Muralisms ... Some use[ful | less] ideas!! Since 2009

Type A Companies ..

2013-10-31T08:33:00.003-07:00

I guess most of you have heard the leadership personality types classifications mantra oft repeated by management gurus and speakers.

That a type A hires type A or A+ types. On the other hand , Type B leaders hire type C and type C hires type D and soon the company becomes a bozos carnival... etc., etc.,

However, in the "dark arts of management" section, where you wouldn't normally go - to check out books - from the library of leadership, there is a corollary to this adage.

If you are a type A leader and actually hired all type A and A+ colleagues, very soon you would encounter a fork in your career path ...

You would be deemed replaceable as you have built a great line of succession and substitution bench strength.

You would be deemed a great asset and be given better opportunities to provide your services at a higher strategic level.

Now comes the corollary from the dark arts of management ..

If you work for a type A company, then the second option materializes most often... unless you have reached your level of incompetency in your company's hierarchy. If it is a type B or C or D company ... then your role would be eliminated for hiring top talent. This is called in the normal management speak as "Obsoleting yourself ..".

Monkeys on a Tree ... Parable

2013-09-17T03:19:00.001-07:00

It is said that every organization is like a tree full of monkeys .. some jumping up, some being pushed down and some monkeys swinging away to other trees.

This tree full of monkeys always see action and things are always on the move.

Only thing, however, that stays constant is -- that the monkeys sitting on the top and looking down always see smiling faces and the monkeys looking up always see 'ass holes' !

Organization maturity is just not measured in CMMi

2013-09-17T00:14:00.003-07:00

There was this folk tale I heard a long time ago....

Once upon a time, there was a great king and a wise minister, both of whom are foodies. It is said that one fine morning, both the cooks for the king and minister go to the forest to collect some herbs and get eaten by a lion.

The king gets pretty upset and so is the minister and both of them find their life is getting miserable due to lack of the sumptuous and lip-smacking food.

So, at first, the king announces for the new royal chef position with a great pay and benefits package and invites the popular and known cooks from all over the world to apply. Strangely, none of the cooks that attend the interview were able to create the culinary savor the king used to get from the same dishes earlier. And... so ... no one gets selected as the new royal chef. The king keeps getting more and more irritable and unbearable.

Adding insult to the injury, the king starts noticing that his wise minister has started appearing less miserable and in fact seem to be getting happier day by day..

So, the king summons the wise minister to his private chambers .. rants for a while about how much he is missing the great food that he used to take for granted ... and then inquires with the minister .

What is happening with you these days !! Aren't you a good foodie like me and since you have also lost your cook , you must be feeling miserable!!!

The wise minister replies back with a smile ...

Not at all Sire!! In fact, I have found a cook who creates me the same taste and flavor that I love and that is the reason why I am very happy again.

The king gets mighty annoyed and started accusing the minister ..

How ungrateful of you !! you found the best cook and kept him for yourself instead of offering me his services.. I shall punish you for this disloyalty ..

Then the minister says ...

Sire! It is not the cook!!. Whenever my earlier cook made a dish that I liked very much, I used to take notes of the ingredients and cooking procedure.. So, when the new cook came aboard, I gave him the recipe book and asked him to follow the same. That is the reason why he was able to reproduce the magic. It is not that he is a great cook. He is good enough to follow the established procedure..

Moral of the story ...

If you don't keep track of how great things are done by your best folks ... then, when they leave, you are left with nothing ....

What this has got to do with the organizational context .. you may ask !!

I have come to know many instances of the "so called" indispensable engineers leaving companies or going on vacation and when shit hits the fan, things came down unraveling ...

Why is it that your team or organization or work force has indispensable engineers ?!?

If any of your manager comes to you saying that - he got an irreplaceable engineer that should get hike or promotion or whatever ... If I were you, the first thing I do is to fire that damn manager!!!

Does not matter if you are a CMMi 5 level company ... if you have not created redundancy and Personnel DR strategy, then you suck!!

If you observe that your IT guy, Ops guy or Architect guy or PD guy or Sales guy is a STAR .. create a buddy pair mechanism to build a back up. Document ... document .. document everything that the 'star' performer does and create an easily accessible knowledge management system.

The rule of thumb is that -- having GREAT performers in the organization should add value to the organization. NOT .. losing them is going to create a chaos..

