Fortess

The U.S. celebrities in Siberia

2010-03-04T06:48:26Z

What would bring foreigners to Siberia?

In 2008 Novosibirsk was crowded with tourists from all over the world due to total solar eclipse. But could you believe that the US celebrities, whose names (or their companies names) are known all over the world could come here in winter when even locals suffer from frosts?

Anyway, in February 2010 Novosibirsk welcomed the US delegation, which included White House officials, representatives of technology powerhouses: Twitter, Cisco Systems, EDventure Holdings, eBay, Mozilla; representatives of civic organizations, including those fighting human trafficking and corruption; and a famous Hollywood actor, anti-human-trafficking activist and the most followed user on the social-networking site Twitter Ashton Kutcher.

The main goals of the visit were discussions of the role modern technologies could play in spheres of:

Education, Entrepreneurship, Training, and Mentorship
Anti-trafficking and child protection
Combating Cyber-crime
Health
E-governance and Collaboration
Promoting Cultural Collaboration

John Donahoe (CEO of eBay)

"My image of "being in Siberia" is forever changed by this trip ... this place has real potential"
"The story for my last week is 'I went to Siberia and came back 10 years younger."

Jack Dorsey (Founder of Twitter):

"A great number of visionary engineers & computer scientists I admire and have learned from are Russian."

Padmasree Warrior (CTO of Cisco)

What did I take from Russia? Inspiration to listen better, learn more, new friendships.

Howard Solomon (Director for Russia, National Security Council)

"I found Novosibirsk to be an exciting, vibrant, and creative city with much potential. In particular, most striking were the extraordinary students our group met. It was clear from our interactions with both High School and University students that the youth of Novosibirsk are an increasingly sophisticated group, technologically savvy, and linked in with the rest of the world through internet. It was assuring to see that many of them had a number of social causes they deeply believed in and were working to make the world a better place. (This is not a tweet; full text of interview is here)

It seems that visit was estimated as a success by our guests:

Jared Cohen (Member of Secretary Clinton's Policy Planning Staff)

"Just landed, slept 10hrs, still tired, but energized by success of #RusTechDel. 21 deliverables driven by private sector. "
"Successful trip w/21 deliverables in education, anti-trafficking, health, anti-corruption, e-gov"

Being a software development company, operating on international market, Fortess is specially happy to hear about enthusiasm of world-known companies about cooperation in IT sphere.

Full list of the visit's deliverables is posted in Ashton Kutcher's blog.

We always say that Novosibirsk has all precondition to become another Silicon Valley. And I am glad that interest of world-known IT companies towards our region and its potential in technological domain increases with every year.

A tweet I want to sum up the post with:

John Donahoe (eBay): "Russia's best hope is for their young people using tech tools to drive change."

Thank you, Mr. Donahoe, we will try our best :)

Our first freeware: HaRusel

2010-02-17T06:57:03Z

Staff is one of the most important assets in any company. To a large extent, business success is determined by personalities of employees, from top managers up to bottom line operators. That is why HR-managers and recruiting agencies face daily a challenging task of finding a proper person for every open vacancy they have.

In recruiting process there are a lot of important factors, such as professionalism and communication skills of HR-managers, their ability to analyze candidates' personalities, to interpret test results correctly, etc. Not the least of the factors is a system of candidates' information storage.

Being at the phase of active growth, and therefore dealing with a large number of candidates on variable vacancies here at Fortess we faced a few difficulties:

time-consuming work on proceeding candidates' data
low speed of search and inconsistency of existing information
half-manual and time-consuming statistic reports
difficulties with reuse of existing information from database
informal approach to decision making between HR and heads of departments
verbal notifications about progress on candidates' search to people involved
absence of ready-to use program which would meet our needs

I guess many companies worldwide face periodically the same or similar difficulties. We were in more preferable conditions, if compared with others, being a software development company. Between external customer's projects we started working on the solution for our own needs. Soon, the developed software was put into practice. Besides work with candidates, we added functionality for collection and analysis of internal questionnaires and performance reviews' results.

The current version of the program was done for internal use, and not for sale. We want to share it with anybody who finds it useful. Soon more detailed description and demo-version will be published on Fortess web-site, and we will be happy to get any feedback.

