Road to Triumph

A Programmer- An Appreciation

2009-01-31T02:49:00.000-08:00

Dimensions Of Programming Art

Software Programming is an art, we can judge a programmer by his experience and education, but It is not well enough to asses core expertise of a programmer.

Any programmer who code , software solutions repeating same common programming experience without any further efforts to enhance his style , without further variation of form and content ,can be hardly called a programmer.

So experience by itself is not a determined factor , should not be consider as the only single criteria.

* There are following factors that describe a programmer

* Breadth : How much skills , variations, style a shows in his creation, how much variation of same solution he provide , disclosing new and new aspects of programming.

* Depth : How much effective code he writes, How much power has he exhibit. To write small, effective and meaningful code.
*

* Height: What is the code is to create more best practice code.

Inspirations :

Shah Abdul Latif-- An appreciation by Allama I. I Kazi

http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=dftm7bf2_2g9wbhkf4

Enterprise Architecture

2008-10-27T10:08:00.001-07:00

Enterprise Architecture (EA) can be defined as an abstraction of an Enterprise, namely its elements of various types and their interrelationships.

Enterprise Architecture (EA) can be divided into two separate but interdependent domains
• Enterprise Business Architecture (EBA)
• Enterprise IT Architectures

Business Architecture defines the business strategy, governance, organizational structures and business processes.

According to Ralph Whittle and Conrad Myrick, authors of “EBA: The Formal link between Strategy and Results (CRC Press, 2004)”, “The EBA defines the formal link between the enterprise business strategy and the results predicted from supporting strategic initiatives. The EBA provides a single source and comprehensive repository of knowledge from which corporate initiatives will evolve and link. The EBA also provides integration capabilities for software development, packaged software configuration, and process improvement initiatives”

Corporate Strategy drives EBA. EBA is normally comprised of Business Architectures representing initiatives by different corporate units of an organization.

Business Architecture consists of three distinct architectures in this order: Enterprise Functional Architecture, Enterprise Information Architecture and Business Process Architecture. However, no formal methodology or framework exists to develop Business Architecture at this time. Considerable research is being conducted both by individuals and some organizations most notably OMG (Object Management Group).

Enterprise IT Architectures consists of:
• Enterprise IT Application Architecture
• Enterprise IT Data Architecture
• Enterprise IT Technology Architecture (Security, Information and Infrastructure)

Different frameworks exist to define, develop and maintain Enterprise Architecture and its governance. Zachman is the first one. Others include FEA (Federal Enterprise Architecture), Gartner, ToGAF, and DoDAF

Those elements of Business Architecture which needs to be realized by IT Solutions (Applications, Data etc) become part of Enterprise IT Architecture.

Software Architecture consists of different components, or views, of a system’s architecture. There are many different patterns to develop and present software architecture. Phillip Kruchten presented a powerful pattern in Architecture called 4+1 view of Software Architecture. He added this view in Rational Unified Process (RUP). 4+1 view consists of:
• Use Case View (Central View linked to all other views)
• Implementation View
• Process View
• Logical View
• Deployment View

4+1 view can be used to represent architectures of both J2EE and .NET based applications and systems. It is suggested to use this, or any other, architectural pattern following a proper SDLC methodology.

Badar Munir

Managing Principal/Chief Architect, i3 Technologies

http://www.linkedin.com/in/badarm

Super Teams

2008-10-18T12:48:00.000-07:00

Every business is a part of creativity/art and a part management/strategy, the balance attain define the caliber and path of success for an organization. What is the formula to construct super boosted, highly effective and productive teams that could perform at their best across all differences like cross culture and cross technologies. Here are the points

1. Single Purpose : everybody has same goal. Success of joined efforts, effective linked team.

2. Planned : well planned , drafted

3. Roles/Responsibility: right people hired for required jobs.

4. Collaboration /Performance

Gender of leadership

2008-10-05T22:15:00.000-07:00

Comments on : http://resourceasia.blogspot.com/2008/10/women-in-leadership-do-men-and-women.html

Gender of leadership, is being genuine and bold , being able to inspire others and get inspire. A good actor, who can act in many multiple roles but they love to make a group, work together , where a collection of individuals and smart people can perform more than the sum. One who enjoy Individuality of his own and everybody in his team, and capable to drive to mutual and central goals, that is success.

