tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-85526272024-03-06T12:00:45.028-08:00Leader for SuccessThoughts on software and high tech leadership
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by Jeffrey Paul AndersonUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger66125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8552627.post-30533525410736228202013-06-28T13:43:00.000-07:002013-06-28T13:58:47.686-07:00Rails productivityI recently started a project at work where we want to store some business data we don't currently have, and also integrate with the data we do have, without extending any of the myriad hodge-podge of data sources that we pay for. I was drawn by the promise of Ruby on Rails, where one can create a web site with "rails new websitename". Seriously. See the getting started guide. It's very Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8552627.post-13294350437184496292008-11-27T15:37:00.000-08:002008-11-27T16:31:53.472-08:00Maven, Woodstock and Netbeans 6.5I spent quite a bit of time trying to "mavenize" our woodstock based project. I am sure someone will point out how to do this easier, but I was unable to find a reference. This magic works for me and I haven't been able to find something simpler. At the high level, what I did was create a standard webapp project with the option to create a dedicated library. I used the .jars in that Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8552627.post-84415614037015881002008-07-05T11:15:00.000-07:002008-07-05T11:45:16.873-07:00Saving Energy with Wake-on-LANAnother tech posting, nothing about leadership today.I confess: have a lot of computers. Two of them are on full time - one hosts a web site and one hosts a development repository using SVN over an SSH tunnel. After two years of the SVN machine being on 24x7, I wondered if I could put it to sleep and just wake it up when needed. This led me to the Wake-On-LAN feature which was a little Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8552627.post-68791812216072483872008-05-10T10:25:00.000-07:002008-11-12T17:41:07.125-08:00Repairing an 85W Magsafe Power AdapterA little different post today - not about leadership, process, or some great new technology. It's about fixing something yourself; fixing things sometimes pleases me almost as much as creating things. After you read this, go get a copy of Sam Martin's How to Mow The Lawn.I love my Macbook Pro. I like the idea of the Magsafe adapter, but I'm not happy with the fact that it's single sourced. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8552627.post-62835838482270536072008-03-30T20:27:00.000-07:002008-03-30T21:08:44.616-07:00ACM queucastThe Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has a podcast series called "queuecast". It's a fairly quiet feed since many of them are "premium". But I very much enjoyed the recent queuecast featuring Jason Hoffman, CTO of Joyent. In the first segment, he talks about how he "isn't interested in evolution", in response to his developers saying they want to iterate and evolve the product. His Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8552627.post-24631725362621326982008-01-21T08:12:00.000-08:002008-01-21T08:37:33.058-08:00Vicious MeasurementACM's Queue magazine features a regular Q&A column by someone with the pseudonym Kode Vicious. This month he talks about measurement, in a humorous and short story entitled "Take a Freakin' Measurement". He makes the case that you should measure as much as it takes to reach your desired level of confidence, but that anything less isn't science. His style is different than mine, but I Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8552627.post-24436655096949717692008-01-09T19:56:00.000-08:002008-01-09T20:22:14.164-08:00Active Design Reviews: So sensibleI'm often embarrassed when I discover a method that has been around for decades, makes perfectly good sense, but I haven't seen it practiced and didn't know about it. Active Design Reviews (ADR) are such a method. First described in 1985 by Parnas and Weiss, they devised a system which mitigates non-participation in design reviews. ADR changes yes/no questions asked in a design review (e.g. "doUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8552627.post-35821492926006761372007-12-16T12:56:00.001-08:002007-12-16T13:00:26.705-08:00Government concept of emergencyThis really shows the difference between business and government. In this story in the San Diego Union-Tribune, Schwarzenegger is getting ready to declare an emergency. But we don't want to rush this emergency or anything:Schwarzenegger will not declare an emergency until early next month, when the Legislature is scheduled to return from its annual fall recess that began in September.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8552627.post-50745566904295577882007-12-09T16:01:00.000-08:002007-12-09T16:19:13.282-08:00Software Engineering Institute and Software Product LinesSEI has a certificate program in SPL, and I decided I'd take the leap all the way across the country to check it out. If SPL works, it addresses a problem we've wanted to solve for decades: reuse of working code. The first course is basically a high speed tour through the book, Software Product Lines, by Paul Clements and Linda Norththrup. The book is excellent, covering all 29 practice areasUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8552627.post-88329500487986291532007-11-18T08:00:00.001-08:002007-11-18T08:10:45.646-08:00Innovation Management modeled like the InternetThe Nov 15 issue of CIO magazine interviews Gary Hamel about innovation management. He says that our management skills are mostly tuned for efficiency, and that isn't what we need to focus on any more. Efficiency is about conformity, whereas innovation is about diversity. He also says that what management needs to do now is model the Internet: amplify and aggregate human capabilities. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8552627.post-56783138360429012762007-11-16T07:36:00.000-08:002007-11-16T08:56:37.096-08:00Requirements and CapabilitiesI attended a presentation yesterday which was intended to help people understand how to do Design for Manufacturing when offshore manufacturing is the objective. Unfortunately the presentation fell way short of its target, and the crowd even got a little annoyed. The presenter was talking about models that have worked before:Document wellFollow the process exactlyManufacturing team has Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8552627.post-63114999555121494762007-11-04T13:28:00.000-08:002007-11-04T13:48:08.422-08:00Information hidingThe August 2007 Communications of the ACM has an article called Offshore Outsourcing: The Risk of Keeping Mum. In it they discuss factors that contribute to information hiding. They reference a model developed by G. Hofstede, which breaks down cultural differences into 5 factors, and then combine it with work done by Keil and Robey [ACM 44 Apr 2001] which identified fear of being punished as Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8552627.post-40388726447259981582007-10-28T12:36:00.000-07:002007-10-28T13:06:34.005-07:00Exit StrategiesMany people have asked "What's your exit strategy?" when discussing my startup. Initially, I found this offensive, because in my mind if you build a viable business, you will have exit possibilities, should you desire one. Moreover once you are successful, you'll have a better idea of exactly how it should be done. Isn't building a business that has long term value what starting a businessUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8552627.post-10026134098211726852007-10-21T11:36:00.001-07:002007-10-21T12:22:21.510-07:00Open source practices even if you aren't using open sourceAt High Regard Software, we're trying to make it easier to "onboard" new developers for our startup, RideGrid. We are using some open source, notably pieces of Apache Commons. Even if you are not using any open source, there is a lot that can be learned from Open Source to make it easier to do development. The argument for this is straightforward: if the tool set works for collaborators Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8552627.post-64548501901242358352007-10-14T14:55:00.001-07:002007-10-15T11:13:57.929-07:00Software Development and the EnvironmentWhat can software leaders do to help improve the environment? Reduce the footprint we leave in the process of doing our work. Each of you may have unique ways you can do this, but there are some that could be nearly universal and I'll cover those here. The areas I've actually been involved with are listed below, followed by more details about each in terms of what to expect and the challengesUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8552627.post-40435889958606510212007-10-10T10:02:00.000-07:002007-10-10T10:24:54.614-07:00You can't "make it up later"When you see a schedule challenge, followed by words like "but we'll make it up", you should be seriously suspicious. When the plan isn't working, the idea that things will magically get better in the future simply strains credibility. My inspiration for this post is Boeing's announcement today of a six month slip of their new airliner, the 787. The kicker here is that they've known about Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8552627.post-40254170194682448922007-10-08T06:50:00.000-07:002007-10-08T07:02:18.176-07:00FocusI saw this story this morning, about Columbus Day protests in Colorado. At the risk of being insensitive, this seems like a complete waste of energy. You can argue the relevance of the federal holiday I suppose. It was 500 years ago, and Columbus didn't really discover America, he simply introduced Europe to it. But what's the point of the protest? Draw attention to behavior we no longer Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8552627.post-49639624717699296092007-09-30T10:23:00.001-07:002007-09-30T10:35:44.285-07:00Teaching engineersWhat do we want our Universities to teach computer science and computer engineering students? I've lamented that teachings are sort of bipolar: flip-flopping between minutiae associated with implementation (and attendant lack of attention to design), and interesting but in the long run nearly useless theory. This week's New York Times Magazine describes a new university, Olin, which Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8552627.post-41362107541276147612007-09-27T08:05:00.000-07:002007-09-27T08:26:47.465-07:00Moral HazardIt's fascinating to me to read about whether lower fed discount rates cause inflation, and even whether it's good for the stock market. I wish I'd blogged on it last week, because there was great article that basically said we have no idea how the economy really works. We understand some things, for example, a smaller discount rate immediately increases the value of stocks. When the Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8552627.post-50284640989893751102007-09-26T16:57:00.000-07:002007-09-26T17:10:51.548-07:00Another negotiating tool: WIFMYou may have heard WIFM in the context of managing others. WIFM stands for "Whats In it For Me?". Sometimes you'll hear it as "WIFM radio". (Ironically, there is at least one real WIFM radio station). WIFM doesn't mean look out for yourself - rather it's a reminder that others will be looking out for themselves. So put yourself in the other's perspective, and then answer the question of Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8552627.post-44049251933978816322007-09-24T14:50:00.000-07:002007-09-24T15:17:03.676-07:00NegotiatingI'm currently doing a little negotiating, so it was timely that this month's HBR has an article in it about negotiation. Entitled Investigative Negotiation, it resonates with me because it is loaded with examples and techniques about understanding the motives of the people you are negotiating with, rather than trying to "win". It somewhat reminds me of advice on selling by Jeffrey Gitomer, andUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8552627.post-45862554644393884842007-09-17T15:41:00.000-07:002007-09-17T15:53:25.015-07:00Measurement ConstructsI've been learning about the methods used by the PSM group, which is detailed in their reference book here. One of the concepts is what they term a Measurement Construct. It's a graphical structure that shows how you go from an Attribute to an Information Product. At first the whole thing seemed very intuitive, but the structure helps you consider all the aspects of metrics. What are we Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8552627.post-33664605608551738292007-09-12T12:38:00.000-07:002007-09-12T12:54:44.149-07:00Geeking outMy excuse for not blogging recently is that I have been totally geeking out on the technical details of my startup. We're using windows, mac and ubuntu, NetBeans 5.5.1 with the visual webpack and the mobility pack, Sun's Java Application Server, asterisk (via asterisk-java), a third party routing library and SAS, mySQL, some Apache Commons stuff, svn and a bunch of free tools. We share our Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8552627.post-28233444782532321852007-08-27T17:20:00.000-07:002008-11-12T17:41:07.789-08:00Confused about Open Source?I found this excellent reference from O'Reilly, which compares various licensing mechanisms including GPL, LGPL, Apache, etc. The entire book is online in PDF format, and it walks you through the important legal language of each type and then explains it to you in english. You don't have to read the entire book to get to a good understanding of how they differ. I recommend this for any Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8552627.post-51599776537711680472007-08-27T17:04:00.000-07:002007-08-27T17:18:28.048-07:00Blog Action Day: the environmentOn October 15, blog action day, thousands of bloggers will blog normally, but include something regarding the environment. If you blog, check them out and register! If you read blogs, October 15 should be interesting. The promo video is here:Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0