Bas van Leeuwen

Time flies when you're having Hippo fun

2011-12-29T15:22:00.000+01:00

It's amazing to see how much the world shifts every couple of months in the Hippo universe. 2011 was no exception :-)

SCRUM & KANBAN
Even though we only hire the best we have managed to maintain our policy of rapid, but steady growth, this resulted in another 14 hires in 2011. Two Hippos became Apache committers and we found another through our Open Source Recruitment track, bringing the total to eleven! We've introduced Scrum at our implementation teams, enhanced the Scrumishness of our R&D department and introduced Kanban in our support process.

AUTODESK
In the second quarter of this year the value of open source proved itself once again. Out of the blue we got called by Autodesk, telling us (this is slightly paraphrased): "You guys have -like- a really rad CMS, could we please use your kick-ass software?"

Apparently Autocad does not automatically make you an artist :-(

Autodesk did an in-depth, comparative study of Hippo and six other open source products and concluded that Hippo gets "Consistent high marks against all criteria with no major concerns, code looks well architected". Safe to say that this was a major boon to our recently opened Boston office.

BOSTON
At the beginning of this year we opened our office in Boston, to expand on the work already done in San Francisco. We're growing Boston quickly and it is well on its way to become a full blown Hippo office. Within months a Fortune 500 company named [sorry, can't tell] started to become active on our mailinglist. This became a Hippo-wide engagement, where R&D, Infra and Professional Services work jointly to create new product features for our now biggest client.

BIGGER!
Autodesk and [still secret] continue the trend of ever growing clients: to my current knowledge Hippo's "biggest client" has never been "biggest client" for more than two years. In the CMS6 years it was the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and/or the dutch AAA. A year later it became the entire Dutch government. The past year we've added the entire national Police, TenneT, the Dutch Railways and many others to our growing client base.

When the weather gets extreme, this site gets more than 1000 visitors per second

PARTNERS
In the Netherlands we've seen a gradual, but radical shift when it comes to partners. Hippo is supporting partners more and more, we are continuously winning deals for and with partners, e.g. University of Amsterdam with Dutchworks and Surfnet with a to-be-determined partner.

I don't know what 2012 will bring us, I do know that Hippo is going to be radically different once more! :-)

Want to be part of the fun? Have a look at our careers page!

On requirements, freedom, RFPs and hamburgers

2011-12-06T10:21:00.001+01:00

Picture this RFP:

After an extensive decision making process, Me&Friends (M&F) has decided that its current needs are best served by a (ham)burger. Consequently M&F is looking for a supplier that can provide it with a burger that fulfills the following requirements:

MUST not contain e.coli

SHOULD provide 250 kcal or more

SHOULD contain cheese

MUST contain beef

COULD contain bacon

COULD contain a middle bun

SHOULD be packaged

Proposals should be received no later than 1 hour after receiving this RFP and will be judged on price, distance and provided references.

This is clearly an asinine way of ordering a burger as you'd usually work on look&feel, previous experiences and/or recommendations of friends. Please bear in mind that the same basically holds for the procurement of a high-end car, which is the same order of magnitude as a medium sized website.

Common Sense
So why is it that we lose this common sense approach when it comes to business? Why do we insist on using even more convoluted processes? The procurement process appears to have a single aim: removal of any agility and creativity from the development process.

Check?, check!, check, check, no, check, check

The only advantage that the formal route gives you is a degree of certainty, which is something that is of course never actively punished in the corporate environment. No one has ever been praised for taking a risk if the eventual outcome is negative..

McDonald's
It's the same as McDonald's food: you are certain of a very bland, mediocre burger, but you will never be unpleasantly surprised. Mediocre burger in Shanghai = mediocre burger in Kernersville = mediocre burger in Amsterdam.
Conversely, you will never have the absolute delight of randomly walking in one of Amsterdam's lovely Burgermeester establishments.

It gets worse: since you are actively looking for the cheapest deal (and will for any future project) you do not give any incentive to the selected vendor to provide you with anything more than explicitly required.

Cheapest, thus wins

Consultancy
As Hippo Business Consultants my colleagues and I are often placed in situations where we can not do our job properly. Many companies spend ages coming up with their requirements document, this document becomes leading in the entire development process. This robs me and my colleagues of the opportunity to help a client achieve the full potential of their online environments. It is rare to see an RFP where any experts where actively involved in the drafting of requirements.

The procured system is not used to its full potential (e.g. it's rare to see an RFP demand faceted search). It's a sad situation when an entire project team (including manager) agrees that the chosen solution is not optimal, but you do it anyway, because that's the requirement.

Luckily a lot of project managers I've worked with are smart enough to realize this and allow diverging from the strict requirements (with or without telling the sponsor). Sadly they are still required to work with the defined process, thus creating a lot of overhead and unnecessary (conflicting) documentation.

Rules
As with most rules, I think requirements should be treated as (strict) guidelines. Substantiated diverging should be allowed at (nearly) all times.

Another pressing recommendation I'd like to make: make a reservation (time and budget) of at least 30% for unforeseen features. This will tremendously improve the quality of your end product (and make developers happy).

