The second quarter was another successful three months for yuwantithwhen.com.  A number of essays were very popular with the site’s visitors.  The most popular essay for the quarter was “Why It Takes So Long.”  Thanks to Steve Johnson over at Pragmatic Marketing for directing his readers to the posting.   There are often very good reasons it takes longer than expected to deliver a software product, but there are things that we often do to make projects take longer than they should.  I’m thinking of writing the sequel to the essay:  “Why it Takes Longer Than it Should.”  I’m not sure when I’ll pen that one, but it’s in the queue.

Recently, I was thinking about what keeps me motivated to blog, and I find blogging to be similar to fishing.   Writing the story is like preparing for the fishing trip.  There’s a  lot of work involved in planning the fishing trip and traveling to the fishing spot.   Baiting the hook and casting the line is like publishing the story.  Then, you wait.  You wait for readers.    As you follow the web statistics to see how well the story is attracting readers, you get excited as you see many visitors reading the story.  It’s like fish nibbling at the bait. Sometimes, you see readers visiting from their web email accounts or links from other sites.  It’s like a chum trail to your posting. You’re hoping to finally hook one of those readers into posting a comment, and when they do, it’s like the joy of reeling in a fish – at least to me. 

Recently, I stumbled on Stevey’s Blog Rants.  After reading a few of his essays, I thought about giving up blogging on software development.  This guy is good.  He writes well, he is an engaging storyteller, and I find his point of view interesting and thought provoking.  It’s his storytelling ability along with his technical acumen that I find most appealing and unique.

He has one of the more interesting criticisms of the Agile methodologies that I’ve ever read in his essay, “Good Agile, Bad Agile.”  In it he describes Google’s software practices, which he identifies as “Good Agile.”  It’s an interesting approach to software development that I don’t believe is easily replicated:  even Steve is surprised that Google has managed to scale the approach.  It’s an interesting essay give it a read.

I plan to post less frequently during July and August.  Posting every week while juggling all my other responsibilities can be challenging at times, and in the summer, it’s even more challenging.    For July and August I plan to post once each month, and I will resume with my weekly target in September again.

The top ten stories for the second quarter of 2008 are as follows:

1. “Why It Takes So Long“
2. “Is Formal Project Management Necessary“
3. “Reflection Unrealistic Schedules“
4. “Danger Agile Practices at Work“
5. “A Strategy for Building Stable Applications“
6. “Simple by Design“
7. “Embrace Change“
8. “Agile Isn’t a Process“
9. “Does Agile Solve the Right Problem“
10. “It Ain’t Easy“

 The top ten countries visiting “You Want IT When?” for the second quarter of 2008 are as follows:

1. United States
2. United Kingdom
3. India
4. Canada
5. Australia
6. Poland
7. Sweden
8. Netherlands
9. Hong Kong
10. New Zealand

In Closing

Thanks for visiting, and especially thanks for commenting.  Please keep reading, tell your friends about “You Want IT When?”, and Email me if would at “bill(at)yuwantitwhen(dot)com”  to share your thoughts, critical or positive commentary or even topics that you would like me to cover in future articles.

The first quarter of 2008 has been a terrific start of the year for “You Want IT When?”  The site continues to attract new visitors every month at an increasing rate.  One article, in particular, enjoyed tremendous popularity when a popular member of dzone bookmarked the article “A Strategy for Building Stable Applications.”  Consequently, the article enjoyed tremendous popularity for the month of March, pushing it to the top read article for the entire quarter.

Statistics

The top 10 articles for the first quarter of 2008 are as follows:

1. “A Strategy for Building Stable Applications“
2. “Reflection Unrealistic Schedules“
3. “Danger Agile Practices at Work“
4. “Part 1: How to Manage an Unrealistic Schedule“
5. “No Pain, No Gain“
6. “An Objective Method for Navigating Your Project“
7. “Refactoring Isn’t A Design Methodology“
8. “Agile Isn’t a Process“
9. “Outsourcing Debate – Two Guys Talk it Out“
10.  ”Certifications, Who Needs Them?“

The top 10 countries visiting “You Want It When?” for the first quarter of 2008 are as follows: 

1. United States
2. Canada
3. Great Britain
4. Australia
5. Netherlands
6. Japan
7. Germany
8. South Africa
9. China
10. South Korea

Thoughts 

Eight months ago in July 2007 this blog was launched.  I read somewhere on a blog that most bloggers stop within the first three months.  It is eight months now, and I’m still blogging, so I guess that I’m doing okay.  I must admit, though, that it’s difficult authoring an essay once a week.  When I first started, I was averaging 2 essays a week, and I was hoping to continue at that pace.  I suspect if I had continued at that aggressive pace (aggressive for me) I would have likely stopped by now.  Watching the visitor metrics increase is motivating, and it keeps me going.  Engaging in dialog with the site visitors is also enjoyable and motivating.  For those of you who have contributed comments, thank you; I value and appreciate that you have taken the time to share your thoughts. 

