Tommy Norman's Blog

MS Pattern & Practices New Lab

tommynorman@comcast.net — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 05:03:00 GMT

Channel 9 has a very cool video (http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=238321)that takes you on a tour of their Patterns and Practices new million dollar lab that has been specifically built to facilitate Agile type development. While I am not a huge Agile fan, I was definitely impressed with the thought that was obviously but into designing their facility to help their development teams write better software faster. I lean more to a hybrid SDLC approach that is somewhere in the middle of Agile and traditional waterfall methodologies. But some of the ideas express in the video were very appealing not matter what flavor you prefer.

I am a big fan of team development. I hate to sit in a cube all day banging away on my keyboard talking to myself. In my past projects where our development team was sequestered together are some of the best experiences I have had in my career. Sure there are distractions that come with cramming a bunch of socially (and sometimes hygienically) challenged developers together in one space, but I think the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.

But I think you need to put more than just developers in the mix. I think you need representatives from the business side, testing, project management, etc. Yes at times it can be chaotic, but with some internal policies and discipline you can more effectively write software that has a better chance of meeting your user’s requirements and most likely will have fewer defects.

My current project has a fairly large team so we are not all in one room, but we do have the majority of the team in a few conference rooms in the same building. I can attest that this has made the process more accurate than developing in a vacuum. The ability to turn to someone from the functional requirements team to get clarification on something or confer with another developer to formulate the best approach for a solution definitely makes a difference. We are not an Agile shop (by no means), but this team integration and emersion has helped us react and course correct more effectively.

Here are a few ideas/issues that we have discovered:

· There is no such thing as enough whiteboard space. Our current conference rooms have entire walls covered with a floor to ceiling whiteboard. This has been a great tool for brainstorming, task tracking, and smack talking.

· It really helps if most team members have laptops. We move from room to room, meeting to meeting and being able to tote my laptop has made each developer a mobile worker. Each of us has an actual desktop sitting somewhere in the building that we generally remote into to get the extra horsepower of a full blown PC. The ability to grab a few developers and go to another workspace to work made us a much more flexible team.

· Definitely put in some common sense common courtesy guidelines to try to quell the intrinsic chaos. Here are just a few:

o Take phone calls outside the room.

o Unless the majority of the people in the room are involved in a meeting or conference call, do not hold it in the room.

o Spend the money on a good set of headphones that will block out the external noise, but also do not add to it.

o Keep your immediate workspace as sparse as possible. It helps to put a few filing cabinets around for people to store all their extraneous documents and other work resources.

· Have a few smaller rooms or cubicles for those times when you do need privacy or just need to get away from it all.

I have to say that the next time I am a lead for a development endeavor I definitely will implement as much of the team development culture as possible regardless of what type of methodology we use.

Tommy

Throwing Bodies at the Problem

tommynorman@comcast.net — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 08:09:00 GMT

It is not necessarily a technical issue but many technical projects sometimes suffer from a project team that is too large. It usually happens when management has decided on a delivery date that cannot be met with the current amount of manpower and for some reason it is more logical to them to add more developers than to move the date. Realistically there are valid times when a date cannot move, but merely adding more developers usually gets to a point of diminished return rather quickly.

A good friend of mine was fond of saying “You can't get nine women and make a baby in a month.” Take the situation where you have a team of 3 developers and the estimated time for development is 6 weeks. That does not fit the desired schedule so you double the development team to now be a total of 6. So that means we should get a deliverable in 3 weeks now, right? Probably not. Most likely it would be closer to 5 weeks, and if you are not careful it would be right back at 6 or more with a poorer quality deliverable.

Why does this math not work? Anyone who has been in the situation above can tell you that adding more resources usually means someone (usually the team lead) will end up spending more time managing the additional resources and coordinating between them than they will actually developing. So one of your original developer’s actual availability for development tasks will be reduced greatly. The other’s productivity will be hurt also since more coordination means more meetings, more need for documentation, etc.

Another factor of adding more people to the project team is that it usually happens well into the project. This is also known as the “Oh, crap!” factor. That means all the new developers have to be brought up to speed on the project which takes the existing team members away from development tasks.

