Jim's thoughts

What would the Sistine Chapel look like if painted today, by an IT department

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Barrows) — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 21:45:00 +0000

The artist and the software developer share many things in common. Both deal in pure thought, and abstract ideas. Both try to make them real. Both attempt to constrain complexity, and abstract away the unimportant to the thought.

While the artist attempts to evoke an emotion, or explain the world, the software developer tries to allow another human being to get something done. If looked at from the point of view of accomplishment evoking emotion, maybe the two aren't that different. I could argue that this is a vast gulf between the two as well.

Modern software developers have managers whose theories are historically rooted in the very real worlds of assembly lines, and military necessities. As far from the amorphous world of thought as you can get. Deadlines, measurements, distances, performance, all can be easily measured in reality. We have the tools and they work.

Modern project management has it's roots in ship building, and construction. Fields with firm roots in physics. You can only move the much mass this fast, and this far. It only takes so long to do a weld so big. Everything can be measured, because everything follows the immutable laws of physics.

Which leads us to the question: What would the Sistine Chapel look like if Michelangelo was managed by an MBA, and the whole project overseen by a PMO?

How to accurately estimate projects.....

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Barrows) — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 06:30:00 +0000

Most people estimate how long something will take by trying to figure out how long a task will take. Most of the time that works, however for software, it fails miserably. See, it's not about the task, it's about the behavior the user wants. Behavior can't be easily defined the same way a task can be.
Take for instance this task:

Resolve issue with business stuff that's irrelevant (default materials lists were not being created w/ new programs)

The key here is the word issue. It's not defined. So you have to figure it's at least10 hours to get it defined. Then you can get actually implement what they want. Then you have to define what a default materials list is, and what they mean by default. The more people that are involved, the longer that will take. Say another 10 hours at least.
See, the easy part is writing the code. The hard part is figuring out what the heck it's supposed to do. Most project managers, and project management software think that's a task. It's not even a requirement.
Here's another one:

Final notification would be provided to someone indicating that they were something good

Here again the words final notification provide a whole world of unknowns. How will this happen? Will the user have the option to specify the method of notification? That's probably another 10-15 hours of wrangling right there. Then, another 5 hours for the actual content of the notice itself. If it's different formats, you might have another 5 hours wrangling over typography, format etc.
Another one:

Ability for roles within some department to search for people and leave notes

Roles? Which roles? Are they new roles? Search for people? By what SSN? customer ID, email? phone number? Do you know how many ways there are to find someone? Then how do you present the list? How does the user know that they have found the right person? *SIGH* Another 15-20 hours of wrangling.
Here's one more, and one of my favorites:

Business status identified and managed effectively

Manage? Manage? What does that mean? Simple Create/Read/Update/Delete functionality? Do we need a business rules engine? There's a huge difference between managing a 3 person business, and a multi-national corporation. Manage.. really... not even close to being a good requirement.
So what makes a good requirement? Anything that defines behavior. That's not something that can be defined in a single sentence. It's certainly not something that can be defined easily in MS Project, or any other project management software. It's at least a paragraph, probably more.
See not only do you have to define what you want the software to do (how it behaves) when things are good, but also when things go badly. There are usually more things that can go wrong then can go right. Each of those is it's story, it's own behavior.
Project management says you can start when you have all the tasks that need to be accomplished specified. This is just not possible. You're not done when all the tasks have been accomplished. You're done when the software behaves as the user wants.
This is where Behavior Driven Design comes in. It's not a methodology for project management. It's not a silver bullet for all your software project woes. It's a method of doing the hardest thing there is to do in any project: communicate. It focuses the attention of everyone on the project on the two single most important things in any project: Behavior, and communication.
You can find out more at: the wiki article and at the website

Critical Thinking in the corporate world, by the top brA55es

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Barrows) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:04:00 +0000

We get a 22 page document on how to fill out a defect report in Jira. This would not be so bad if it was 22 pages of how to describe and detail defects in a coherent way. It was instead 22 pages of work-flow, which is entirely driven by Jira anyway, and therefore does not need documentation.
Instead it was describing the use of 3 fields in order to allow management to do apples-to-apples comparisons of bugs. Only an MBA (Massively Bad Advice) could come up with something so incredibly asinine. Bugs, like real estate are unique. A bug in one application is not the same as a bug in another application.
What they mean is that they want a way to determine which bugs they want to get rid of, and which ones they want to keep. This means that by definition defective software is acceptable. Which means that at my employer, quality is not a primary concern.
Yes folks, MBA's think defective software is acceptable to deliver to the customer.
Is there any wonder why I call being made a manager, a demotion.......