I’m planning to customize the site, and I recently downloaded and installed MySQL, Apache, and PHP on my Windows Vista computer and my Windows XP computer.  The installation completed reasonably smooth, though not without problems.  The XP installation completed without any installation problems.  On XP I had a few configuration problems: Apache Web Server was unable to resolve the virtual URLs that WordPress generates for postings, and the PHP libraries for interfacing with MySQL were not installed.  On Vista, there was some patching that was needed to get things working. Fortunately, none of these issues was too difficult to solve, and I only spent a few hours rather than spend over an entire day completing the installation.  Thanks to Google searches, finding the solutions to these problems was easy and saved a great deal of time.

When I complete the theme, I plan to make it available for download for those of you who are interested.  I have plans to develop some WordPress plugins, and when they are completed, I will make them available for download as well.   

In Closing

Thanks for visiting, and especially thanks for commenting.  Please keep reading, tell your friends about “You Want IT When?”, and Email me if would at “bill(at)yuwantitwhen(dot)com”  to share your thoughts, critical or positive commentary or even topics that you would like me to cover in future articles.

In February many of the older articles continued to have heavy readership.  I find it interesting to see how the articles of interest evolve over time.  Some of the older articles are the most popular articles for the month when not too long ago it was always the latest articles published that would have the largest readership for the month.  The top 10 articles for the month of February are as follows:

1. “Reflection Unrealistic Schedules“
2. “No Pain, No Gain“
3. “Refactoring Isn’t A Design Methodology“
4. “Danger Agile Practices at Work“
5. “Agile Isn’t a Process“
6. “An Objective Method for Navigating Your Project“
7. “Part 1: How to Manage an Unrealistic Schedule“
8. “Outsourcing Debate – Two Guys Talk it Out“
9. “Monthly Wrap-up – January“
10. “Certifications, Who Needs Them?“

The top 10 countries visiting “You Want It When?” for the month of February are as follows:

1. United States
2. Canada
3. Australia
4. Great Britain
5. Netherlands
6. Japan
7. Germany
8. China
9. Thailand
10. Hong Kong

In February the focus was on critiquing the Agile Methodologies.  I believe the Agile proponents have been correct in attacking some of the traditional software development practices.  I’m sure we share a common disdain for many of the process-for-process sake requirements of traditional practitioners. I think in many cases the engineers working in traditional shops find the practices stifling as well, but they are often powerless to change it, so everyone goes along to get along; apathy essentially sets in.   The Agile proponents need to be concerned about similar behaviors on their projects.  When dogma sets in, momentum often prevents the practices that require change from changing.   A good process is one that changes.  For process to endure in corporate settings, it must change – even Agile.

It’s interesting to read some of the articles from Agile practitioners.  They’ve invented a lot of good jargon to describe what traditional practitioners have been doing for many years.  Refactoring is one of them.  There’s little new here except that the Agile practitioners have given it a name.  Traditional practitioners have always redesigned and recoded their applications where and when appropriate, but there is one distinction between the traditional camp and the Agile camp: the Agile methodologies make refactoring inevitable, while the traditional practices attempted to avoid this with more investment in up front analysis and design.  There should be goals when deciding to refactor.  The goals that I target are to deliver faster and/or to improve the quality (less defects).  It’s always to serve the business needs, never elegance–for–elegance sake. 

In May, I will be presenting at the PSQT Conference in Las Vegas.  The topic of my presentation is “Test Driven Quality.”   If any of you happen to be attending the conference, please find a way to say hi.  I’d value the opportunity to meet some of my readers.

Please keep reading, tell your friends about “You Want it When?”, and Email me if would at “bill(at)yuwantitwhen(dot)com”  to share your thoughts, critical or positive commentary or even topics that you would like me to cover in future articles.

January was a good month at You Want It When?  It had the largest increase in unique visitors in a single month.  Unique visitors for the month of January grew ~75% over the month of December.  The site still doesn’t have a Google page rank yet.  The traffic stats seem to warrant it, but apparently there are other more important criteria.   If anyone has any insights into this, I’d love to hear from you.

