who’s out of the office at any given time. Sharing this information with the team becomes more important as the team grows and is difficult to do if the information lives only on the manager’s computer–or, even worse, in their head. WhosOff will get this information in front of the team where it belongs without burdening the team members or mangers with unneeded overhead.

via lifehacker

Intro to Abject-Oriented Programming

jpreardon — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 15:59:01 +0000

You know about object-oriented programming and all its goodness. Now, step up to abject-oriented programming. Learning to work in an abject-oriented (AO) environment is important since there is a high demand for people that can maintain existing abject code (there is a lot of it out there). Greg Jorgensen’s Introduction to Abject-Oriented Programming will get you started by touching on some of the high points of AO. Here’s an excerpt that describes an AO best practice:

A good time to write documentation is when someone in the department gives two-weeks notice: use that time to make sure the departing team member documents all of their code.

Make sure you peruse the comments on that post. Its amazing how many people disagree with abject-oriented practices.

via Simon Willison’s Weblog

Intro to Engineering Estimates for the Layperson

jpreardon — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 14:23:03 +0000

Over the years, I have been in many meetings where someone will ask an engineer how difficult a particular technical problem is to solve. More likely than not–after a lengthy question and answer session–the answer will be something like “hard” or “trivial”. Most people in the room will respond to this question with a befuddled look. The silence in the room will eventually be broken by someone demanding to know preciously what date this problem will be solved by.

If you are one of the befuddled on a regular basis, you should read Understanding Engineers: Feasibility. It offers definitions for these common engineering answers. Knowing this information might prevent costly assumptions in the future. For example, you might get excited when you are told a problem is “trivial” to solve. You might think that you can have this trivial solution tomorrow or next week. Perhaps you should think again:

The only caveat is that triviality refers to how hard the problem is to solve, not how hard it is to implement the solution. So there is no necessary relation between a task being trivial, and how long it takes…

For those readers that are already familiar with these definitions, you might want to forward this link to people who need to understand them. This might be especially useful before a difficult status meeting. Even better, perhaps you can persuade your project manager to print a short summary on the back of all meeting agendas.

via Simon Willison’s Weblog

Fog Creek Open House

jpreardon — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 17:40:24 +0000

Fog Creek Software has an open house every year in their beautiful offices. But, even though I used to work right across the street, I missed it every year. This year will be different, I’m actually going to make it this time. If you are a technical type in the area of the West 30′s on ~~Tuesday~~ Thursday, the 19th, I suggest you do the same. The details are at joelonsoftware.com.

Wireless Bunny

jpreardon — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 20:36:11 +0000

How did I miss this? I should have been well aware of this Nabaztag bunny last year. I will immediately adjust my RSS feeds so I’m get the appropriate level of gadget news and this sort of thing doesn’t happen again.

The latest Wi-Fi bunny, Nabaztag/tag, has a few more features than the original, including a bellybutton and and RFID reader. But, both can do all sorts of cool, internet connected type things. Best of all is the API. What’s better than a programmable bunny? Oh, so many possibilities.

Just one example is this Nabaztag/tag enabled build status notification. It helps a group of software developers know if their current projects are being built without errors. The bunny is in tune with their CruiseControl continuous build system. Good builds mean a happy bunny. Problems in the build process make the bunny sad–and nobody wants a sad bunny around the office.

Joel's Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing v3

jpreardon — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 15:18:22 +0000

It’s hard not to love an interviewing guide that starts off like this:

A motley gang of anarchists, free-love advocates, and banana-rights agitators have hijacked The Love Boat out of Puerto Vallarta and are threatening to sink it in 7 days with all 616 passengers and 327 crew members unless their demands are met.

Julie, Gopher, Doc and the hardest working bartender in the business, Issac are going down with the ship unless we do something about it. Do we have people on our team that can really perform? If we haven’t taken our hiring seriously, the chances of rescuing our beloved crew (and the passengers) from these free-love/banana-rights people is slim.

Everyone says they take their hiring seriously, but do they really? Joel on Software’s Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing, version 3 puts forth some solid strategies for selecting technical candidates that possess two all important qualities: They are smart and get things done. The technology will change, quickly, are these people going to be able to learn and adapt? If your candidates can learn and adapt, you just might have a chance at getting the Love Boat back to Puerto Vallarta.

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jpreardon.com » Management

Evidence Based Scheduling

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