One to Many relationship in liftweb

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Barrows) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 05:50:00 +0000

Most of the other examples don't follow all the way through, leaving you at the "Oh gee, the mapping is done, now how do I get to select the many". My example is not to show the One to Many where the Many are dependant on the one, but rather choices that the one can belong to the one. So for instance you have a Party which has a many to many relationship with PartyType. However, a Party can have different types at different times, so you need a one to many from the party to some intermediate class (we'll call it PartyClassification), and then from PartyClassification to Party Type.
Something this: Party[1]->[N]PartyClassification[N]<-[1]PartyType.
The Party[1]->[N]PartyClassification part is fairly easy to do, and I'll cover it later. However the PartyClassification[N]<-[1]PartyType is more interesting. You can't create a PartyClassification without a PartyType, and you have to present the user with a selection of PartyTypes that the PartyClassification can have.
Now, for the example I'm going to use One[1]->[N]Many as the actual names. I could use PartyClassification and PartyType, however whenever I follow examples with "real" names, I sometimes forget which is the many, and which is the one. I'll assume the same happens to you, and keep it simple.
So we start with a fresh mvn archetype install.

Selling a customer experience not a product or service

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Barrows) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 00:04:00 +0000

http://www.venturecompany.com/opinions/files/serviceforce_is_a_big_deal.html

Business Plans

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Barrows) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 00:03:00 +0000

http://www.pehub.com/36689/study-finds-business-plans-a-waste-of-time/
I've heard this before, from some of the VC blogs I follow. They use the plan as a filter for people they don't know. Same for angel investors. I think they understand that the plan is only good until you open your doors, and then you have to adjust as you go, making the plan fairly obsolete fairly quickly.
In Art of the Start, Guy Kawasaki says there are 5 things you MUST accomplish as an entrepeneur:
1) Make Meaning
If you're ogarnization never existed, the world would be worse off because _________________________________
2) Make Mantra - as opposed to a mission statement
In 10 words or less write your organizations mantra:
3) Get Going
Just go do it. Now please :)
4) Define your Busines Model

1. Calculate your monthly costs to operate your organization
2. Calculate the gross profit of each unit of your product
3. Divide step 1 by the results of step 2
4. Ask a few women if you have a chance of selling that many units. If you don't , no business model

5) Weave a MAT - Milestones, Assumptions and Tasks
Okay, this is a big section.. buy the book!

Standout in a crowd

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Barrows) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 17:45:00 +0000

Watch this link
Okay, so the guy is a bit.. aggressive but is he wrong? No, I don't think so .
Coll Business Card Designs
Super hero Cards
Show Off Cards

Thoughts on regulations and laws.

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Barrows) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 18:53:00 +0000

Here's an interesting article from Slashdot
Click to read. Note Slashdot is a technically oriented site, more interested in technology then politics.
So if a huge rental fee is charged, enough to leave the wireless bands to the major players in the space to rent we stand a good chance of killing innovation. While I don't subscribe to the "All innovation comes from small company" theory, with the state of things now, it's very cheap and easy to start a business and get it running on the internet. Wireless internet, and the devices like iPhone, Storm, Android and others on the way; we could be chilling new company's from getting started.
Let me give you an example: Click to read article
Did the Federal Alcohol Administration Act of 1935 mean to squash competition? No, I don't think they did. Did they mean to effectively make Budweiser the national beer of the U.S? No, I don' think so.
Nor do I think Jimmy Carter intended to allow 1,463 breweries, including 975 brewpubs to spring up across the country. I think his intention was to de-criminalize a hobby. I would tend to doubt that he even thought something like this would happen. I don't think anyone did. They just lifted the regulation, and Capitalism took over. As it always does.
I'll give you another example. There is something called The Ugly C Code Contest (okay, if you Google for that you wont find it, try The International Obfuscated C Code Contest). C is a programming language. The contest is to use and abuse the language to create the ugliest working program you possibly can. Every year, at least 1 new rule is added, because someone obeyed the rules in a new and unique way, that really shouldn't have been done. These are celebrated, although not allowed to win, as being particularly clever. However, despite the ever increasing number of rules, the contest is very freewheeling and encouraging of new ideas and strategies. It is it's view of the rules, and encouragement of innovation that keeps it going for 24+ years. Missing only 1 or 2 years in that entire time.
That's pretty much sums up how most conservatives (that I know) view business regulations. There is a fine line between killing innovation, killing the economy, and keeping people from killing the ideas and concepts that are the United States. I can look at what the financial industry put together and appreciate the cleverness of what they did. I also support eliminating derivatives, and mark-to-market accounting. Those two things alone would have at least made the crash easier. A third thing might be to give up trying to control the economy all together.
This may very well mean getting rid of the Fed. You can make a very strong argument that one of the keys to the real estate collapse was cheap money.