Happy KM' ing !!

AP Politics and People

2013-09-08T00:08:00.003-07:00

I have been watching the United Andhra Pradesh Vs separate Telangana state agitation with a bit of nonchalance for the last many months.

In the spirit of full disclosure : I am an American citizen living in TamilNadu.

I, for one, feel that proponents and opponents of both agitations are failing to highlight few vital points that people of Telangana ought to hear. I am sure that the key leaders of the Telangana agitation are fully aware of these points and are covering them up.

The reason for the proposing or opposing the split should neither be sentiment nor economics.

The problems that are the catalysts for the Telangana agitation are purely regional. They are caused by the regional players. The perpetrators of all these problems are the local/regional/caste/political representatives of the Telangana. They are going to stay whether there is Telangana state or not.

Let us assume for a second that -- The state of Telangana is created NOW!.

How is it going to benefit the people of Telangana !!

The local panchayat chairman would again come from the same families that have been contesting the elections. He or She or his political heir would contest in the new state. The same set of MLAs, MLCs and MPs would contest again and rule. It is their family trade and it would continue to be so. Few new folks may also join the trade who got facetime .. thanks to the agitation.

In the end, you get mostly the same set of people who never managed to improve the region again to rule the region which gets a new name.

Please don't ever think for a moment that "LOCALS" get more jobs. India is a democracy where all citizens are constitutionally protected to live and work anywhere within India and earn their livelihood.

The few more thousand government jobs that gets created/ filled is a one time affair and not going to benefit the Crores of common Telangana people.

This is purely a political unemployment issue getting masqueraded as a "will of people' and creating a mob mentality.

YOU - a typical Telangana person !! ..... your life would be the same whether you are in AP or TG. Because, you would send the same $H1tbags to your local bodies, state assembly and parliament.

If work is the greatest thing on Earth ... you should try Mars!

2013-09-05T07:26:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs once said ...

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it."

Then again... how many of us are truly inspired to be what all we can be in our life !

Why is it that most of us spend best part of our life to prepare ourselves to become marketable commodities and then spend the rest of our lives as tools in the big machine !!

Why is Indian retirement age is just few years short of the average life expectancy of an Indian adult?

How many of us are introducing ourselves to others not with our work titles?

Like instead of saying .. 'I am an additional secretary of the government of India' or 'I am a doctor' or 'I am a professor' .... how many of us actually say - "I love photography/painting/poetry/cooking but my day job is in the government or medical field" ... and so on ?

If your work title is your greatest achievement in your life and you are a 'nobody' retired few years before you are going to die ... then you have a big problem!

Does not matter if you are a theist or atheist or agnostic person .. all you know is that you are having one life and just one life in front of you and NO you are not a milk carton in a supermarket that has a guaranteed expiry date.

Get out of your comfort zone and try to find the true purpose of your journey while you are stationed on this tiny spec of land mass called 'The Earth' that revolves around an average star in the far corners of a normal sized galaxy in this gigantic universe.

God speed !!

Group Dynamics

2013-09-04T20:56:00.002-07:00

At a meta level humans are not very different from dogs and leaders from alpha dogs.

There is a wise old saying that dates back many centuries in India.

It is told in Sanskrit and it reads as "Yadhaa Raja ... Tadhaa Praja".

Literally translated , it means "As is ruler ... so are the ruled".

In a modern context, kennel owners know this saying and practice it intuitively. Their pups would be rewarded an extra pat or an extra bone if they behave the way the owner approves. It is necessary for the kennel owners to practice this model since, they want to train all the dogs in a way that they are amiable to prospective buyers and get off their hands quickly. They dispose of the unruly dogs in various ways.

Same goes in human society as well. If the society rewards trust and honesty, most of the social order is build on trust and honesty. OR If legal matters more than moral, society would become legal compliant and damn with morals.

Same goes for companies. If the top management rewards results above all things, managers and alpha employees drive for results and nothing else matters.

On the other hand, if we see around us that people are growing up in ranks doing whatever it takes to play to the gallery and still getting rewarded, then slowly but surely, every intelligent and pragmatic wannabe leader and people manager would try to adapt the same tactics to grow up in the ranks ( or leave the shop). After few years, if the top management looks back and finds only a bunch of suckers and no task masters / tough leaders and character builders around, they sure should recollect the age old Indian saying "Yadhaa Raja ... Tadhaa Praja"

MisManagement 101 ..

