Executive cannot support all projects.

Normally a company will have more than one project simultaneously. The top management cannot guarantee all projects will be successful. They have to ensure the right investment to ensure the projects that are vital to company’s core competency.

Some projects are expected to fail.

Failure can be desirable.  For example, many projects in research department will be expected have a failure ratio. As they are so advance and the major purpose is for research. Hunter (2005) summarizes as “fail early and often”. The more important thing here is that you must learn from failures.

Executive support is needed throughout the entire project lifecycle.

Executive support sometime is gone with a reason, like if a project isn’t aligning to the core business objectives any more after the business strategy shift, or a project is poorly managed, why an executive should still support and invest to a doomed project?

PM is not actively seeking management support. This might be the PM is inexperienced or any other possibles.

So, my conclusion is not the top management does not learn from the obviously wrong, but more about the decision making on choices.

References:

Hunter, M. (2005), ‘Fail Fast’ [online]. Available from: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/micahel/archive/2005/08/17/failfast.aspx

I have been working for a giant software company for about six years. I have completed many projects in past years and a common factor that I notice across all the successful projects is the executive management support in the project environment which I am working with. There are certainly other factors that can impact the project success, but without executive management support, the success is almost impossible.

Executive support = good resource

If a project is supported by executive, then the project resources are generally ensured, including both human and non-human resource simply because the project will be at a high priority to the company. Skilled and sufficient resource is always a good foundation to make a successful software project. This also means a good financial fund and experienced project manager that can maximum ensure the well-defined and executed project management.

Executive support = good user involvement

User involvement is difficult sometime. It’s a typical challenge in an agile environment. Without the executive support, in our project environment, this normally means very low user involvement and unclear requirements which can very possibly lead to project failure.

Executive support = clear business objectives

A well executive supported project is very likely aligned with corporate business goals either in short term or long term. And the project commitment is also likely accountable to executives. Executives will make sure the business objectives are clarified unless they don’t want personal and business success.

Executive support = better corporate culture

Pixar is one of the most famous animation studios. Ed Catmull (2008), cofounder and president of Pixar, concludes that the executive supportive culture is one of the major reasons why Pixar can keep their creativity gene. Software development also needs creative and a culture of trust.

Besides, Avots (1969) already points out that unsupportive management generally reflects the lack of understanding of what are needed to make a successful project. And the executive support means much more than these! Basically, in a big company, if a project isn’t supported by executive management, then even if the project is well managed to a fully and qualified delivery, the result of the project might still soon be forgotten by everyone.

Thanks,

Binzy Wu

References:

Eveleens, J. L. and Verhoef, C. (2010), The Rise and Fall of the Chaos Report Figures, IEEE Software, Vol. 27, Issue 1, IEEE Computer Society Press Los Alamitos, CA, USA, doi: 10.1109/MS.2009.154

Preuss, D. H., 2006, Interview: Jim Johnson of the Standish Group [online]. Available from: http://www.infoq.com/articles/Interview-Johnson-Standish-CHAOS (Accessed: 24^th March, 2012).

Catmull, E. 2008, ‘How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity’, Harvard Business Review, 86, 9, pp. 64-72, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 24 March 2012.

Avots, I. 1969, ‘Why Does Project Management Fail?’ California Management Review, 12, 1, pp. 77-82, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 24 March 2012.

Generally speaking, there are two major purposes of IT project outsourcing, 1) for cost and 2) for expertise. Microsoft as one of the biggest software companies is using outsourcing in many projects and products development. And I used to directly work with vendor teams together in several projects for years. There were many successful deliveries made by our vendor teams during past several years and overall we are satisfied with their work. But I have to admit there are always many risks in these outsourced projects and sometime the negative impacts of these risks do cause economic loss.

Within my own experience, we started our outsourcing journey from mixed vendors with staff based model. Then we realized some problems of this model, like the cost is still relatively high,  very high management cost, no consolidated training since staff work for different companies, no career path for these vendor staff, etc. So we moved to single vendor model for single project or product and gradually, we moved from staff based model to project based model in our outsourcing projects. And along with this shift, some new risks raised then.

Currently we are still facing many risks and two major ones are: 1) underperformance and poor quality delivery, 2) legal affairs.