I’m using the statistics from my hosting service this month rather than from Google Analytics.  There are differences between the two analytic engines that I’d like to understand better.  The top 10 are basically the same, but in a different order.  I’m guessing this has to do with Java script being disabled on the visiting clients that accounts for some of this, and the rest has to do with Google filtering out crawlers and bots, but I’m not entirely sure.  I figured the best view to present is the unedited view, so here it is.

 The top 10 articles for the month of January are as follows:

1. “Reflection Unrealistic Schedules“
2. “An Objective Method for Navigating Your Project“
3. “The Paradox of Right“
4. “Refactoring Isn’t a Design Methodology“
5. “No Pain, No Gain“
6. “Outsourcing Debate – Two Guys Talk it Out“
7. “Part 2: How to Manage an Unrealistic Schedule“
8. “Part 1: How to Manage an Unrealistic Schedule“
9. “Danger Agile Practices at Work“
10. “Why Software Process Adoption Fails“

The top 10 countries visiting “You Want It When?” for the month of January are as follows:

1. United States
2. Great Britain
3. Netherlands
4. Canada
5. Japan
6. Australia
7. Egypt
8. Germany
9. Taiwan
10. South Africa

I was doing a web search on some of the search keywords that readers are finding this site by.  When I searched on one phrase, I happened to stumble on an article titled “Agile Isn’t” at http://www.technocrat.com/.  After reading the first few sentence, I said to myself, “Oh no, another programmer who found another process he loves to hate.”   You’ve probably worked with a few of those types who just hate process, any process.  He also happened to be a Microsoft hater, which also turned me off at first.  I’m just not one of those types that find Microsoft can do no right.   Within the first few sentences, this author pressed all my hot buttons.

But as I read more, I found his critique of Agile to be along the lines of someone who actually embraces process, but not bad ones.    While I’m sure to disagree with him on a few of his positions, he has some worthwhile positions to add to the process debate.  Give it a read, and you may find yourself nodding your head in support, and you may even laugh a bit.

I’ve been working on my next article.  I was hoping to post it this week, but the ideas haven’t settled down yet. There are still too many ideas on the subject competing for attention, and as a result, the article hasn’t hit the right tone.  The working title is “Agile Isn’t a Process.”  Hopefully the ideas have settled down by next week, and it’ll be ready for publishing. 

Please keep reading, tell your friends about “You Want it When?”, and please share your thoughts.  Email me if would at “bill(at)yuwantitwhen(dot)com”  to share your thoughts, critical or positive commentary or even topics that you would like me to cover in future articles.

First, I’d like to wish everyone a belated Happy New Year.  I’m starting to get back in to the swing of things, and I’m looking to publish as frequently as I was before the months of November and December consumed my time with other positive diversions.  In some ways I believe the slower pace was actually positive as the readers began discovering the earlier articles that were published, and as I’ve been saying, the most practical and readily usable article published was “An Objective Method for Navigating Your Project Successfully.”  That article was the third most read article for the month of December.   The top five articles for the month of December are as follows:

1. Software Metrics: Making the Case
2. Outsourcing Debate – Two Guys Talk it Out
3. An Objective Method For Navigating Your Project Successfully
4. Why Software Process Adoption Fails
5. Believe Defect Free Code is Possible

The five most read articles of 2007 are as follows:

1. Why Software Process Adoption Fails
2. No Pain, No Gain
3. Reflection: Unrealistic Schedules
4. Part 1: How to Manage an Unrealistic Schedule
5. Danger Agile Practices at Work

We often focus a lot of attention on process and the technical aspects of our work to improve software management.  While those aspects are important, there is less written about the people and cultural aspects that impede our productivity and success.  In January, I started writing about those aspects of the work that we need to address.  Improving process and the technical aspects will only get us so far in improving software practices.  To realize even further gains, we need to address the behaviors and attitudes that also impact the team’s ability to perform at peak.   Please, share your experiences and thoughts.  I’d like to learn of other perspectives on the subject.

It’s been a good six months since I’ve started this blog, and the readership continues to grow every month.  Thanks for your support, and I hope to continue to publish articles on software development that you will find interesting and valuable to your work.

It’s often said, you have to take risks to be successful. Who would disagree with that?  Starting a business is risky.  Investing in the stock market is risky. Going to college is risky.  Getting married is risky.  Few would argue that these risky endeavors shouldn’t be pursued in life.  These are all rewarding endeavors when we’re successful at them.