Cold winter

2010-02-01T09:44:26Z

Most of our customers say that this year's winter is coldest one for at least last decade

Although frost (down to -40 C, as in this picture) is quite common in Novosibirsk, usually it lasts no more than several days and happens just a few times during the winter. The winter in our area, btw, normally start in November and may last until March or even April.Well, we confirm - in Novosibirsk, Siberia, this year is also the coldest. The frosts last since mid-December up until now with small breaks, turning our lives to a daily challenge. But the secret is simple - use warm clothes and transport yourself in the car as much as possible.

Outside clothing during such temperature should look like this:

Clothed like this, you can walk outside relatively long, maybe hours. Our girls mostly wear fur, because it's not only luxurious, but also makes real practical sense.

Cars are held mostly in open air, even during the winter. Many have an automatic car startup, which helps to keep it warm enough to start. Anyway, often the accumulator is not strong enough for low temperatures and one may see pictures like these:

What also surprises a lot of people is that actually you can ride bike in Siberia, it just has to have snow tires, just like a car:

To get more feeling as to what warms us, please watch this video with winter scenes.

Our way of introducing Scrum

2010-01-11T09:59:38Z

Over 2 years already passed since we started to use Scrum processes at software development here, at Fortess. I guess, it is already enough to make judgments on its effectiveness.

How it started to us: we had quite a difficult fixed price project, with significant project scope (involving about 20 developers from Java and C++ departments) and tight schedule. The project has already started, and we faced a lot of communication and interaction gaps. To minimize these problems, we decided to take a risk and to try Scrum, inspired by "Scrum and XP from the Trenches" book.

Starting from basic Scrum practices, we spitted up people on functional teams, moved every team to one room, organized daily meetings and scheduled sprints and retrospectives. In every team there was also assigned an internal tester for continuous testing, and a group of testers for acceptance testing at the end of each sprint. We have designed and printed cute cards for team to estimate tasks. It worked out. Analyzing results of this first attempt, we concluded, that Scrum:

increased team spirit and people involvement into project
increased quality of results
the first working version of application was provided earlier than expected

In general, the team accepted new process positively. They saw better the goal of their work; due to tester in team errors were found on the earlier stages, not causing big works on later stages; at daily meetings with the whole team all issues were detected and solved much faster, then through email exchanges or not-organized meetings.

What was difficult to organize?

Make the whole team gather exactly at one and the same time daily. At the meeting was scheduled for 15 minutes only, 5 minutes delay of a few members was a significant waste of time for the rest. We solved it with pineapple penalty. Every latecomer should have brought a pineapple. With a number of fruits gathered, the discipline improved.
Move team members to one room. Here we met barriers as people get used to their work places, and didn't want to move somewhere else, and move frequently with every new project. To solve this problem, on one hand, we tried to equip all rooms identically: tables, comfortable chairs, even wallpaper's color. On the other hand, we concentrated on team building activities for people to feel comfortable with any Fortess staff.

When Scrum doesn't work

When application was almost complete, the support and bug fixing tasks start taking most of the time. Sprint planning become useless and scrum does not work anymore, people were demotivated. On retrospective meeting we decided to try Kanban. To make it more interesting we introduced weekly KPIs, so team was passionate to improve KPIs every week.

Evolution of Scrum at Fortess

In 2-3 months after introducing of Scrum in first teams, all Fortess was speaking about this new process, and project managers started to introduce Scrum practices in their own projects.

Tools

Inside Fortess, teams use task board, real or virtual. The last ones help to eliminate common problems such as manual entry errors and lost cards. Some teams work with commercial tools like Rally; while others prefers open source like Agilo for Trac which gives more control and ability to plug in.

But more than tools, or following any written processes, Scrum is about people's culture: to learn how to communicate, how to make the process visible and understandable for all, self-discipline. To continue with, we started considering lean development techniques, oriented on continuous self improvement and avoiding waste of time at production.

Season´s greetings and a Happy New Year!

2009-12-31T09:26:39Z

Thank our customers, partners and employees for being with us at 2009. We appreciate our cooperation and looking forward for fruitful 2010.

We are wishing everybody a joyful year and bright memories.

Short video with memorable moments of the last year at Fortess is available here:

Career in IT in Russia

2009-12-29T21:10:34Z

Recently in Novosibirsk there was a seminar, I really found thoughtful. The seminar was devoted to different choices in IT career in Russia. Leading specialists in IT sectors shared their visions on types of IT companies in Russia, and the most important personal characteristics, all IT companies are looking for in future employees.