A possible mis-understanding about my views on MLM

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Barrows) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 21:18:00 +0000

I don't hate or despise MLM in general.
I found most MLMers to be amusingly tragic. Speaking in the general:
They start a business without knowing anything about business. They know nothing about marketing, sales, accounting or management/leadership. Yet, they are doing all of those things.
They believe people who say fake it until you make it.
I find most MLMers annoying, and their companys products or services over priced or dubious.

Warrior Spirit and the Entrepreneur

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Barrows) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:23:00 +0000

I have the oddest thoughts while driving to work. Today was, what does the warrior spirit and being an entrepreneur have to do with each other? More then just doing battle with competitors, how does a Warrior spirit really help.
I started thinking along the lines of several of my favorite mantras:

Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

Not dead yet, can't quit

If you can keep your head when all around you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, then the world is yours and all that's in it -- Rudyard Kipling

Let's take the classic time-to-panic scenario - Zombie Invasion. In the classic scene, the zombies are all around the car trying to get in, our valiant hero, ignores the first mantra, and grabs for his key, and jams it into the steering column. Note, he jams it into the steering column, not the ignition switch. Why? His movements were jerky, and therefor did not have the finesse needed to find the switch. He's panicking, he hasn't kept his head, he's forgotten number 3 as well. Some might say that he's obeying number number 2, but is he really? Our typical hero isn't trying to do anything more then stay alive, he's playing defense because he doesn't think he can win.
The Warrior however, knows mantra 1. He's keeping his cool. He knows that he could die, and he accepts his fate. The car is the best weapon he has. He hasn't quit. When he grabs for his key, it's slower then our hero, but he gets it the first time. When inserts it into the ignition switch, it's not as quickly as our hero, but he gets it there the first time. Now that the car is started, its time to go with mantra 2... he's not dead yet.. can't quit.
Works quite well in a horror movie, but what about in business? What happens to the warrior when shipments stop going out, and the bank drains his account, and the creditors are calling? Is he running around slamming phones down, answering hysterical phone calls, and screaming at the bank's customer service rep? All at once? Or does the warrior calmly, smoothly move from one crisis to the next, accepting that the business might be dead by evening, but it's not dead yet, and he can't quit?

More MLM Annoyances

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Barrows) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:53:00 +0000

Multiple streams of income do not come from the same business. One business can have multiple revenue sources, and indeed should have them. However, that is not the same as multiple streams of income.
Learn how to run a business, not annoy the frack out of people. Anyone interested in making more money is not your target market. Learn how to target your market. Let me give you a for instance:
I am interested in making more money. I have no interest in so called health products. I have some interest in financial products and services, but they must conform to my ideas, not the other way around. If it's a product, you can be that I'm going to see if I can find it cheaper online. If I can, why buy from you?
You have a business if you have marketing, sales, management and acccounting systems in place. Otherwise you have a hobby that might be profitable.

Rules for approaching me if you're into MLM

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Barrows) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 20:58:00 +0000

So, you're in MLM and you want talk to me about it? Here are 5 simple rules you must follow to have any hope of selling me on your business.

Determine if I'm in you're target market. Contrary to popular belief, you're target market is not anyone who happens to be over 18 and breathing. Remember both sales and marketing start the same way, qualifying the prospect. The difference is that marketing qualifies a segment of the market and selling qualifies the indivual.

Do not under any circumstances attempt to sell me your opportunity. I will be more interested in your product or service. See, without a viable product or service, you have no business. If I like your product or service enough, then and only then will I decide if I'm even interested in your business.

You must be deriving most of your income from sales of your product or services. Oh, and I'll want to see proof of that. If you can't sell it, how do you expect me to sell it? If you aren't making money at it, how do you expect to teach me?