Sometimes things we call risks, though, are not risks at all: they are errors in judgment, manipulation, or foolishness.   Jumping from an airplane without a parachute is not a risk: it’s foolish.  Driving a vehicle while under the influence is not a risk: it’s an error in judgment.  In business, persuading people to support an ill-conceived mission is not taking a risk; it’s manipulation.

Manipulation is sometimes disguised as risk in our software projects.  You may have witnessed it.  The project sponsors set the software team on an impossible mission to deliver a set of requirements on a date that is just not possible to hit given the amount of work and the resourcing levels. One argument you may hear from the project sponsors is that we need to take risks to stay competitive.  Few would disagree with that, but if the date is truly impossible, it’s not a risk: it’s manipulation to persuade people to support an ill-conceived decision.   The true risk is that by proceeding with the effort it, at a minimum, impairs profitability and at worst imperils the survival of the company. 

It’s important to classify risks properly.  True risks have a chance at a positve outcome and/or a chance at being overcome — however small the chance.  If you are careful about what you risk for, you just might get it.  Or to put it another way, be careful what you risk for, you just might get it!  You decide.

It was worse than I thought.  I figured I’d be able to get at least one essay a week published during the month of November, but that even proved to be difficult.  I’m just juggling too many things right now, but I expect after the holidays for things to relax enough to continue with my goal of publishing at least one essay a week and at most two.

I hope everyone had an enjoyable and festive Thanksgiving holiday this year.   For the past two years I’ve been cooking up the turkey.  Last year I followed a Martha’s Stewart recipe that was published on Yahoo.  It was good, but it was nothing to write home about.  This year I found a recipe on http://allrecipes.com/.  I was looking for something simple and different. What caught my attention with this recipe was the overwhelming number of positive reviews, so I gave it a try, and we were not to be disappointed.   The recipe is called “Perfect Turkey.”  It was moist, tasty, and really simple to put together.  Everyone commented on how good it was, but when the kids all tell you it’s the best turkey they ever had, you know it was good, or all the others were really bad.  If you’re looking to try something new, I recommend you give this recipe a try.

As I did last month and I plan to do this monthly, I would like to let you know what the visitors have been reading for November and since the site has been open.

The top 5 articles for the month of November are as follows:

1. “Part 1: How to Manage an Unrealistic Schedule”
2. “Part 2: How to Manage an Unrealistic Schedule”
3. “Outsourcing Debate – Two Guys Talk it Out”
4. “Part 3: How to Manage an Unrealistic Schedule”
5. “Reflection: Unrealistic Schedules”

The top 5 articles since the site has been up are as follows:

1. “Why Software Process Adoption Fails”
2. “No Pain, No Gain”
3. “Reflection: Unrealistic Schedules”
4. “Part 1: How to Manage an Unrealistic Schedule”
5. “Danger: Agile Practices at Work”

Recently, the article “An Objective Method for Navigating Your Project Successfully” has been seeing an up tick in interest.  If you are looking for techniques for gaining more control and predictability over your project schedule during the test and defect fix phases of the SDLC, the techniques described here offer an effective approach to managing that phase.   To me, it’s the most useful and practical article that I’ve published that can make an immediate difference in your management of this phase of the project.  If any of you have been using the practices after reading the article, I’d be very interested to learn of your experiences: good or bad.

I’ve been building a nice backlog of articles to write.  Being that I still practice software management and don’t write for a living, my work gives me a wealth of inspiration.  My technique is to notice my reaction to circumstances and events during the day, think of a title, note the main points, and send myself an email message to record it.  My best writing is typically when I have a very strong emotional reaction to a topic.  When that happens, the essays seem to just write themselves. 

Please keep reading, tell your friends about You Want it When, and please share your thoughts.  Email me if would at “bill(at)yuwantitwhen(dot)com”  to share your thoughts, critical or positive commentary or even topics that you would like me to cover in future articles.

I offer my best wishes to my readers this holiday season for health, peace, love, and happiness.

Happy Holidays!

The month of October has just come to a close, and it was an interesting month here on You Want it When?  The month started with the first of a series on metrics:  “Software Metrics: Some Background.”   It was a well read article, and I plan to continue with the series in November. 

I got side tracked a bit after publishing the next article, “Reflection: Unrealistic schedules.”  That’s when the site analytics went through the roof.   It was the most read article in the month of October, and it also has the most readers for a single day of any of the articles published to date on this site.  I’m unsure if the readers appreciated my position on the topic, but it certainly is a subject that evokes a reaction in my audience.