A good appraiser and healer of a system , one who can enrich existing rules and create new one. A good decision maker who know value of each decision, for the benefit of his organization and his value able clients. A happy client can bring two new client, or can come to you many times, they are informal ambassadors of an organization.

Certifications

2008-10-03T23:35:00.000-07:00

Question: What is more important in an IT candidate? The candidate's IT experience, their customer service skills, or their certifications.

Certifications are real proven of your Technical Skills, I favor it , If one is really interested , eager to gain real depth , more than just passing the exam.

Certifications can be real tool to short list high caliber developers. But when you move forward into next steps of interview , you have to prove these skills and level which your certification claim.

So Certification ~ Technical Skills , provided Interviewer is real intelligent to find out real gem.

2. Then Experience of architecture of multiple business domains and sectors (ERP, BPM, CRM , CMS) , and (banking , hospitals, media house, e-learning, social networking)

______________

Dure

I am not sure that I agree. I have seen many like this group that has the knowledge and not the skills to carry that knowledge out.

~ James Raab, M.A.

_____________

James

I think Software Solution should be created by using knowledge, creativity and all logiks , Software Solution should be one from many options you know, rather than creating problem based solutions.

I agree Learning by experience , carry out a knowledge into skills is essential too.

Dure Sameen,

Are you a thinker/executive ?

2008-10-03T21:58:00.000-07:00

Do you like to have both roles, and one with greater excellence?

In my opinion, In life we act as both thinker/executive, but at organizational level(depend on size), one can focus on to achieve high level expertise in one role.

Even in life , one cant be true and real strong when one try to balance many roles (thinker/executive/operator), we can choose to be one with complete focus at a time period for much good results.

It is a question to exhibit same mater into two forms, each form contain different focus and expertise but both are needed like water and ice.

Water :

1. It has no shape, It can take any shape. (Fragile/Ability to see multiple Logic )

2. It has no color, It can take any given color to enhance itself.

Ice:

1. It has a shape , it cant take any shape ( Strength/Single Logic/Greater Confidence)

2. It may own a color, it cant take any new color . (Showoff/Presentation)

This blog content will changed as I will post this discussion in linked in : http://www.linkedin.com/answers/career-education/occupational-training/CAR_OCT/335558-13399726

The Recreation

2008-09-21T07:44:00.000-07:00

I died from minerality and became vegetable;

And From vegetativeness I died and became animal.

I died from animality and became man.

Then why fear disappearance through death?

Next time I shall die

Bringing forth wings and feathers like angels;

After that, soaring higher than angels -

What you cannot imagine,

I shall be that.

Rumi

Mentoring

2008-09-20T04:56:00.000-07:00

Commercial Organizations /Individual professionals are designed for success, competition, productivity, a steady growth curve with time, competence, capabilities and confidence. They like to operate on something like a war strategy
(Exaggerated !! )

Mentoring process build a human chain mentor/mentee , teaching/learning, recreations of personalities , a sincere give/take. A mentee need to trust mentor, open up, share and bring out his weakness, set goals, plan and workout on it, announce success.

A good mentor is well skilled to address human and professional side and good observer. He/She should know how to work like a quiet catalyst in others life, how to not invoke a sense of inadequacy or competition in other.

LI is doing great over mentoring Vaughn Akin, Pat Mehan, Richard Tabor Greene and Susan Shwartz are doing so great, addressing different aspects of career. I simply learnt a lot by reading and participating with them.

As a mentee I feel there is need some privacy/anonymity in counseling process. Many professionals don’t like to take part in such activities, because it crack out unrelated details or some under construction thoughts and could effect their worth calculations, your confidence or competency.

I am not a professional mentor, it is my natural habit, I just can’t study or grow alone. I dream myself a genial mentor/mentee, I am trying to develop better communication skills, clear purpose, well defined scope and boundaries of my efforts. I am also trying to identify a good social circle for me for my professional and personal grooming.

Most non-financial reward for my efforts is a smile and respect.

Vaughn Comments

Thank you, Dure.

as you grow more gray hairs you will look around and see the many people who, in some way, express in their success, or life-style, something you will recognize as having come from you to them. This is the reward for giving of yourself without thought of reward. What is the good in you becomes imbedded in these fortunate people and they grow where you have provided the fertile soil of trust, hope, confidence and vision that, without you, they would have missed.

I see this in your future, Dure! It's a part of who you are.