Risk from Delivery

The underperformance and less quality delivery risk is one of the major risks of IT project outsourcing. There are several reasons of underperformance delivery,

-          Incapable development team;

This is a major reason of underperformance delivery. When an outsourcing vendor is selected, it may provide very strong and capable people at very beginning and then replace with lower cost and incapable people to pursue the maximum financial output.

-          Communication problem;

Software development relies on communication like the understanding of requirements, schedule and status update, etc. But as normally vendor is in different location with the client (normally offshore), and the communication is normally based on email or phone, the miscommunication is very likely to happen. For example, even there is no intention to misunderstand the requirement, since the communication approach, the delivery may not fully meet the requirement. Although the contract can define the penalty, that’s normally not what the client expects.

-          Management issue;

The vendor development team is normally managed by outsourcing provider, except the staff based model. As the management style may be very different with client, there is a conflict in management, especially the project management. Furthermore, the management of outsourced project in client side is also very challenging, as the information may be hidden intentionally by the vendor. Try to make sure the delivery requires a transparent communication and management in both sides.

-          No incentives to vendors.

Herath and Kishore (2009) state that underperformance delivery occurs because the vendor’s incentives for hard work are different. Even you can propose incentives to the vendor providers, but as the individuals are managed by the provider, there normally is very limited incentive for them.

Legal affairs

Firstly, software is an intangible asset and normally is protected by intellectual property laws or legislations. There are several legal risks in outsourcing projects,

-          Contractual problems;

Outsourcing needs contract in place and to be signed before the actual development happens. As you may not know what will happen in future no matter the project size, you may miss something in the contract. The professionalism of vendor may be helpful to you, but you likely finally get the legal affairs. Besides, although there could be penalty defined in contact, this is not really the client wants. Underperformance delivery hurts to both client and vendor.

-          Local legal regulations;

As the vendor is very likely locating in different country or region with the client, and they need to follow the local legislation and regulation, there is a risk of conflicts in different laws with the country or region the client sits.

-          Open source code or library;

The open source projects are an important part of software world. But since these projects have different licenses and are not all suitable to be applied in the outsourcing project, the client may face to legal problems by not aware of this. Also because the management and actual development is not fully transparent to the client, the vendors may want to use open source library to accelerate the development and lower the cost.

-          Other IP issues;

Using open source codes is not the only IP problem. The content, functionality, or even UI may violate other companies patent or IP.

Potential Solutions

Outsourcing strategy

Whether outsourcing the project or not is always a challenge to the companies. There are always advantages and disadvantages in both sides. And the project is not always suitable to be outsourced. So it is very necessary to have a clearly defined outsourcing strategy in place to help decide whether the project is suitable to outsource.

Better Vendor selection

Vendor is indeed very important to the project success, since they are the actual people who will deliver the project. Selecting a good and capable vendor will be a very good start of an outsourcing project. Following dimensions may help in selection (Herath and Kishore, 2009),

-          Performance, especially historical performance;

-          Technical expertise;

-          Quality;

-          Management;

-          Cost;

-          People.

Better Vendor management

Vendor management is always challenging in outsourcing projects. To have a very good engagement with vendor in management is very helpful. Besides, applying agile development process in project management will likely be helpful as well, which increase the transparence of project status and delivery.

Technology

Choosing the suitable technology to deliver the project is always a key to success. And it will be essential that the chosen technology is known by both client and vendor to mitigate the delivery risk. If the vendor is not capable in specific technology, the delivery risk is very high.

Conclusion

Just like Forest’s mother told Forest Gump when she was dying. Sometime life is just like a box of chocolate, you never know what’s in it until you open it. Outsourcing is very similar, since the lack of transparency to client; the client may only know the output at the end. There are many risks in out sourcing projects. The client needs to be aware and identify these risks at the start of the project and it’s also essential that the client and vendor need to work together closely in the risk management to ensure the success.

Thanks,

Binzy @ 21 July 2011

References:

Armour, P. G. (2005), ‘Project Portfolios: Organizational Management of Risk’ Communications of the ACM, Volume 48 Issue 3, March 2005, DOI: 10.1145/1047671.1047690.