2013-09-04T08:25:00.002-07:00

Let me share with you a folktale back from the days of my childhood summers ...

A villager decides to go do 'Tapasya' in mountains .. and spends years and years of time to pray to his favorite God. God gets very pleased after many years of the meditation and appears before the villager.

God speaks to the villager

I am extremely pleased with your devotion in these modern times. Ask whatever you want and I shall grant you ONE wish!

The villager bows venerably before the God and speaks

Sir ! "please grow hair on the ears of my mother-in-law!!"

God gets surprised but he is bound to grant the wish of his devotee

Ok! I have granted your wish. But I am curious to know why you have spent so many years of hard tapasya to ask for such a strange wish ?!?

The villager speaks...

Sir! when I was very young, I heard that the son-in-law gets extremely lucky if his mother-in-law has hair on the ear lobes. That is the reason why I have asked for that wish ..

God laughs out very loud and makes the following comment before disappearing ..

If all you wanted is to be extremely lucky .. you should have just asked for that !!

Moral of the story ...

Before you go ahead and ask for the solution .. take few minutes to actually think and analyze what is the problem you are going to solve with the solution

For many leaders who are trying to make impactful changes to better their organizations, it is many times not uncommon to get prescriptive of the solution and most of the subordinates tend to tow the line and rush to implement the prescription. At the end of the retrospection, if you don't see the desired outcome .. you have no one to blame but to look in the mirror.

In your rush to get things done, if you jump the gun and start telling "How you want things done" as opposed to "What you want to be done", you will make your organization "procedure" oriented rather than "process" oriented.

Some one should send this guy Mozilla Swag!!

2010-07-01T16:45:00.000-07:00

Look at this article http://www.sutor.com/c/2010/07/ibm-moving-to-firefox-as-default-browser/ ....

To summarize ... he listifies reasons why IBM use Firefox browser as internal standard

Some of the reasons are

Firefox is stunningly standards compliant, and interoperability via open standards is key to IBM’s strategy.
Firefox is open source and its development schedule is managed by a development community not beholden to one commercial entity.
Firefox is secure and an international community of experts continues to develop and maintain it.
Firefox is extensible and can be customized for particular applications and organizations, like IBM.
Firefox is innovative and has forced the hand of browsers that came before and after it to add and improve speed and function.

While other browsers have come and gone, Firefox is now the gold standard for what an open, secure, and standards-compliant browser should be. We’ll continue to see this or that browser be faster or introduce new features, but then another will come along and be better still, including Firefox.

I think it was Firefox and its growth that reinvigorated the browser market as well as the web. That is, Firefox forced competitors to respond. Their software has gotten better and we have all benefited. We’ll see this again as Firefox continues to add even more support for HTML5.

Damn! this is a heart warming write up !!

Some one should send this guy Mozilla swag .

Congrats Mike Shaver!!

2010-06-05T20:49:00.000-07:00

I was reading an article about Apple's arrogance & HTML5 here. I was very disturbed that the stupid demo site of Apple actually wants me to see it only in Safari. Frak you Apple! You suck !!

A paragraph that caught my attention when I was reading this article is as follows ...

---- Mike Shaver, chief technology officer with Mozilla, the open-source operation that builds Safari-rival Firefox, was less diplomatic on Twitter. Having difficulty suppressing my contempt for Apple's arrogant and ridiculous HTML5 positioning today, he said. ----

No one could have said it any better!!

When I read that sentence, two thoughts raced through my mind....

The first one was ... "When did Mike Shaver became the CTO?"

and the second one was very stupid ... and a funny but impolite thought ... some thing like my six year old daughter commenting on my Quality engineering experience or my programming skill set.

The second thought that went through my mind almost parallel with the first one was ... " I'm out of Mozilla for a little while and everybody gets to be a Jedi " .... on the lines of the dialog used by Han Solo in Starwars Episode VI.

I know this is an inexcusable thought knowing how smart Mike is and how much his contributions have made a difference to the world of open web and how 'utterly under-qualified' I am to think like that. But in the spirit of openness, and in the spirit of a "leaf commenting on the tree" ... I thought I will share it with my Mozilla friends ...

Congratulations Shaver, if that article referring you as CTO was not a typo.

I hope your level of involvement in Firefox do not diminish on a technical and day to day level because of your promotion.