Vaughn

Vaughn Akins

Life/Career/Business Coach -

Virtual Networking Technologies

2008-09-08T11:20:00.000-07:00

These technologies facilitate virtual team management, create a global, cross culture business environment, free to explore , compete and win more strategic based contacts and reliable business. Qwaq Forum(http://qwaq.com/) and Second Life (http://secondlife.com) are some example of online meeting , 3d environment. These are all collaboration tools to enhance sales and marketing meeting, demos, with document management system and team builders.

As opportunity hinter and a developer 3d characters bored me, I feel need of more “reality” into virtual networks, I dream more improved products, creativity and visions.

Virtual Marketing involves 1.online meeting 2.email history 3. secured document management 4. teams(much sound like Sharepoint)
Online Video Conferencing (Future of Virtual Networking),
Online Video Conferencing is money grabbing branch of software products that Microsoft and Adobe compete fiercely with immense investment and research.
Move Networks Inc., a company that supplies streaming video technology, in an attempt to boost its online video presence. Along with video to handle other such as branding and navigation in the videos SilverLight will be used to customize and develop.
DRM (digital rights management): Primary components of the plan include Windows Rights Management Services (WRMS), server software that will manage access to corporate documents, and new Information Rights Management tools included in MS Office.

Business Developers and Developers ; Market should be ready to see more mature incoming products and more technologies in virtual networking.

Do you believe it's possible to align your career path with your heart's desire?

2008-09-08T11:12:00.000-07:00

Absolutely, You must know what more than money you need from career ,There are so many possible ways to earn money in career but which one path complete your inner self.

Planning

a lot of planning needed,

1. a constant skilled improvement plan, you should aware what you lack to be at your goal,

2. plan to develop a conscious of target environment business and EI requirements,

3. plan to improve depth of technology and philosophy of your field,

Team UP

you must find a group with many types of people

1. A group of likely minds who want are same career dreams,

2. A group of people who will mentor you encourage you; keep your soul cheer up,

3. a group of people who are at the position where you want yourself to be, Ideals

4, A group of juniors, encourage them, support and appreciate them.

These four set of teams , Keep in contacts with all , take advice , ask question ,keep step by step growing, be positive , dump down your fear and failure daily, don’t feel down and distracted by people who make fun of you ,but listen up and face openly, there exists many facet of same truth , where which one is applicable , it depend on mind wisdom and logics. Goals are important and same the path, people, life too.

REHAN

07 September 01:38

(http://cid-b8f6925ea55d43a3.spaces.live.com/)

Good Ideas. However, I don't think these can be very practical in all fields. In the creative arts, for example, one must lead a life of loneliness and in the end we're all alone. Collaboration is out of the question and attempts have ended in futility (Wordsworth and Coleridge are a prime example). In short, it is not always possible to align one's career path with the heart's desires which are largely unceremonious and uncomplimenary

Ah Love Could thou and I with Fate conspire

To grasp this sorry scheme of thing entire

Would not we shatter it to bits, and then,

Remould it nearer to the heart's

Dure Sameen

08 September 14:36

In creative art, It is really so difficult to find mentors , target audience and peers networks. It also depend on persona, What kind of objectives he has set for himself, what success/failure mean to him, just because a very high level of creativity , independence and experiments are needed , you might like to walk alone. Just like jhon elea.

I really love this field and such complete sync people; I am in favor to create sponsor plan and much bigger marketing plan for such individuals, driving business community to support such effort without any immediate business results.

My article is written for developer community to develop more strategic professionals with good technical, business and ethical skills. they could be a super part of a team same time can maintain their individuality. But the upper layer of authority CEOs, CTOs and PMs would like to see this growth in business growth, they would like to see what an individual development could mean to their business. The whole organization is working and running for economical growth and benefits.

Analytical CRM Versus Business Intelligence

2008-09-08T11:09:00.000-07:00

The discipline of business intelligence addresses a broad range of functional activities from data mining and statistical analysis to predictive modeling and reporting. Within the context of CRM, business intelligence is the process of leveraging detailed customer-behavior information to best manage relationships for maximum customer satisfaction, loyalty, retention and profitability.

BI is a set of technologies like data mining and OLAP that we apply on CRM Application. By using these all technologies we can foster CRM, and bring out a more effective decision support system. BI is a tool to driven out analytical CM data

There are three fundamentally different types of CRM information resources - content data, contextual data and analytical data - and each requires different tools and methods for the appropriate management and use within your CRM strategy (see Figure 1). It is the effective integration of information across these resources that will drive your CRM strategy development and related business intelligence processes. As a result, it is important to understand the fundamental differences in information resources and their roles within an overall CRM strategy.