Herath, T. and Kishore, R (2009), ‘Offshore Outsourcing: Risks, Challenges, and Potential Solutions’. Information Systems Management, volume 26, pp312–32, DOI: 10.1080/10580530903245549

Typically and traditionally most of the business companies are using financial measurement of their performance particularly the financial output: revenue and profit. And this normally is extended to the executive management level and individual employee level. While these still remains true and important in many scenarios, the non-financial operational performance measurement are becoming more and more important especially when we entered into the information age. The companies are running different and new business models in this relative new circumstance, particularly the software companies and online service companies. Financial measurement normally focuses on,

• Annual or short term performance against accounting (Knowledge@Wharton, 2000);
• Tangible assets;
• Past financial performance not future financial development;
• Particularly in satisfying the shareholders not stakeholders;
• Financial figures not business capability and competency.

In summary, the traditional financial measurement is more focusing on what the company and its employees have done. This is indeed very important to be taken as a new baseline to reflect and move on. This is also a very important measurement to provide incentive to those employees who work on jobs like sales, market which directly related to revenue. But only measuring the financial result will not keep these companies competitive in their business environment, and even will cause management make wrong or short term decision which may be very harmful to the future of the business.

Non-financial measurement

To a typical software company, the intangible assets and the overall employee capability are the core competencies to help them survive in the very competitive business environment. Besides the financial figures, they also need to make sure the right investments are made to keep the company and its products competitive.  In summary, there are several key things they need to pay attention and invest on what the company and its employees can achieve,

• Long term organisation strategy;
• Intangible assets;
• Future financial success;
• Not only satisfying shareholders, but stakeholders (like employees, customers);
• Sustainable development like the company and managerial capability.

To small companies, the edge of financial and non-financial measurement might be blurred as they need to more focus on short term success to make sure they can survive into next level. But to big companies, they will need to take both measurements, since many divisions are critical but not producing revenue but costing company huge money. Many modern companies now have separated R&D, legal, finance, HR, facility, support and IT departments which are not making money but spending money. But without these departments, the business will not be able to survive in longer term.

Conclusion

Measurement is important to development, without proper measurement the development can’t be indicated. The world and the business environment keep changing every day, every hour or even every minute, so it is important that business operation is kept tracked and measured by both financial and non-financial measurement to stay overall high operational performance and competencies. The non-financial measurement is very essential to the business success in the information age.

References:

Knowledge@Wharton (2000), ‘Non-financial Performance Measures: What Works and What Doesn’t’ [online]. Available from: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=279 (Accessed: 9^th July, 2011).

In Brookshear’s book, the definition of an operating system is “software that controls the overall operation of a computer” (Brookshear, 2008, p.122).If we strictly follow this definition, we cannot simply agree on the “Super Net OS”. But from a different perspective, I will consider the internet itself as an operating system which provides the operations to data and services via the internet. The “Super OS” is the combination of internet and its infrastructure, protocols, web, server, client, and other technologies.

Firstly, the major job of a computer system is 1) storing information/data (data storage), and 2) processing information/data (data manipulation). The current internet has websites from everywhere (individual person and business/education/government organizations), search engines, emails, social network, web services and lots of other online services. All of these online services can be considered as data storage and manipulation. The data are no longer limited and stored in individual’s computer. A typical instance, via the online services like Apple’s iTurns or Microsoft’s Zune, you can enjoy the music and movies online, or download and share in different computers with different operating systems. Online Office service like Google Doc or Microsoft Office Live is also becoming an alternative of the client office software.

The “Super OS” is independent with its nodes’ operating systems, no matter whether the systems are for nodes as server, client or network equipment. Like if a user wants to make a search query from Google.com, he can use a web browser on any operating system (Windows, Linux, Mac OS, mobile operating systems, etc.) or can even program against Google’s API to make the search query. Moreover, most of network/internet protocols, web standards and development platforms are operating system independent. This independency enables the integration of all different type nodes into this “Super OS”.

The management of this “Super OS” is coming from a joint-effort by different organizations that provide online services, the protocols and fundamental infrastructure. W3C, for instance, is developing general web standards (Brookshear, 2008, p. 172). Also ICANN is managing the domains and IP addresses.  The website or online service is managed by the provider.  Individual PC user also participates in the management of this “Super OS”, like user generated content (blog, text, multi-media, social network, etc.). Besides, technology like Grid Computing can also enable individual user to contribute to the complex computation (Wikipedia, n.d., b).

