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Ever worked on a project that reminds you of this? Click here for a bigger picture

In any organization change is inevitable, in a fast paced environment change happens weekly and sometimes daily. In order to successfully manage and institute change you have to master techniques to gain support from your peers. Without support, the change will fail. Regardless of how high up the change from.

Unfortunately, as the saying goes, in order to succeed you must fail. I’ve learned a very valuable lesson while reading Fearless Change (not to mention failing numerous times) and using some of the patterns, it is impossible to institute change by yourself. The book really drove home the thought that “people support what they create” and “people do not resist change as much as the resist being change”.

While this seems like a simple technique, using your peers can help you institute change in an organization with little resistance and even early acceptance.

Fearless Change: Patterns For Introducing New Ideas
By: Mary Lynn Manns and Linda Rising

Steal This Wi-Fi

For those of you who have not seen this article it is a must read. Here is the world’s most renown security/cryptology expert saying that it’s “basic politeness” to provide a public connection to any wanting visitor.

He makes quite an argument. The article even goes into the legal action that could take place if someone decides to advantage of your kindness.

Fon also gets another well deserved mention, and if you haven’t seen this service you should take a quick look.

I’ve been procrastinating lately getting a firewall setup on my Mac-Book and I think this article just bumped it up in priority.

QA is a crucial part of the development cycle that is always easily overlooked. Development teams are not given ample time to develop proper unit tests and quality assurance is not given sufficient time to properly run test cases against the application. This causes defects to rear their ugly face in production after being “tested” by developers and the quality assurance teams.

Because of the “lack of time”, both groups focus their attention on the newest feature. A close second is moving onto the next priority (at the request at the impatient business owners) Long forgotten is the basic regression test of the applications core functionality.

Traditional development says that developers should write unit tests for all code. This allows for maximum confidence that an application is performing correct after new defects/features are introduced into the code base. Ideally, this would happen for all applications. We all know that we do not live in an ideal world.

Writing unit tests take time, especially when the application was not written with unit tests in mind. Refactoring the code with unit tests takes additional time. Both are long term solutions that need to be worked into development to stop the vicious cycle from continuing.

While working on our ideal solution, our application continues to chug away in a production environment. There is still a need to ensure that the application is running defect free. What better way to put an end to this then to go back to the stone ages of check lists? This ensures that no one can “forget” to test basic features such as: reporting, statistics, tracking, billing, customer satisfaction features, etc.

The checklist need to be short, you don’t want your team to spend their entire day regression testing. The core features of an application must easily be testable within 15 minutes. This will allow everyone to confidently say the application will continue to run after the new release is delivered.

Your checklist should be documented on paper and saved for later use. It can be used to show who release which version of the code, track defects that should have been caught by the checklist, provide an audit trail for auditors, etc.

Here is link on how doctors and agile project managers have introduced checklists into their day to day routine.

InfoQ: Agile Checklists

Book Review

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
By: Malcom Gladwell

Malcom Gladwell really hit the decision making spot with this book, showing numerous techniques for quickly breaking down a situation and coming up with a quick and accurate decision. Blink goes into great detail explaining how the more information you have can cloud your judgment when it comes to making a decision.

There are many real world examples stating his case and even plays the devil’s advocate explaining when more information is required. Using examples like: expression recognition, dating, military warfare, art enthusiasts, police shootings, etc the book effectively demonstrates the power of making a decision in the blink of an eye.

Interestingly enough, one of my favorite quotes does not relate to making quick decision, rather on the management style an effective leader is responsible for having.

General Paul Van Riper recounts of his time in the Marine Corp.
“‘The first thing I told our staff is that we would be in command and out of control’, Van Riper says, echoing the words of the management guru Kevin Kelly.”

I had a hard time putting this book down. The book has a wealth of information and conveys each message with a “novelesque” story that makes you want to continue reading. Great way to enjoy an entertaining book and learn along the way.

Interesting video interview (from InfoQ) describing some of the architecture choices that eBay has made over the years. I especially like the part where he states a junior developer shouldn’t have to ask for help to create a page that expects 4 million page views a day, they should just use a proven pattern.

InfoQ: Dan Pritchett on Architecture at eBay

While at ZendCon07 I attended a talk by Eric David who was giving a lecture on Project Management. During his speech he plugged a web application called Remember the Milk that he used for task management. While at the office, Microsoft Outlook does a great job of keeping all my tasks organized and it works seamlessly with my Blackberry so I always have access to my tasks.

My problem has always been that I don’t want to store my personal tasks on my work’s computer. So for my personal to-do lists I have taken myself back to the stone age of paper and pen. This works fine when I’m at home, but when I’m out around town and think of something I need to do I have no place to jott it down so I don’t forget. Enter Remember The Milk.

Adding a task to my task list is as simple as sending an email. When I log in later I can then file it and send appropriate due dates. Not to mention it has a mobile interface, send reminders via sms/email, syncs with google, work offline with google gears, organize tasks via tags, etc. It also has a very slick Web2.0 interface with a ton of nifty tricks. Did I forget to mention that the entire service is free?

The developers over there did a great job with this application. Anyone looking for a great new way to manage their tasks on the go should give it a shot.

Ask anyone on the street what the current buzz in software management is and you’ll hear “Agile”. And while this is fine, the industry as a whole is missing a big part of the SDLC. You can use all the best practices in the world but in order for it to be useful it must be release to the public.

With the internet being as hot as it is being able to release frequently is huge for companies trying to achieve the most revenue possible. Every minute a defect is left unfixed or new feature is not available to the public means lost profit for the organization. This can easily result in daily pushes to production. So why is information on this topic so scarce?

Arguably, you might say that it is an easy situation to overcome. But when you have a large team working on the same code base conflicts are likely to occur. Why are there no “best practices” to overcome this pitfall?

Book Review

Time Management: Set Priorities to Get the Right Things Done
By: John Hoover

I borrowed this book from a friend the other day for a quick read while I was on a business trip. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. You’ve always been taught not to judge a book by it’s cover, but when the book looks like this and the pages are color coded how can you not make a snap judgment.

If you are a looking for a good refresher course on time management or small things to improve your daily routine, I would recommend this book. If you are looking for a step by step process, you should look for something with a few more pages(and maybe less color)

The book touches on creating lists, handling email, phone calls, dealing with a boss who is poorly managed, helping your direct report get organized. It doesn’t go into great detail on any of the topics, which can be a good thing because it lets your creative juices flow. The format of the book is really convenient to look up information. The color coded summary at the end of each section make it easy to return to get a quick synopsis of the entire section.

Even with the lack of detailed information, I’ve decided to add it to my collection after returning.

Buy Time Management

So I started this a few weeks ago and I still don’t really know what to expect. So many things to write about and so little people to read about them.

We’ve had quite a lot of personality conflicts lately which is a new task for me to manage. I’m attributing to the pace we’ve hired over the past 6 months. Thankfully, I have some great people to learn from. I’m learning more and more that constant feedback plays a huge role in the development of your people, both good and bad. It builds a better overall team environment. I read an article a while back by Esther Derby about this topic, I will find it later this week and post.

Esther Derby: What Every Manager Should Know About Feedback