Using the fork is optional

Now I'm hungry :-)

What makes a job awesome?

2011-07-06T18:36:00.009+02:00

My employer really needs people (preferably yesterday) and is offering an iPad2 to any employee who brings in a new developer. So, onto Facebook (this was a week ago, before Google+) I went to post that Hippo was offering awesome jobs, within minutes someone asked me to define what an "awesome" job is.. Hmm, that won't fit within a comment, so here's a blog about it!

Clients make a job awesome
There aren't many companies where you can interact with clients such as the Dutch government, Thomson Reuters and the Dutch Railways, or completely revamp the site of the University of Amsterdam or create a site for the security sensitive people of [redacted].

Being a paid know-it-all is awesome
No one knows Hippo better than us Hippos and it feels good to share this knowledge with our many partners and clients, either by being a consultant or by giving awesome trainings. You'll have the technical know-how that will enable a partner/client dev-team to really shine and who knows, maybe you'll pick up a trick or two from the guys at e.g. Capgemini, Smile or JTeam :-)

Knowledgeable colleagues make a job awesome
How about working in an environment where 1 in 5 developers is Apache commiter?
Of course everyone is beyond the Hippo Baby Steps which they took under guidance of Hippo's technical leadership :-)

The location makes a job awesome
Amsterdam -love it or hate it- is awesome, and Hippo is smack in the middle of it. And I am sure that Boston is not too shabby as well :-)

Open Source is awesome
While a lot of the work is tailored to each specific client we don't like it. It is rare to see a certain problem solved thrice without it resulting in a plugin that standardizes it and gives it to the community.

Creative freedom makes a job awesome
Every other Friday is play day, the Hippo Fridays allow you to express yourself by creating (potentially) useful things without any management direction.

On the job training makes a job awesome
Want to go to to Fronteers or J-Fall? Go! We'll pay your ticket (and it's on company time).

Fridays make a job awesome
Every Friday people congregate on the balcony to share laughs, beers and (technological)-insights.

Proper estimations make a job awesome
Developers make the estimations, management listens, so no Swordfish stuff :-)

Time off makes a job awesome
Save for some rare exceptions you work 40 hours a week, not 60, it's a proper company. As is custom in the Netherlands you'll get 25 vacation days.

Informality makes a job awesome
The CEO is Jeroen, there is no executive lunch table, you can show up in shorts, T-shirts and flip-flops if you want.

The commute makes a job awesome

Work those calves, you get a bike! Broke it? No problem it's full service: pickup, repair and delivery is handled before 6pm, so you can bike back home.

Want in?
Send a mail to jobs@onehippo.com or look at the careers page
Nota bene: mention my blog to make me happy..

SLA vs. Service

2011-06-23T17:53:00.002+02:00

What is the difference between a Service Level Agreement and a working relationship?
One will give you good support, the other guarantees you mediocre support. Guess to care which one makes you happy? Hint: it's not the legal document..

There is absolutely no doubt that any support agreement should be accompanied by (many) a legal document, but this document should be the foundation on which a true working relationship is built.

I want my Google!
A couple of weeks ago I was at a client when all of a sudden ALL thin clients were unable to connect to the internet. No problem, we'll have an early lunch and go on our merry way. But alas, still no Wikipedia goodness. Since I was there together with another Hippo to work in the CMS, we kind of needed access. Time to make a call to the "service" desk, to ask whether or not we should head back home.

On an unrelated note

After listening to the default tape telling me that currently there is a problem with Citrix. I quickly got hold of an understandably harried person. In response to my question "any idea how long it will take", he immediately replied with "well, we have made a top-prio issue, so within 4 hours". While true it's not very useful, it means that I might waste an entire man-day playing minesweeper.

The personal relationship
The human element is often under-examined in "proper" support systems such as ITIL. If you have a problem, then you want to talk to someone you trust; not a automaton that tells you that your problem will be looked at within the required X hours.

Reminds me of the famous Afghan war strategy

As Berry Schwartz said: "when things go wrong -as of course they do- (...) one tool we reach for is rules: better ones, more of them". ITIL embodies 30+ years of rule-making to prevent disaster. Unfortunately rules don't allow for exceptions, they regulate that ALL top-prio incidents should be handled within four hours. So the tools are there to handle ALL issues in four hours, even if these same tools (rules) prevent you from fixing things in a couple of minutes.

Understandable
Unlike Hendrik Hijzen, our super cool and awesome* Service Manager I am not without blame here. With my CompSci background I am quick to go into new procedures and tools (JIRA filters FTW!) and I have to admit that one (me) sometimes forgets that tooling is not a goal in itself.

You cannot document experience
I'll leave you with the following question: if you are in a panic, who would you prefer to talk to, a 10 year veteran with no documentation and rules, or a recent graduate with 30 years of rules and documentation to help him?

* Thank you for proofreading Hendrik!

Skiing!