The traditional PC operating system is fading from normal user’s daily use and becoming more transparent to end users. It’s still there, but users are more likely to use it to connect the internet to consume the data and services from this “Super OS”. The data from Internet World Statistic shows the internet user has almost reached 2 billion worldwide. Based on this trend, Google is even providing an operation system only provides a browser experience called Chrome OS (Google, n.d.). The popularity of the smartphone nowadays is also accelerating the application of internet/online services. In 2010, there are totally 302.6 million smartphones shipped from the phone manufacturers (IDC, 2011).

This “Super OS” is still evolving, like the inventor of World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, he’s working on promoting semantic web to reorganize the web content in a better approach (Berners-Lee, Hendler and Lassila, 2001). Like the search engines are providing more and more functions and better accuracy. The potential of “Super OS” is unlimited.

Thanks,
Binzy

Reference list:
Brookshear, J. G. (2008) ‘Computer Science, an overview’, 10th ed. Boston: Addison-Wesley. pp.122, 172.
Wikipedia (n.d.) b, ‘Grid computing’ [online]. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_computing (Accessed: 16 April 2011).
Internet World Statistic (n.d.), ‘INTERNET USAGE STATISTICS’ [online]. Available from: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm (Accessed: 16 April 2011)
Google (n.d.), ‘Home – Chrome OS’ [online]. Available from: http://www.google.com/chromeos/index.html (Accessed: 16 April 2011).
IDC (2011), ‘Android Rises, Symbian^3 and Windows Phone 7 Launch as Worldwide Smartphone Shipments Increase 87.2% Year Over Year, According to IDC’ [online]. Available from: http://www.idc.com/about/viewpressrelease.jsp?containerId=prUS22689111&sectionId=null&elementId=null&pageType=SYNOPSIS (Accessed: 16 April 2011).
Berners-Lee, Hendler and Lassila  (2001), ‘The Semantic Web’ [online]. Available from: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-semantic-web (Accessed: 16 April 2011).

We restarted (or I can say started…) the development work from this Monday and things are in good progress. In the meantime, I would like to share what we’ve experienced during development and I hope this can help you if you are thinking to develop your own client on Windows Phone 7 or Silverlight for Sina Weibo. So this first entry is about getting OAuth access token for Sina Weibo via Hammock. Hammock is a great lib for you to consume and wrap RESTful services and it supports OAuth and XAuth.

Step 1 register your app.
Sure, you need to apply/register an application on http://open.t.sina.com.cn/. You will then get your app key and secret (which is actually consumer key and secret).

Step 2 authentication.
OAuth is quite simple and straightforward. In summary, you need to pass your consumer key and secret to get the request token, like this,

void OAuthTest()
{
    RestClient c = new RestClient()
    {
        Authority = "http://api.t.sina.com.cn/",
        HasElevatedPermissions = true,
        Credentials = new OAuthCredentials()
        {
            ConsumerKey = "your appkey",
            ConsumerSecret = "your appsecret",
            SignatureMethod = OAuthSignatureMethod.HmacSha1,
            ParameterHandling = 
OAuthParameterHandling.HttpAuthorizationHeader,
            Version = "1.0"
        }
    };

    RestRequest r = new RestRequest()
    {
        Path = "oauth/request_token",

    };

    c.BeginRequest(r, new RestCallback(Callback));

}

void Callback(RestRequest request, RestResponse response, 
object userState)
{
    Regex r = 
new Regex("oauth_token=([^&.]*)&oauth_token_secret=([^&.]*)");
    var match = r.Match(response.Content);
    token = match.Groups[1].Value;
    tokensecret = match.Groups[2].Value;
}

RestClient c = new RestClient()
{
    Authority = "http://api.t.sina.com.cn/",
};

RestRequest req = new RestRequest()
{
    Path = string.Format("oauth/authorize?{0}&oauth_callback=xml
&userId={1}&passwd={2}", response.Content, "user", "password")
};

c.BeginRequest(req, new RestCallback(Callback2));        

void Callback2(RestRequest request, RestResponse response,
 object userState)
{
    Regex r = new Regex("<oauth_token>(.*?)</oauth_token>
<oauth_verifier>(.*?)</oauth_verifier>");
    var match = r.Match(response.Content);
}