Why you should not multi task !!

2010-05-27T17:22:00.000-07:00

In my long career, it was not uncommon to see a bunch of engineers attending the Release meeting of Platform meeting or Product meeting with their laptops, fully immersed in their little worlds -- doing a 'body present - mind absent' routine. Well, in defense of some multitasking aficionados , they truly try to optimize on their time by attending a meeting as well as doing some thing else useful like .. say coding or chatting etc!!

In agile organizations, it is given that you always keep your eye on the IRC chat window, keep track of in-coming bugs, comment on relevant bugs, test/develop/plan etc.,etc.,

In my earlier assignment, one thing I did bad was, not being available in the IRC channel always. Even when I was on the channels, I did not pay much attention to the chat when I was busy doing my scripting/tooling etc.,

One thing I always tried to do was -- not to take my laptop into a meeting unless I needed it to present some thing or follow an issue on screen.

I suspect that some of my esteemed colleagues might have found my dislike for continuous multitasking as a short coming but ... that seems not such a bad tactic after all.

You don't believe me !!

Then please read this http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2010/05/how-and-why-to-stop-multitaski.html

Celik's entry at Mozilla ... about time!!

2010-05-26T11:31:00.000-07:00

It was a good news to see (today) that Tantek Çelik joined Mozilla. Between Shaver, Jay, Celik and UI experts like Alexander Limi I hope Mozilla would make Desktop Class WebApplications enablment a first class citizen in the product strategy.

Should it chose to accept ... Mozilla can really build kick-ass frameworks that would trounce the Sproutcore like systems. But, knowing Mozilla and its mission, I don't believe that would be a good enough justification to start such a project.

Mozilla does not believe in one-up-man-ship as a policy.

But, sooner or later ... the HTML5 based RIA world would become highly fragmented into many camps of looks&feels unless Mozilla like neutral players, whose purpose of existence is -- to enable open and free web standards -- step in ... and step in sooner!!

The worst day to look for ... is a proxy war between various rendering engines via HTML5 RIA generator frameworks.

VP8 and the future of Video in Circa 2015 or RIP H.264 ?

2010-05-20T13:19:00.000-07:00

This blog post is neither endorsed by Mozilla nor represent their position. ..

Few days ago I , Asa and a QA manager were having a spirited discussion during a coffee break. It was few days before the Google I/O and before the world knew when and how Google is going to make the open source announcement of VP8 codec.

So, I asked Asa why should VP8 be successful other than the fact .. that it is backed by Google.... ( God knows, should it chose, Google can make even my dead Grandma the most famous person in the world !! ).

We had a long technical discussion on how Theora / VP3 is a better codec at crappy bandwidths and how VP8 gives a better cost per bit performance over H.264 under majority of pro-sumer video/web-video scenarios etc.,

But the point that caught my attention is that there is an excellent business reason why VP8 would become a dominant player and take over the lands ruled by H.264... (This is in addition to the technical and vendor support reasons ... )

The H.264 is a technology based on a bunch of patents owned by many companies including Apple,Microsoft etc., so for an individual to acquire H.264 license, it would a pain in all places to obtain licenses from multiple patent holders. So, all these companies patent pooled and delegated the job of H.264 licensing to a single vendor, MPEG-LA, who would become a one stop shop to dispense H.264 license and then distribute the proceeds on a pre-agreed basis to all patent holders minus its service fee.

Even though Apple is part of MPEG-LA consortium, it still needs to get a license to use H.264 in products it sells. So, when it pays a dollar to acquire a license, it goes to the MPEG-LA and say, Apple gets 10 cents as profit sharing from MPEG-LA when they do their books.

In effect, Apple payed a total of 90 cents to acquire H.264 license instead of the full dollar. So, it still fraking losing money every time it need to acquire a license. Same goes for all other companies in the consortium that use H.264 in their products portfolio. Only those companies that hold patents in the H.264 pool and do not make any products using H.264 get a true profit from the MPEG-LA bounty distribution.

So, what would be the reason -- why Apple or Microsoft would not switch to VP8!! Nothing !!!

Or, they can force MPEG-LA to come out saying they don't charge any thing for H.264 for next 20 years or some thing like that ... effectively making it a free codec. This would be a questionable outcome if the only-profit-taking-partners object to it.