2011-03-25T13:30:00.000+01:00

Well into its 12th year of existence, it was time to celebrate… Hippo’s 10th anniversary! :-)

All Hippos were invited to join for a weekend of snowy fun in Winterberg! Starting with a long bus ride on Friday morning. Of course some people were busily typing away on their UMTS-enables laptops... the show must go on! We arrived in winter paradise just after lunch. No fifteen minutes passed after disembarking the bus before everyone was equipped with skis and onto the slopes.

With everyone well exercised and winded it was time to check into our Hotel and enjoy a relaxing three course dinner, some light beers or wine and enjoy a presentation by Jeroen, our CEO.

Besides informing all Hippos of the (financial) results of last year and long-term strategy, Jeroen also unveiled a new initiative: the Hippo Friday.

The morning brought another day of skiing, dinner at Benny's Kartoffelkiste (potato box) and an extravagant late-night fest in Europe's biggest après-ski bar: Alpenrausch!
Now, for obvious reasons I am not able to post most of the pictures taken that night, but I will leave you with one that gives a proper impression of the night and the entire weekend itself: it was FUN!

Thank God It's Hippo Friday

2011-03-21T15:47:00.000+01:00

Hippo has launched a new initiative: the Hippo Friday. A day in which each and every Hippo employee is in the Amsterdam office. No client work is planned in, (project) managers are not allowed to schedule anything on that day.

Stolen from: http://agileconsulting.blogspot.com/ :-)

So, what are we going to do?
That’s up to everyone! At the beginning of a Hippo Friday everyone is able to pitch his/her project, if others like it and are willing to join in, go and do it! There is only one restriction: it needs to have potential to add value to Hippo, its customers or their audience.

Hippo already has 15 full-time employees working in R&D, giving away everything they create. Now the professional services and support departments are joining in, adding another 10% of non-billable time to the already enormous investment in Hippo CMS and our clients. Even so, we are convinced that this will improve our company in many (unforeseen) ways.

Result of a brainstorm session

Why spend this time?

Unleashing the enormous potential in the Hippo pool;
Remove restrictions by the full-pressure planning;
More inter-colleague contact was needed.

We found that with the rising popularity of Hippo consultants it was hard to get everyone in the office at the same time, contact with colleagues was sorely being missed by many. Knowledge was not shared enough. Hippos simply are herd animals :-)

Won’t this hurt customers?

No.

In the short term this measure limits the availability of Hippos from 80 to 72 hours in two weeks and yes, that might not be beneficial to specific projects at specific times. Note that this will never interfere with us helping clients who have a support subscription.

Take the long view and you will see that it will enhance the product, make new features available and improve documentation and processes company wide.

Can you already give some examples?

Well yes, thank you for asking, below a selection of achievements (remember, we’ve only had three Fridays so far)

HST Config – automated backup and rollback facilities
Red5 integration
HTML compatibility checklist
Selenium integration
Console improvements
CMS announcements / messaging
An internal Wicket-plugin training
RFP Knowledgebase

[2012 update: we've found that bi-weekly is too much, it made the day "normal" and we've reduced the frequency to once every four weeks]

Inspiring: Hippo GetTogether

2010-08-27T15:44:00.000+02:00

So yes, last Friday we had the Hippo GetTogether, our gathering of clients, developers, partners, managers and interested individuals all clad in identical cutesy Hippo shirts. Let me give you an (incomplete) glimpse into the day’s events.

The summer day beckoned, yet everyone decided to stay inside in the magnificent Felix Meritis to listen to an exciting day filled with knowledge sharing. People freely came in and left when they desired, according to Gerrit there was a “good informal vibe” which in my opinion helped to foster an environment for open discussion later on.

Hippo’s very own CTO opened the day with a hearty welcome and after he had shown us what the future of Hippo CMS holds in store it was time for client cases. In this speed-dating for professionals each participant had 4 minutes to show everyone a short glimpse of their Hippo implementations.

TDC Lighthouse used Spring to implement the website of the dutch kidney foundation Not only did we see the big, high-traffic sites for which Hippo is known and loved, but there was also a presentation by Indivirtual about their implementation of http://www.landg.nl in 10 days of work.

The program flowed from these non-technical client cases, through technical cool vs. hot talks ending in an overheated hackathon. Some chose to attend the Usability Sidetrack, in which our User Interface Guru shared some insights into “how we create the friendliest CMS around”. An inspiring workshop in which participants were actively involved in creating ideas for a better product.

Cool vs. Hot focused on using Hippo CMS in new and exciting ways, examples are using Hippo in an “In Memory Data Grid”, integrating Hippo with SAP, SOLR, using REST interfaces, using CMIS, SOAP & Spring, or tips & tricks for running Hippo in a high-performance way.

Afterwards Hippo’s HST expert “Ardcore” gave an introduction into linking with the HST and how to make sure your visitors (and Google!) get where they should be.

We have it all on film, so please have a look at some of the talks, either because you missed them or to review the ideas presented. For example the Liferay-Hippo integration for PvdA.nl

The day ended with a hackathon, complemented with refreshments and pizza. Guys being guys there was no way that the Baywatch-plugin could not have won…

The day ended with a lot of happy faces, see you all next time!

Test blog

2010-08-27T13:35:00.000+02:00

Follow me in my foray into blogging, exciting!