You might think that adding senior people will make that transition smoother. Not so much. You will then experience “Did you think-itis”. This is a syndrome where the new senior developers will ask a question starting with “Did you think of…” about every architecture and design decision. I have been just as guilty of this myself. I have also been on the receiving end where you do not have time to explain the 30 hours worth of meetings that led up to the one design decision.

So what is the answer? If I knew that I would tell you at a rate of $500 an hour. I can say that in my experience the best way to avoid this situation is to consider the following:

Rigorously review requirements, development tasks, and time estimates to make sure your project time line is as accurate as possible. It means more work upfront, but it can save your hide in the end.
Get your development team set early on. This is hard to do with resources in a large IT shop, but getting your core team together early on and involved even before development helps them understand the project tasks and goals more.
Document EVERYTHING. This helps out with many other issues, but thorough documentation helps get new team members up to speed quicker and allows them to operate with less hand holding.
Make sure new additions fit with the team. Pure technical competence is not enough when working with a close knit team under the pressure of a short timeline. Personality, professionalism, attitude, self-reliance, and leadership capabilities all play a vital role. Make sure to involve your team in the interview process and take their council to heart.
Do not add bodies for the sake of adding bodies. We know the math in the scenario above rarely works. I would rather work 16 hours days for a few weeks with a small, solid group of developers than spend 8 hour days will a large, rag-tag group for a month.
When bring in a senior resource midway through a project, set their expectations up front. Everyone wants to prove themselves, but being very open and honest with a new senior level resource about their involvement can save you a lot of pain. There are times when you have to say “shut and code!”

There are many other factors to consider, but merely acknowledging that simply adding more resources is not going to always drastically reduce development time is a good first start.

Toshiba Portege M400 Tablet PC Review

tommynorman@comcast.net — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 03:43:00 GMT

The previous post was an accident and the current blog settings do not allow me to edit or delete previous entries, so here is the correct post:

We recently purchased the Toshiba Portege M400 Tablet PC at work for presentations. Our decision for this model was driven by the need for a beefy notebook that also had a tablet pc digitized screen. While a bit bulky for a Tablet PC, the M400 has above average power with a 1.83 GHz Intel Duo Core processor. We were going to bump the RAM from the standard 1 GB (for the M400-S4032 model) to 2 GB but the 1 GB is two 512 chips and purchasing only ordered one extra 1 GB chip so we settled for 1.5. This model also comes with a 100 GB hard drive which is ample room but only comes in 5400 RPMs. All together it is very powerful for a Tablet PC.

With our company image and the Toshiba OEM software we booted with an initial 450+ MB of a memory footprint. I immediately uninstalled as much as I could to get down to 325 which is about right for the Windows XP Tablet PC edition. I have been using Visual Studio 2005 on for a few weeks with no complaints so far.

The notebook is thick at 1.5", but that is with everything on board including the DVD super multi-drive. There are plenty of IO ports (3 USB, 1 Firewire, SD & CF slots, etc.). There is not a parallel port which in some client offices has presented a bit of a problem. The screen has the standard Tablet PC buttons along with a directional pad. Another feature that Toshiba always includes with their Tablets and I wish BIM and the others would adopt is the stylus with the "eraser" tip. This is a small, rounded end on the stylus that when used in most inkable applications converts to "eraser" mode. This makes One Note and Windows Journal much easier to use. There is also the biometric fingerprint scanner for logging into Windows XP, but I do not regularly use it currently. Of course there is built in WiFi, LAN, and modem.

I have been getting decent battery life with an average over 3 hours between development and DVD watching. I did get spoiled with the IBM X41's extended battery with about 6 hours of life, but you pay the price for more power.

Overall I am pretty happy with the device and it has been a good choice for development and presentations. If I was a true Tablet PC power user the size would be the biggest deterrent, but for a developer who just wants the added Tablet PC functionality it is a good match.

devLink: My wife still totally ROCKS!!

tommynorman@comcast.net — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 01:02:00 GMT

In my last post I thanked all the devLink staff but I did forget to thank a very important person: my wife. The day before the conference I had a ton to get done and did not get most of it completed before I had to attend the VIP dinner. I asked my wife if she would bind a few conference guides while I was at the party so I would not have a ton to do when I got back later that evening. Not only did my wife bind some books, she bound ALL of the remaining ones (about 200). She then loaded all of the food and drinks into the van (which was packed floor to ceiling) and ironed my devLink shirt. All of this while I was schmoozing with the sponsors and speakers at the VIP party. When I came home I was able to fall right into bed in order to get up before 4 AM the next morning. I have to say that without her, you guys would have found me passed out on the couch at the Compuware booth by lunch. My wife ROCKS!