So, if I can look into the crystal ball ... come year 2015, MPEG-LA may not have lot of chips on hand to play any video codec game. Either VP8 would become the most dominant player in video codec world and makes H.264 a bit player or hopefully, saner heads prevail at MPEG-LA and they would make H.264 an equally free and open source codec by that time.

Couldn't think of a better recent example of market economy creating a winner in the field of Web Video technology.

Leaving Mozilla very soon ...

2010-05-12T13:51:00.000-07:00

After a long and fruitful consulting assignment with Mozilla, I am moving on to take up a full time position at Yahoo!

May 21st is my last working day at Mozilla. I aim to remain a committed and useful volunteer for the cause of open web and open standards and hope to continue my association with the good folks at Mozilla.

Getting a grip on multiple test run results ..

2010-04-07T14:48:00.000-07:00

With more than 150K tests run with each check-in and at approximately
100-120 checks-in a day ... there are a tonne of test results out
there for any one to get a grip. Every engineer checks the test run
results of their putbacks and some people go through all orange and or
burning builds.

So, we have set-up a display dash board to enable every one to
know every thing about every failure from every run .. ( lot of
every's). Here, you can see the following.

What are the latest test failures across all runs on all platforms ?
What are the TOP failing tests ?
What are the total tests that have been failing in the timeline that
we have captured ?

We also provide direct links to easily navigate to a test failure log
to build log to putback data. This of course is in addition to some
nifty time-line graphs for each test failure.

So, without further ado, we would like to present the following URLs
for your kind perusal ...

http://brasstacks.mozilla.com/topfails/
http://brasstacks.mozilla.com/topfails/topfails
http://brasstacks.mozilla.com/topfails/tests

and a sample failure timeline

http://brasstacks.mozilla.com/topfails/timeline?name=automationutils....

Success!!

2010-04-01T08:32:00.000-07:00

True success is some thing that you never need to announce your self!!

--Murali Nandigama

Highest Value Extensions that are not yet created for Firefox

2010-03-10T12:04:00.000-08:00

We are going to start a pet project very soon that would identify the most wanted Firefox extensions that are not yet available in the Mozilla Add-Ons website.

The feeder data for this project comes from the web analytics tool to see the most searched for add-ons on the AMO site and then the modulo of the data with available add-ons would provide the answer.

Based on this information, many useful jetpack extensions or Firefox Add-ons can be created to fulfill community needs.

Let us hope that we all be made aware of community add-ons' needs and let us all work together to fulfill the gaps. This would be an excellent opportunity for add-ons contributors to directly work on fulfilling an existing add-on gap.

Please stay tuned for further announcements ...

Fancy Friday @ Mozilla

2010-03-05T11:06:00.000-08:00

Mozilla Cananda office folks apparently have started a counter culture tradition few months ago. That is -- to ask ( voluntarily of course ) the team mates to come dressed up full fancy on Friday. Like in three piece suites, Top hats, Various cultural garbs and what not !! Heck you can even come to office dressed like those Senator types !!

To Quote the original folks who started off all this --

""" Fancy Friday in the Toronto office started off as "Jacket Friday",
a deliberate counterpoint to the "Dress down Fridays"
many of us remember from former, more corporate gigs """

[ Did you see my python geek-ism in the triple quotes ;) ]

However, Mozilla USA , for what it is ... is a way cool place to follow those Corporate customs and we come to office every day in casuals. So, for the fun of it, some Mozilla USA folks have sent a mail yesterday asking us to ( voluntarily of course ) to start adopting our Canadian brothers custom of 'Fancy Fridays'.

So far, I have seen a Scottish traditional dress, multiple pin stripe suites and ties. couple of bling blangs and not many took up the offer ( mia culpa!!) with enthusiasm even though some nice folks offered free photo sessions in one of our conference rooms for all ...

So, in the true Mozilla spirit ... next Friday I would come to office in South Indian traditional dress.

Ideation vs. Innovation

2010-03-02T12:02:00.000-08:00

Long time ago, I happened to watch a video in one of the 'leadership for technical managers sessions'. It is called -- The power of vision : By Joel Barker. It became a great paradigm shifter in my approach & management style.

Recently I happened to come across a powerful corollary to the Power of Vision and I am sure that it would be very helpful to you too ...

Simply put, it states that having a great idea is not a substitute for implementing one... and that creativity, ideation and innovation are three different things !!

