jazz savings - figures

As sometimes happens, looking for something and hit another one. I'm posting this just to back the findings with my feelings, don't take it for granted:

http://dtoczala.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/real-world-jazz-results-our-customers-are-not-kind-of-blue/

These figures just might be true, and that is because of RTC flexibility. You can do whatever your project tells you to. The problem domain shifts from the tool focus to how to best make use of it.

After getting your way around (I'd estimate two weeks of playing for a seasonable architect) with workitems / source control / process setup, you start discovering that you're asking different questions to yourself, like: what am I going to do with it ? I have everything in one place:

- epics / stories (or whatever your process is saying) for business users to tell their needs to the nerds (that is the crowd making things happen ... ha)
- tasks for your crowd to track their work against
- defects for business/tech to track bugs -> unavoidable ... :)
- source control to manage the code

So you see, bridging the gap between business and tech staff adds savings to your company, I'd dare to say ...

RTC and RRC

Just spotted an excellent article about Rational Team Concert (RTC) and Rational Requirements Composer (RRC), which actually fills a gap to my knowledge.

Article is on devworks, a favorite place to look for interesting stuff. It touches a few points, go have a read.

From some time I've been using RTC quite extensively, handling the process / workitems definition, together with its source control system. The point is that the more I know, the more I do understand that a tool isn't enough.

I also came to understand that while tooling isn't enough, adoption is what counts in the evolution of the project.

As the PM or Architect, you can define for the project:

- template for deliverables
- process and roles in project area
- source control process for streams/components
- development conventions
- architectural decisions
- (...) add here countless items from any imaginable methodology

If your team does not adopt above items (which btw, should be tailored to suit the project needs), you're doomed to fail.

What a great PM/Architect does (I haven't seen many ... ), is convince the team that their additional work (like filling fields in workitems, write according to templates) is needed because .... (give the reasoning). And if you manage to convince that stubborn smart team member so that he freely complies and adopt your things, you're on the right track.

Development in small team of friends is one thing. Development in international teams of people only familiar to eachother over the phone, is another.

blog template change time

I've applied the Dynamic Views of the blogger to my corner.

Beside the place to rant, I use this as a bookmarking place to remember stuff. And yesterday, I could not find squat on my own blog !!! this was annoying :)

So, my old template being like several years old, in the meantime Google bought Blogger, did some stuff with it (not sure I like it, though ...) ... however, I've set to experiment this fancy new feature.

I specifically like the Flipcard view from the top left hand.

started mocking with DB2 Express-C

While I'm so lacking the db skills, which I freely admit, I've installed the free edition of DB2, called DB2 Express-C.

Installed it on my *buntu, running and playing with it, everything cool.

But look at these books right on the front page ! http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/db2/express/getstarted.html

Seems like I have some reading to do for the next period, just to keep me in shape

met a Big Data ironman

Last week (6th Apr.) I had the pleasure of watching Jeff Jonas live, on stage, speaking about the things he does.

I'm trying to raise awarness, since this fella speaks simple and straighforward even for non-tech people. Big Data is not my domain and I personally think it's gonna take years for certain parts of Europe and their businesses to even start thinking on that. 

However, the things Jeff's addressing are fascinating, have a look on the following links:

http://www.research.ibm.com/theworldin2050/bios-Jonas.shtml

http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/27/big-data/

http://gigaom.com/2010/10/11/jeff-jonas-big-data/