Below there is analysis of different types of IT companies and their most common features, as they are seen by one of the seminar's author, Alexander Orlov. Of course, every IT company has its own unique features, and the below table shows only general trends with exceptions possible. But due to this expert's judgement, I believe, many young people will be better oriented in Russian IT world, and will find a desired job, relevant to their natures. And I hope this article will be useful for foreign companies, working with Russian partners or contractors, to clearly understand specific features of the last ones.

Types of IT companies in Russia

All IT companies where specialist might find relevant job, were analyzed with "TOP" career development model, where "talent" means factors influencing employee's skills development, "passion" - desire to work, and "organization" - potential for career growth.

Results are presented at the table below:

Types	Factors to consider for potential employees
Subsidiaries of European and U.S. corporations	*Talent* well-established processes internal educational system: trainings, skill-up, etc many clever colleagues low pressure from bosses possibilities to work in R'n'D department *Organization* technical and career growth, but to a certain level, as 3-level and higher managers are abroad only good salary and parachute *Passion* work on world-known products, although in most cases only low-priority tasks are given to subsidiaries huge bureaucracy system with time passion towards work decreases
Product companies	*Talent* experience of product's development from scratch many clever colleagues possibilities to work in R'n'D department no internal educational system *Organization* technical growth career growth not easily, but possible, top management is inside the country salary depends often on one product's sales *Passion* one can see result's of work on local market many support tasks with time passion towards work decreases
Offshore development companies (stable)	*Talent* well-established processes internal educational system: trainings, skill-up, etc clear understanding how money can be earned or wasted *Organization* technical and career growth competitive salary salary growth might be limited by external rate no or small parachutes *Passion* various projects, not stacked to one products for ages indirect communication between developers and final customers/users many support tasks
Offshore development companies (surviving)	*Talent* every project - new technologies work in tough, frequently changing conditions many unskilled colleagues *Organization* technical growth good salary for project-managers usually no career growth rarely good salary for developers, no parachutes no clear vision on future *Passion* rarely support tasks indirect communication between developers and final customers/users
Internal IT department	*Talent* deep involvement into the whole business of the company much communication with colleagues users and "customer" rarely understand technical details and what exactly they want *Organization* usually there are two levels, and the second one is already occupied with IT-director *Passion* users are next to you low priority of IT tasks in terms of the whole organization a lot of intrigues out-of-date technologies
Start-up	*Talent* work with clever, full of enthusiasm people no internal educational system no established processes deep involvement into all aspects of business: technologies, finances, etc. *Organization* up to millionaire or unemployed, no career growth in general no parachutes no salary sometimes *Passion* enthusiasm towards project fast feedback work on yourself no stability

I tried to analyze my company according to TOP model approach. Here are the results:

Fortess

Talent

internal and external professional trainings, foreign language courses
many clever colleagues, tutorship system
established management and development processes
clear understanding how money can be earned or wasted

Organization

technical and career growth
competitive salary, often with bonuses system

Passion

various technical challenges
cutting-edge technologies
not stacked to one project for ages
support tasks possible

When recruiting people, I always say that Fortess is a stable IT company, and at the seminar I was pleased to hear external proof to my words, as according to Alexandr Orlov, Fortess is in "Offshore development companies (stable)" category. It has its pluses and possibly minuses. But what makes me happy, as a person involved into HR process, is one fact, presented by Alexandr. According to his analysis, in offshore companies (stable), unlike other types of companies, "with time passion towards work doesn't decrease", meaning that for most Russian people offshore IT companies will be the best choice of workplace.

Personal characteristics, Russian employers pay attention to

According to statistics, gathered by the author of the seminar, the most asked-for personal characteristics are as follows:

Result orientation
Ability to work on the final goal, not ones' personal tasks only
Communication skills: oral and written, public speeches; English is the "must" for most IT companies
Constant self-development

From my experience, these characteristics are very important for company. In Fortess, for example, we have a published list of values we want to see in our current and future employees. This list includes:

Responsibility
Initiative
Ability to work without constant monitoring, result orientation
Wiliness for professional growth
Positive way of thinking
Ability to work in team, team spirit
Communication skills

Practice shows that these characteristics have the same or even higher importance, then technical skills. And with brilliant team, which combines both technical skills and personal values desired, we can handle everything :)

And what does your company look like?