I don't like sales people. I don't like marketing people. They both have the same flaw, they assume that I'm interested in whatever they have to sell, and therefore have the right to contact me at will. WRONG!!!!!!!!

It's not a fracking opportunity, it's a business. You must market, you must sell. If you disagree with that, don't get anywhere near me.

If you like my rules, please feel free to link to them.

A new day.....

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Barrows) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 14:05:00 +0000

Okay, I haven't done much blogging lately, but then again I've been busy. The short story is that I've been working on my business. I have just created an online organizer. While there are a few competitors, most of them don't do a good job of seeing appointments, tasks and contacts as all part of the same life.
They also don't track relationships between your contacts, or the roles those contact play in your life. These are important things, and things that we often forget about.
They also don't attempt to track every communication you make with your contacts, or attempt to integrate with every aspect of your life.
Mine does. Coming soon to a website near you.....
as soon as I figure out a name!

The Nokia N810

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Barrows) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 16:10:00 +0000

Using the wifi on it is great. I just wish my phone would handle more then one page in phone as modem mode. So its time to start blogging again. Well seriosly blogging anyway.

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Barrows) — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 23:11:00 +0000

Logging & Eating exception

If you don't know where an exception is. DON'T #!@$^%@#$&^@$%^@#$^ EAT IT!

Wrap it and throw it, after logging it. That way someone like me doesn't spend 40 hours trying to figure out something simple, LIKE A !#$^%@#$^%@$#%!@#$%#^@$% NPE! In a simple part of the @#^@#$^%#!$%@!#%^ equals method.

STOP TRYING TO BE HELPFUL!

Why I hate clear case

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Barrows) — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:59:00 +0000

Shall we start with how long it takes for files to "migrate" throughout a distributed team? Please? I'm in Az. The rest of my team is in Ca. 3 hours for them to see changes I've made. 3 hours.
Then lets move on to the integration with eclipse... Lack of would be better.
Having to connect each time I fire up Eclipse, or change workspaces.

Motivation comes from the oddest places.

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Barrows) — Mon, 14 May 2007 18:10:00 +0000

I've decided to follow the Rich Dad Poor Dad strategy for getting rich. I enroll in the coaching course, and one of the things they ask is to find ways to keep your commitment to getting rich. Along comes "The Job" and tells me that I have to work on the single most horrific piece of code I've ever seen. In addition to the incredibly onerous time keeping. Talk about motivation.
I have to put my name to something that I can't change, or make worthy of being called software. I have to keep track of every hour (wasting time tracking every hour) so I can charge a project (but I can't charge them for the time that I spend figuring out and tracking how many hours I used). Then to make matters worse... If we tell a project that we can do it in 80 hours, and it takes 81, we can't charge them for the extra hour. We have to go looking for another project to charge the time to. There's an entire black market devoted to the trading of hours between projects. Keep in mind that tracking all of these hours is to determine what projects truly cost.... This is a major fortune 500 company, partly owned by Warren Buffet. Either he didn't dig deep enough in his research or he's losing his touch.
If your going to figure out how much a project is costing, and keeping people within their budget you have to allow for estimates to be very off. Every single methodology for estimating software development costs has some fudge factor, and admits they won't be 100%. Since we're not using an estimation methodology, we won't be close to right, and don't know how to change our estimation process to be more accurate.

MS I.33

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Barrows) — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 20:06:00 +0000

I've taken up studying the I.33 manual, using the book Medieval Sword and Shield. I don't normally like fighting with a shield, usually using a mass weapon for SCA fighting. However, the buckler is something requires a degree of skill that a normal SCA shield doesn't.
In addition it provides offensive and defensive options that the normal SCA heater doesn't. I've always felt that the SCA heater was too big and too restrictive to be practical. Fighting around it pretty much restricts you to point blank fighting. I've never liked this, for a lot of reasons.
Interestingly there is only one stance that is used here in Atenveldt that is not covered in the I.33, and that is the "midguard". Where the sword forms a triangle over the top of the shield, which the fighter looks through. THis is obviously not a period guard, since this leaves the hand exposed, however because of the basket hilt it is considered invulnerable. This seems to be closer to Left Shoulder, then Vom Tag in terms of possible strikes.
Half-Shield seems to be working quite well, and I haven't tried any of the other Left Shoulder counters yet. With Half-Shield, make sure you start out of range, that big shield gives them a lot of cover. A good solid lunging thrust through the triangle is a great opening move. The heater fighter has several options:

Raising the shield to blind himself.
Dropping the sword to trap your blade.
Moving the basket over to block.

