Even here in Canada, where the federal government has been balancing the budget, and we have a trade surplus, our consumers are buried in debt. And things will likely get worse before they get better.

From the trailer: “This is America. We don’t do anything until something reaches a crisis.”

Check their website at: http://www.iousathemovie.com/

This is when a service business promises you a certain experience, then fails to deliver.

In this case, it was a not-to-be named local haircutting salon I’ve been going to for a year or so. I always make an appointment, arrive on time, and typically wait 10-15 minutes before being started on.

Anyone who knows me is aware of my strict adherence to deadlines and schedules and my general annoyance at people who don’t.

To me, making an appointment with someone is a promise that they will be available at the specified time, barring an unforeseen calamity.

Nonetheless, I put up with the 10-15 minute wait because most places aren’t much better.

Well, today I came in on time, as usual, and was told, “Just finishing up here. Have a seat and I’ll be with you shortly.” I sat down, texted a bit, watched the general goings on. Then I went outside, and started talking to my girlfriend on the phone.

After talking on the phone for a while I looked at my watch and noticed over half an hour had passed since I arrived. I looked in and my haircutter was still cutting the last person’s hair.

So I left. They called me later on and asked what happened. I explained to them a half hour wait was unacceptable and I wouldn’t be coming back. They offered a free haircut, but obviously it’s too late at that point.

This is a service failure handled incorrectly. You see, we also learned in the course about a “service recovery.” This is a failure that you turn around into something that makes the customer happy.

What they should have done is realize when I came in that they wouldn’t be able to get me started within a reasonable amount of time. Then, they should have offered to reschedule the appointment, and possibly offer compensation for the wasted visit. Or, even better, they could have called me earlier in the day to reschedule when they realized they were running behind. Better still, they could be more realistic about their scheduling so they actually finish their appointments on time.

If you own a service-based business, pay attention to the promises you make and what you deliver. Customers aren’t all that demanding. They don’t need their expectations exceeded - just met - consistently.

If anyone knows of any good hair cutting places within walking distance of Uptown Waterloo, let me know.

As a quick summary, he gives five recommendations:

1. Give a ranged estimate (+/- a certain percentage or amount)
2. Do some upfront agile modeling (using people who will actually do the work)
3. If the customer still insists on a “precise” estimate, pad the number as much as possible to account for the risks
4. Fix the price, flex the scope (anything added requires removing something of equal effort)
5. Stage the funding, based on real deliverables (working software)

More to come on this topic…

It’s sure to spark some controversy. As he mentions, both academia and industry have been trying to figure out how to do this for decades now, and haven’t had much success.

The important thing to note is that he is talking about projects where the scope, schedule and cost are all determined upfront. To the inexperienced, this seems completely reasonable, but anyone who’s done software development for long enough (10+ years) understands the problems with this approach:

1. It is impossible to define a 100% precise scope upfront.
2. The scope always changes. Frequently.
3. Even with a 100% precise, fixed scope, your estimate will likely only have order of magnitude accuracy.
4. Starting with a good estimate, the resources you assign to the project will make a huge difference. (The best software engineers are 10x more productive than average ones.)

These are the major factors (IMHO) that together cause a “perfect storm” of risk and uncertainty. Be sure to read Scott’s article for more points.

So what’s the solution? Do we just give up and stop developing software because it’s too difficult and risky? My next post will focus on better ways to approach software projects.

Subject: Linux bash/perl programmer……….HOT HOT HOT and URGENT

Turns out it was actually recruiter spam.

Body: This is *** from ***.. Please let me know your comfortability ASAP…. I need a guy he must have at least 2 years of experience that his primary job is to write bash or perl script on linux machine.

“That’s great,” you say, “but what is PHP?” Glad you asked! PHP is a web programming language. In fact, it’s a web programming language I’ve been using since version 3 was released in 1998. Hard to believe it’s been around for 10 years now.

Since we use PHP on a daily basis to create dynamic web applications for clients, it was only natural for us to produce a training video to help others do the same.

So have a look at the two free sample chapters we’ve posted, and don’t hesitate to pass our link on to anyone you think might find it useful.

If you have any comments, suggestions or questions about the videos, try out the Support feature on the website. Look forward to hearing what you think!

I currently receive about 365 spam emails per day. 290 in my personal account, and 75 in my work account.

But I hardly ever have to think about this!

That’s because I use hosted Gmail for both my personal and work accounts. Every time a spam email makes it through. I simply check it, and hit the “Report Spam” button. Hundreds of thousands of others do this every day. Then, the Google algorithm goes through and figures out which emails are spam based on this aggregate result.
It ends up being extremely accurate. I’ve only had 2 or 3 false positives* over the past 3 years I’ve used Gmail.

Because of this, I can confidently ignore the spam/junk folder. Gmail saves these messages for 30 days — just in case.

Yet another reason to use hosted Google services…

*A false positive is a legitimate email that gets marked as spam.

Gas prices have been increasing over the years, and I personally think it’s great! Don’t get me wrong. I have a car, and I love driving, but I also think people (including me) drive way too much.

Why do we drive so much? Because it’s still too cheap! Even with the price more than doubling in the past five years, there are more cars on the road, more drivers, and people driving further distances each day.

Obviously people need to do a certain amount of driving, but it’s the long distance commuters that really confuse me. Apparently they think it’s more economical to travel hundreds of kilometers and spend 3-6 hours in a car every day than to move closer to their workplace.

I think if you added up all of the costs very carefully (including car ownership and lost productivity due to travel time) you’d find this type of commute is actually way more expensive than moving.

Never mind all of the external costs (ie. costs that drivers don’t directly pay) including road maintenance, emergency services, and environmental impact.

Now, I agree there’s no easy solution to this. City planners need to encourage more mixed commercial/residential buildings. They also need to provide better mass transit.

But nobody is going to bother with any of that when it’s just so darn cheap to hop into the car and drive!

Ok, I think I’ve upset enough people by now At least a few others agree with me:
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/18/hurray-for-high-gas-prices/
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/10/pigou-club-manifesto.html

Consider this scenario: I send an email checking on the status of something. The other person gets the email, and realizes they need to ask me something that basically requires a yes or no answer.

Instead of emailing, they phone me. Naturally, I miss the call and they leave me a long message re-explaining the entire situation, asking me the question, and leaving their contact information and the times they can be reached.

I have to log into my voicemail, retrieve the message, listen to it (possibly more than once) and take down the contact info. Then I call them back — and, you guessed it — they’re not available. By the time I finally get them tracked down and give them their answer, I’ve probably spent a good 10-15 minutes intermixed with other tasks. That’s not that long, you say. Perhaps not on its own, but that’s not the only issue I have to deal with in a day.

Let’s be very conservative and say that I only have 10 such issues per day:

• Email: 1-2 minutes to reply x 10 incidents = 10-20 minutes per day
• Phone: 10-15 minutes to reply x 10 incidents = 1.5-3 hours per day

So with email, I can be about 900% more efficient. Is this a no-brainer, or am I missing something here?

An interesting figure from the article: “Right now, there are one billion people who are malnourished and nearly one billion who are overweight.”

So basically there’s lots of food for everyone, it’s just being distributed very unevenly.

Raj Patel has been documenting this phenomenon for quite some time over at Stuffed and Starved.