RestClient c = new RestClient()
{
    Authority = "http://api.t.sina.com.cn/",
    HasElevatedPermissions = true,
    Credentials = new OAuthCredentials()
    {
        ConsumerKey = "your appkey",
        ConsumerSecret = "your appsecret",
        Token = "request token",
        TokenSecret = "request tokensecret",
        Verifier = "your oauth verifier from last step",
        SignatureMethod = OAuthSignatureMethod.HmacSha1,
        ParameterHandling = OAuthParameterHandling.HttpAuthorizationHeader,
        Type = OAuthType.AccessToken,
        Version = "1.0"
    }
};

RestRequest r2 = new RestRequest()
{
    Path = "oauth/access_token",

};

c.BeginRequest(r2, new RestCallback(Callback3));

public void Callback3(RestRequest request, RestResponse response, 
object userState)
{
    // you will get format like this and that's your access
 token: oauth_token=token&oauth_token_secret=secret&user_id=id
    var s = response.Content;
}

        private void Test()
        {
            RestClient c = new RestClient()
            {
                Authority = "http://api.t.sina.com.cn/",
                HasElevatedPermissions = true,
                Credentials = new OAuthCredentials()
                {
                    ConsumerKey = "your appkey",
                    ConsumerSecret = "your appsecret",
                    Token = "your access token",
                    TokenSecret = "your access tokensecret",
                    SignatureMethod = OAuthSignatureMethod.HmacSha1,
                    ParameterHandling = OAuthParameterHandling.HttpAuthorizationHeader,
                    Type = OAuthType.ProtectedResource,
                    Version = "1.0"
                }
            };

            RestRequest r2 = new RestRequest()
            {
                Path = "statuses/update.xml"
            };

            r2.AddParameter("status", "hello world");
            r2.Method = WebMethod.Post;
            c.BeginRequest(r2, new RestCallback(Callback));

        }

        void Callback(RestRequest request, RestResponse response,
 object userState)
        {
            // check wheather post is successful
        }

references:
OAuth: http://oauth.net
Sina Weibo API: http://open.t.sina.com.cn/
Hammock: http://hammock.codeplex.com

So how about contact info? I tried to add my twitter link to the app, and it just works. From some internal discussion, I would think following information will be OK (not guaranteed…) since in basic, it just requires you to provide a contact approach for end user to contact/feedback to you.

• twitter link
• a webpage/website
• embedded contact form page
• email
• anything else can find you…

Hope this helps…

然后是看电视基本有3种：Freeview，Cable和Freesat。一般电视机可以自带Freeview和Freesat。Freeview有40多个台可以免费看，挺好的，如果没有对电视节目有什么要求，就默认这个挺好。提供Cabel的很多，比如BT, Sky, Virgin, Talktalk, etc. 我装Virgin宽带的时候顺便选了电视。最便宜的那种，一共65个台，比freeview多了几个美国频道可以看看美剧，但当然没有什么热门的。Glee, Big Bang Theory, ugly Betty, drop dead diva, etc… 还有几个少儿台。激活HD频道要付49磅的费用，先免了吧… Freesat看上去非常诱人，我租的公寓正好是有装锅子的，有电视机自带Freesat或者可以买设备，argos上就几十磅吧。等virgin过期了我肯定要买个试试，反正不能用我就拿去退，哈。2个网站如下。

• http://www.freeview.co.uk
• http://www.freesat.co.uk/

原书的第三版从目录来看，更新了一些有些过时的内容，比如版本管理从CVS改为SVN，针对PHP5.3的一些新特性添加了一些内容，并且加入了持续集成这样的重要敏捷元素章节。

不得不说，翻译比我想象的要累得多。不仅要考虑到原作的表达，也要符合中文的习惯。希望我的翻译不是太糟糕。
更多关于本书，可前往douban等网站，也希望大家多批评指正。

2. I’m living in China within the famous GFW, and I’m using a twitter proxy site to tweet when I’m at home or using mobile phone.   So there is a problem to me, the http://bit.ly is almost the most popular short url service on twitter which is also blocked by GFW…

3. There are some short url expanding service sites, like http://longurl.org, but they were blocked sometime…

I decided to create a simple function with google app engine after dinner. So that I can continue to learn some of python and also know a little of google’s cloud stuff.

Then here you go the app: http://yatlongurl.appspot.com/ and the source code here. Really quite fun to write code with python. But it looks the app will be intermittently unavailable. And apparently, I did not use any of real functionalities of google’s app engine. Possibly I will add support to automatically retweet or delicious the useful link while expanding it .