Halloween 2009

2009-11-01T05:02:17Z

Celebrating Halloween with traditional Halloween Jack o'Lantern and costumes is one of our favorite corporate events.

More Halloween photoes are available here

RFID practics in Value Chain

2009-10-20T11:29:51Z

On October 13 we participated in a conference "RFID practics in Value Chain" at GS1, Cologne.

Our German colleagues introduced their experience about implementations of RFID-based solutions to small and medium companies all over Germany. It was clearly demonstrated that the cluster of RFID-based solutions is well-enough established and is available (more often, though, with real support of technology pushers, like GS1) even for small companies, for example with overall just 6 people of staff.

As for the "internet of things", all technical components are there, but no real interesting solutions (at least at this conference) were demonstrated. Apparently the financial barrier for introducing such solutions to non-logistics areas is still high.

Demo-center at GS1 really impresses. In their show-room the full RFID cycle from production of bottled water to storage, transporting and point-of-sale processes is demonstrated. The whole set of equipment is there, humming, working, connecting with banks in real-time together with added light and video-presentation on screens looks more like industrial music concert.

Exploratory testing

2009-10-20T04:11:50Z

I haven't found a tester yet who didn't, at least unconsciously,
perform exploratory testing at one time or another.
James Bach

At the beginning of my career in testing many times I faced a challenge in a form of a need to conduct testing without pre-defined test design and enough product documentation, and to do it ASAP. What my astonishment was when one day I found out that there is a well-known approach in software testing society named Exploratory Testing (ET).

Actually it's the same ad hoc testing just renamed to "exploratory" to free oneself from synonymous with sloppy and careless work and to allow beginning development of the practice into a teachable discipline.

Nowadays more and more clients ask me about benefits of ET if compared with more traditional - scripting testing. I recommend it when:

there is poor documentation of the product
there is not enough time to organize classic scripted testing
the testing of product was never conducted
there is very limited budget on independent testing

By the way I keep the notion that Exploratory and Scripting testing go well together and supplement each other through the product testing life cycle:

Exploratory testing will lead your team to the scripted process one day or other if you keep testing for the same product for a long time;
Scripted testing is always supported with exploring which allows us to do the better tests every time. IMHO it's the one way to prevent minefield effect.

Exploring the software testers feel free in their actions and use their experience as well as they can. That is way the more the tester knows about the product and different test methods, the better the testing will be. From the other hand the approach makes testers' work interesting and gives good opportunity and motive to improve themselves.

Testing and IPR

2009-10-01T04:40:57Z

Another presales conversation about independent quality control ended up with a prospect's concern about IPR on their product. I hope that my thoughts on this issue might be useful for others.

On the first stages of cooperation trust is the most important goal to be reached. And I do understand that despite all service company's sincere words about no lucrative interest in seizing of somebody's code, prospects might still have worries.

Traditional issues to be covered on due diligence stage are the following:

1) subcontractor's way of doing business

2) references from existing clients

3) contract's conditions

4) how a subcontractor prevents leak of misappropriation of data and IPRs

Besides, I would suggest the following risk-free start with a new testing subcontractor:

1) Start with black-box testing. Maximum you risk here is one copy of your product. You can always add white-box one, when you get trust in your partner.

2) Order testing based on a trial version of your product, if you have any. You risk nothing. Depending of the duration of your product's trail version, you may get results of exploratory or even full functional testing.

3) Experienced testers are able to conduct testing without getting to know internal documentation, e.g. software requirement specifications. User manuals and list of high level requirements will be enough to start with.

Anything else haven't I foreseen in risk-free plan?

Soccer 2009

2009-08-30T04:19:39Z

We won!! We definitely won the last soccer championship! I am not speaking about World Cups, Euro qualifying matches, etc., please forgive me all fans of these events. I am speaking about our local IT companies' championship.

Fortess girls won their fear, as for the first time ever this championship was accompanied with cheerleaders contest. Some shy and quiet in daily life, they boosted the stadium; mothers of school-aged kids were considered an invited teenagers from professional cheerleading clubs.

And we won brilliant emotions at this day. Thank you all, our soccer team!

We haven't got the first prize, but that doesn't that much matter. A really positive day filled-in with team spirit does matter.

Video with fragments of a game and cheerleaders' dance.

Total solar eclipse 2008

2008-08-01T07:14:32Z

At August 1st 2008 foreigners all over the world came to Novosibirsk to observe total solar eclipse. And it was really amazing!