This would be a great short read for any one who is interested to know more ..

http://www.sixsigmaiq.com/Columnarticle.cfm?externalID=634&ColumnID=11&utm_source=sixsigmaiq.com&utm_medium=SMO&utm_campaign=LINKEDIN&utm_content=2_3_2010&mac=SSIQ_LinkedIn_SMO_2010&utm_term=SIXSIGNET&shownewswindow=1

On being a US citizen

2010-02-25T14:58:00.000-08:00

After a 11 years of residency in the USA, today I have taken the oath to become a US citizen and with that accepted all privileges, rights and responsibilities that come along with it. It is a good feeling to become a full member of society where I have been living from so long.The first thing I did after taking oath is to register as a voter so that I can vote in the upcoming California elections to vote 'YES' on the open primary measure.

So long .. Sun Microsystems

2010-01-28T09:14:00.000-08:00

Yesterday has seen a lot of action. Apple announced its iPad. Obama gave his State of the Union and Larry Ellison completed the take over and change in control of Sun Microsystems.

I am very fond of my four and half years at Sun and I know why Sun is what it is today. I also worked for Oracle and it is a great place to work. Oracle has a singular focus on success and most of the times they succeed. Time only tell if Oracle would be able to bring the Sun brand back to its old glory. But if Oracle wants to do that, it must let go most of the Director to VP level Sun staff who were never accused of having an iota of business quotient and market orientation.

The Sun URL http://www.sun.com started pointing to http://www.oracle.com effective today.

So long ... my friend !!

How many cows you got !!

2010-01-26T17:02:00.000-08:00

... just wanted to share this piece of ancient wisdom that one may find useful when asking for an advice from others...

One day, a villager in India goes to the priest/village_doctor and says 'My cows are not happy and not giving as much milk as they used to ... please give me an advice as to what to do'.

The priest gives him a medicine and says ' mix it in the animal feed and your problem would be solved. See me again in a week'.

Next week, the villager comes back more depressed ... 'My cows are not only not giving milk but they are sick now ... please give me an advice what should I do !!'.

The priest goes into his prayer room, meditates and comes back with a different medicine. 'Now ... go back and feed only this medicine to your herd. And come back in a week's time to give me the report'.

This time the villager comes back in 3 days, crying and shaking ... 'My cows are dying !! I lost many cows ... please give me any idea how to save my cows !!! '

This time the priest sits silently for a while ... looks straight in to the eyes of the villager ... and says .. 'Ideas I got many ... how many cows you got? '

Brownbag Presentation on January28, 2010

2010-01-26T16:35:00.000-08:00

I am presenting a talk on risk analysis associated with code changes made to fix bugs in Firefox during the entire year 2009.

At a very high level, the top 10 files which contain the highest source change related risk would be presented.The algorithm used to calculate the risk would be presented. In addition to that, we would also present the current branch coverage, functional coverage and block coverage data [from automated test runs] on those top source change risk files and make some recommendations on how to target for risk mitigation.

The brown bag is scheduled for January 28th,2010 at 12:30PM in Ten Forward. It will also be simulcasted on http://air.mozilla.com

Should large source files be split into smaller ones for work flow efficiencies ?

2010-01-13T17:14:00.000-08:00

I am working on a study of risk associated with code changes made in the Mozilla Firefox browser.

Here is the ten thousand feet view of my approach

Get the list of all bugs that were fixed in Firefox in the last one year [ from Bugzilla ].
Assign a score to each bug fix.

Example: If the source file is modified to fix a security bug in the recent quarter .. give it 20 points, if it was fixed 4 quarters ago, then give it 5 points ... that means a sec-fix can get a score of 20 or 15 or 10 or 5 points based on when a sec bug is fixed in the last 365 days

If the source file is modified to fix a regression bug in the recent quarter .. give it 16 points, if it was fixed 4 quarters ago, then give it 4 points ... that means a reg-fix can get a score of 16 or 12 or 8 or 4 points based on when a reg bug is fixed in the last 365 days

Using a similar logic, a general bug fix would get a score of 12 or 9 or 6 or 3 points based on whether it was fixed 0-90 days ago or 91-180 days ago or 181-270 days ago or 271-365 days ago

Then add all the scores for all source files and stack rank the files in descending order.