devLink 2006

tommynorman@comcast.net — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 00:48:00 GMT

After a fairly grueling 18 hour day, devLink 2006 is in the archives. The unofficial turnout was a little shy of 400, which blew away our original 250 goal. Everyone I talked to throughout the day (attendees, speakers, and sponsors) seemed very pleased and we got through with only a few minor issues. Next year is only going to get bigger and better. I personally had a blast although I was a zombie by the end of the day. Next time you guys see John Kellar, make sure to thank him since he was one of the primary forces getting this going. There are several other event staff that really busted their tails to make this thing happen: John Baker, Joe Chafatelli, and Amy Boegh. Several volunteers helped out the day of the event, some who just offered to help when they registered! We will get the list of these names and post them to the devLink site to make sure they get their due. Thank everyone who attended and if you did not get a chance to give your feedback in the conference surveys, please post your comments in the user group forums. We have many people who said they want to participate in the planning next year and we definitely want to know how to make it better.

Tommy

Nokia E62

tommynorman@comcast.net — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 03:19:00 GMT

My lovely wife bought me a new phone yesterday: the brand spanking new Nokia E62. The phone just came out on Tuesday and I had one that afternoon. My wife ROCKS! The phone (http://www.nokiausa.com/phones/E62) is thin and light weight although a bit wide at almost 3 inches across. The look is new wave BlackBerry with a full QWERTY keyboard with decent sized keys. One of the big features is a slew of remote email options. My company uses GoodLink which is support and easy to setup for pushing email and calendar to the phone. There is also included software to sync directly with a PC using the included USB cable. It of course has Bluetooth which is especially handy due to the somewhat awkward size. I am not going to run around with a wireless headset glued to my head, but it will be handy in the car. There is a decent address book and calendar feature, an MP3/WMA player, video player, voice dialing and commands, and some other utility apps. The phone also has an SD slot but it is located in the back and you have to remove the cover to get to it. The screen is very bright and very visible outside even in direct sunlight.

Now I had a Windows SmartPhone for about a year and there are some things that I miss that the people that write software for the Symbian OS phones just have not gotten around to stealing yet. Although there is voice dialing, it is for only one phone number per contact and it is automatically tagged with the first and last name. On my previous phones I could create my own tags for each number for a contact such as "Salma Hayek Home", "Salma Hayek Cell", etc. (since I do talk to Salma quite often). There was another handy feature from the Smartphone where when you start dialing the phone would show a list of all possible matching entries in your address book by either the number or letter combinations. With this I could generally dial two or three numbers and then hit "Dial". These two features are sorely missed since I have to pay more attention to dial on numeric keys super imposed on top of the middle of the QWERTY keyboard. The European version had WiFi which is not in this version and it would have been nice to use that for internet access and not eat up my data transfers. My only other big beef is that I wanted to dump my Windows Mobile software on it and write my own applications, but I would have to either do it with the Symbian SDKs for C++ or Java, or buy AppForge to write using VB.NET.

All in all it is a good phone and for someone not hung up on using Windows Mobile. It has some very nice features and is very sleek physical design. I will most likely upgrade to the 8525 Windows Mobile device when it comes out later this year and give this to my wife, but for now I am happy with my new phone. And did I mention my wife totally rocks?

Windows Vista Tablet Input Panel

tommynorman@comcast.net — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 04:12:00 GMT

Rob at www.gottabemobile.com has posted a cool video of the new Tablet Input Panel that ships with Windows Vista. Very similar to the one from Windows XP Tablet PC edition with SP2 but the best new feature I like is being able to highlight regular text and open it in character recognition mode in the input panel. Allows for easy editing of typed text using ink. Check it out http://www.gottabemobile.com/VistaTIPSoftwareInkShow.aspx.

Also check out TEO 3.0 from Josh Einstein at http://www.tabletoutlook.com/. Nice add-in for Outlook to make it much easier to use it on the Tablet PC. Josh also helped me a great deal on my current project and some of the best ideas we implemented in our own ink controls we stole (with his permission) from him.