Raising the shield seems like a silly thing to do, however, an experinced fighter will combine this with a strike into the arm, over the top of the shield. This I found out the hard way :) Be sure to have your buckler on top of your arm to cover this. Immediately bind that sword with the buckler, and strike the heaters arm yourself. Be careful, your sandwhiching the arm with the heater.
I haven't had an experience fighter try to land a flat snap on my leg yet, as I've always used the leg on the oppisite side of the sword to lead with the lunge. Leading with the other leg may not work out as well. When the heater gets tilted up to block, it changes the dynamics of the shield, and what the heater needs to do to get around his own shield. A long blade seems like a really good idea, even if the heater fighter is also fighting with a long blade.
Against inexperienced and slower fighters I've had excellent luck in slope stepping to the sword side, and pinning the arm. This was supposed to be a bind with the buckler, but so far it seems that I end up trapping the arm against the shield, or with the buckler against both shield and body. This leaves them open for a wide variety of shots.
Against expereinced fighters I'm mostly making the same mistake. I want to stand and trader blows, which I can't do with a buckler. I have to attack, and retreat. The retreat has to be on a different line then the attack as well, or I'm in a lot of trouble. As I retreat I have to also make sure that I end up out of range again. My attacks need to make good use of blade length, and footwork until I'm ready to close. I also have to make sure that I cover my sword arm, and that I hit theirs whenever possible.
It will be interesting to see what happens as I continue to learn and master this interesting style of fighting. I'm sure that everything I've written above will change, but they're starting thoughts so that's not a surprise.

The silliness of blaming terrorism on anything but militant Islam

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Barrows) — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 20:05:00 +0000

Why are the radical Islam nut jobs pissed at us? Because we're not Moslem.
The Pope quotes 13th Century Byzantine emperor in a speech about rationality and religion, pointing out that violence is antithesis of rationality. That as Catholic we belive that our God is a rational God. If we believe in God we must almost be rational people.
What do the Moslems do? They riot. Hmmmm.....
Ted Koppel points out that one of the reasons we may not have been attacked is because under Islamic law, first you must give the infidel a chance to convert. Apparently several leading Islamic clerics disapproved because Osama didn't give us the chance to convert. See first you offer them a chance to convert and then you can kill them.
In every Christian country on the planet, you can be a moslem and no one will care. In every Islamic country, if you are a Christian, you are forbidden to openly practice your religion. The anti-terror war folks call this being open minded.
The anti-terror folks seem to think that all of this because we don't understand them. They're poor, dis-enfranchised, downtrodden. They seem to ignore that many of the terrorists are from the Middle Easts middle class. They're engineers, doctors and lawyers. They're not poor.
The Middle East should be among the richest nations on earth. They invented the number '0', and were at one time the guiding lights of philosophy and technology, while Europe was in it's Dark Ages. Everything they had, they've lost. I wonder if you were to trace the downfall of they're civilation to the rise of Islam, if there would be any correlation?
We're not the only ones with issues with radical Islam. India has had problems with them attacking the Hindus. They created Pakistan as a place for the Islamic people. However, today, if something blows up, it's because of a Moslem. The same in France, and the rest of Europe.
So why do the Democrats believe that this is not a war? Why do they think that we can solve this diplomatically?

Argh

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Barrows) — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 15:44:00 +0000

So, after looking deeper into Req Pro, and skimming some of the other requirements management tools out there, I'm becoming more and more disgusted at the lack of features in Req Pro.
There is no analysis package available. You can't mark requirement types as global. The integration with Word is not so good, especially if your requirement are in tables inside the document.
The one feature that I thought would be obvious, importing a Rational Rose/RSA model into Req Pro for Use Cases doesn't exist.
I had hoped that Rational considered to be the best of the tool vendors, that this product would not only be better, but harder to beat with one competent programmer and a few hours a day of development time.

Working with Rational Req Pro and their tools

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Barrows) — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 16:03:00 +0000

At work we're trying to get Req Pro working. This is a great piece of software for managing requirments. As long as you don't have projects that interconnect. And you don't want to be able to search your entire company's requirements for data mining.
Here we are, in the middle of the IT world getting into the whole data mining, and the IT industry's so called premier tool can't do it. I get so tired of the cobblers children syndrome. We can't build cool software without tools, and if Rational is the best there is.... we're still buildling cottages and not skyscrapers.