Each source file gets a cumulative score based on how many bugs are fixed in it, what types of bugs are fixed in it and when.

Using the bug patch attachments from Bugzilla and bugId in the source control log comments I could create a fairly accurate mapping between bug number to actual source files that are modified to fix the bug.

Remember ... this study is done not on all bugs in the Bugzilla but only on the fixed bugs.

Without getting into too many details, I have found that top 10 files in the stack ranked order of fix-score have 12% of all bug fixes in them. Since there are thousands of files in the executable, this is a significant concentration.

All of these TOP score files are big in size. For example the number one score file has fifteen thousand lines of code in it.

But if I double click the source file and see which methods are actually modified to fix the bugs, the distribution of hotspots is fairly concentrated in the file itself into segments. Typical scenarios are more like 20% of the source file itself has 80% of fixes concentrated in it.

It is fairly obvious that the top 10 files should have additional review mechanisms in place to account for the fact that they have been centers of a lot of bug fix activity. But the actual bug fixing in those files is not uniformly spread across the files.

Here is my question ... since the bug fix hotspots in the files are concentrated , does it make sense to recommend that the large file be split into smaller files so that only those ( small ) files that contain the hotspot segments should be tracked for additional review and the safer portion(s) follow the normal check-in procedures ?

2010 wiki template for status report

2010-01-04T15:30:00.000-08:00

Folks,

If you are like me and use MediaWiki to do a status report on a weekly basis, this is a handy wiki template that you can use.

There are various ways to do a weekly status report [ some may not even do that and that is perfectly fine too !! ] and using a calender format allows to show maximum information in a minimum space.

You can cut and paste the text below into a new wiki window to get the final format which looks like this

CUT HERE >

== 2010 ==

{| class="wikitable"
|-
!align="center" | January
|
! align="center" | February
|
! align="center" | March
|
! align="center" | April
|-
|
{| class="wikitable"
|-
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Breaking Fake News :: Whitehouse announced the policy to end all threats to the airline security problems

2009-12-29T11:25:00.001-08:00

Washington DC[ 00.14AM local time ]: A visibly tired and red eyed White house press secretary Robert Gibbs has made important policy announcements to sparsely packed sleepy room of white house correspondents that president Obama has approved the latest changes to the FAA security guidelines.

Effective January 1st, 2010 all airlines would be mandated to bomb proof cargo holds of all airplanes that would be capable of flying more than 6 passengers other than the flight staff. All airlines that have flights flying into and out of United States would be required to take up this measure which is expected to cost around 128 billion dollars. White house has initiated serious consultations with the congress to pass a law that would allow the government to redirect the TARP money recovered from US banks to US airlines to provide funding for the extra costs associated with retrofitting all the air planes.

It has also been pointed out that president Obama has urged the airline industry to consider the following points : since US airlines receive funding from government to implement new security measures and all other international airlines would have to foot the bill them selves, this would provide an undue competitive advantage to Us airlines and that is expected to bring the US airlines out of the red into black if only they stop screwing up their advantage by using their usual dick head ways of antagonizing airline passengers and general public.

It has also been announced that effective March 1st, 2010 all traveling passengers would be required to undress at the airports and check in their cloths along with luggage and they would be provided scrubs and sandals to change into. The airport provided clothing would be certified by FAA to be chemical and explosive free and that would prevent the would be terrorists to use their shoes or underwear as explosive devices. Even if their cloths or shoes have the explosives, the bomb proof cargo bases of airlines would prevent any damage to the airline or the passenger safety.

ACLU, which has raised the privacy concerns over the proposed millimeter wave x-ray machines deployment in national airports has welcomed this measure as a victory for passenger privacy and also cautioned for continuous monitoring of change rooms for hidden video cameras or other photographic devices.

Stocks of airport security monitoring x-rays machines manufacturers have tumbled on the wall street in anticipation of this announcement where as the ratings of cloth manufacturers have received an upgrade.

Paris Hilton who was returning from a late night party has commented on this news and wished for a passenger choice to purchase exquisite cashmere scrubs for extra price and hoped that she would not see a day where all passengers would be dressed in the same colored and same quality scrubs causing a fashion chaos.

Update [ 08:30 AM localtime ] Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has assured the public that passengers would have the choice to select from multiple varieties of scrubs to meet their preferences and that business class and first class passengers would be offered a variety of silk scrubs to chose from.