Since I seemed to strike oil with the article, “Reflection: Unrealistic Schedules,”  I decided to stay on topic while I had the readers interest, and I followed it up with the 3 part series on an approach for managing an unrealistic schedule.  The article “Part 1: How to Manage and Unrealistic Schedule” was the third most read article for the month of October, and “Part 2: How to Manage an Unrealistic Schedule” was the fifth most read article of the month.  They didn’t quite register the same reaction in the hearts of the readers as “Reflection: Unrealistic Schedules,” but the interest was positive nonetheless.

The forth most read article for the month of October was surprisingly “Why Software Process Adoption Fails.”  It is the number one read article on this site since this site has been up, and it continues to be well read.  I did not have any appreciation for the kind of interest that the article has had – totally unexpected.   I’m a bit passionate about software process, but my experience with process has been that it’s something that the software community loves to hate — even I hate it when it’s bad and so many are bad – so I didn’t expect an article that was advocating that process is good, and that the software community is sabotaging its own welfare would be embraced warmly by the software community.  Maybe most of us all feel inside the same way, and this gave a voice to what many are feeling.  I really don’t know how to explain it, but I’d love to hear some of my reader’s thoughts.

Finally the second most read article for the month of October was “Managing a Product in Crisis.”   I was asked by Scott Sehlhorst of Tyner Blain to share a personal success story.   Scott said, “What a great way to put some proof points behind the theories!” in his article, Software Product Success Stories, that created the blog-tagging meme.   I agree.   There are times when I read articles and wonder if the author writing about software development was ever actually successful.  Frankly, at times the writings from the Agile proponents evinces that reaction in me.

Really, why should anyone ever take any advice from any of us writing about software development? Even if what we write about sounds good on paper, there’s a difference between a theory that sounds logical and good and one that is practical.  Scott’s request gave me an opportunity write a bit about my success in putting to use many of the practices on which I’m writing.  That one was a little uncomfortable for me to write as I’m apprehensive with writing about myself, but I thank him for the opportunity because those of us writing about software practices should have some accomplishments to back up our rhetoric. 

It’s like hiring a financial advisor: you want to know that he’s been successful managing their own finances before you hire them.  I wouldn’t feel comfortable taking advice from a financial advisor that was heavily in debt, bankrupt, and doesn’t have much savings or success with investing.  Likewise, you, the readers, should expect the technical bloggers to have experience and successes in the practice of software development. 

For the month of November I plan to continue with the series on software metrics.  I know I’ll be writing about a topic that is inimical to many in the software community. I have been using the principals and practices that I plan to describe for nearly a decade now.  I attribute the practices to greatly improving the predictability, time to market, quality, and well being of the software teams that I have managed.  Good use of software metrics will improve the performance of your team more than anything else if you are not already using them.  My experience has been that once people have the epiphany, they warmly embrace software metrics.

I’m also planning to write about the characteristics of a good software process in the coming weeks.  We all know what we dislike in process, but I don’t read too much written about what makes a good software process.   I started outlining the article, and I hope to publish that one sometime shortly.

My goal has been to publish two articles a week: one on Monday and one on Thursday.  I’ve been staying with that pace reasonably well but not perfect.  As we get closer to the holidays, I expect that schedule will be challenging to meet, so I will try to at least publish one article a week, and I will try to publish that by Thursday when my schedule doesn’t permit me to write two.  It is possible that there may be a week that I skip. I will try not to, but life gets a bit hectic around this time of year, and so it’s a real possibility.

Please keep reading, tell your friends about You Want it When?, and please share your thoughts.  Email me, if would, at “bill(at)yuwantitwhen(dot)com”  to share your thoughts, critical or positive commentary or even topics that you would like me to cover in future articles.

For those in the US who will be celebrating the Thanksgiving Holiday and to our global community who have other celebrations this time of year, I wish you all a happy and peaceful celebration.

In retrospect, virtually every decision against trying for defect-free and in favor of short schedule time was wrong and resulted in longer schedules, more bugs, more support, higher costs and smaller profits! by Terry Colligan, president of Tenberry Software, Inc.

It has been my experience that shortchanging quality has always had a negative impact to the team and the organization that was never worth the trade-off.   How about you?  Has this been your experience?  If so, why do teams and management persist in repeating this mistake? He is also saying that shorter schedules don’t improve project success.  In fact, they contribute to project failures.  That is contrary to the Agile tenent of short release cycles.  What do you think?  I’d love to hear your thoughts.