Links

http://www.dmreview.com/issues/20040601/1003997-1.html

http://www.12manage.com/methods_analytical_crm.html

What is the best environment for engendering useful creativeness?

2008-09-08T11:06:00.000-07:00

How can a company, country, society provide the best environment to encourage and reward creativeness? Some companies/countries/societies seem to produce more than their share of creative advances while others seem to produce less than their share.
What are some characteristics of a 'creative' incubator environment that produces beneficial, marketable results in art, science, literature, etc.? What are some of the things that stiffle creativeness?

All these incubators companies/countries/societies need to provide more space ,group of likely minds, and opportunities. They need to develop a patiences to accept negation of conventional foundations. Every creativity , every thoughtful effort may choose any origin to start from, there is a certain point in main flow of structure, they will negate and restart effort to build something new.

All those societies/cultures that can not provide this patiences attitude space and acceptance, will suffer from brain drain towards somewhere else or unfortunate lose of talents.

Historically inventions , ideas and creativity always grows under all restrictions and limitations, it is just a natural process in her genre to exhibit resilience and grow around, between , down the hard rigid borders and rules.

Two words in your question draw me to a little distance, “useful creativity” And “produces beneficial, marketable results” .

These words looks to me a little harsh and materialistic , It looks like an early effort to bound whole process to usefulness, benefits and marketing.

Lets take example of Marie Curie,a physicist and chemist ,She was a pioneer in the field of radioactivity, the only person honored with Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, and the first female professor at the University of Paris.

Lets see what conditions and environment were provided to her by country or society .

Her early education and her father role in her education, She was born in Warsaw,that was in the part of Poland controlled by the czar, who hoped to stamp out Polish nationalism by keeping the people ignorant of their culture and language.

AS HER FATHER WAS FORCED into a series of progressively lower academic posts, the family's economic situation deteriorated. To help make ends meet they had to take in student boarders. Maria was only eight when her oldest sister caught typhus from a boarder and died. That death was followed less than three years later by the death of Madame Sklodowska, who lost a five-year battle with tuberculosis at the age of 42. The surviving family members--Professor Sklodowski; his son Joseph; and his daughters Bronya, Hela, and Maria--drew closer to one another.

Although Sklodowski would never forgive himself for losing the family savings in a bad investment, the children honored him for nurturing them emotionally and intellectually. On Saturday nights he read classics of literature to Maria and her siblings. He also exposed them to the scientific apparatus he had once used in teaching physics but now kept at home, since the Russian authorities had eliminated laboratory instruction from the Polish curriculum.

"I easily learned mathematics and physics, as far as these sciences were taken in consideration in the school. I found in this ready help from my father, who loved science....Unhappily, he had no laboratory and could not perform experiments."

http://www.aip.org/history/curie/polgirl1_text.htm

Life is a challenge

2008-09-08T11:01:00.000-07:00

At every stage of life, fears stand in front you, fears are the constraints and measures you consider before taking any step forwards. It is a simple feeling; opposite to fears are hope, dream and courage.At every decision, life stand in-front of you with set of choices, It doesn’t matter what is you age, you religion or race. It doesn’t depend upon how much wealthy you are and what’s your status or position. Life asks to take responsibility of every decision, it ask you to perform something very truly, deeply, sincerely and honestly. Perform at your best, not for material or temporary gain but for greater meaning, complete your self–definition and self recognition.

When you have a road map to move forward and you know your all goals, then invest all your full powers into the way. Whatever come along, all success and failures are milestones. These milestone will carve you into more good shape, will remove all unwanted things from your life and ad more substance and meaning to your life. Live for these; keep them dear, these are your real assets.

Generalist versus Specialized Programmers

2008-09-08T11:00:00.000-07:00

Okey , I answer as a specialist , a software development team should be mix of both generalist and specialists. I am using generalist term as juniors who will learn and get expertise to be specialist.

It is difficult to survive as specialists who are handy in more than one technology, because each technology /management sciences is expanding with innovations.

But it is quiet charming to know conceptual details of atleast two technology platform like I am Microsoft side and IBM inspire me a lot, because IBM has refined and rational process of software architecture process and SOA.

The specialists are needed in an organization to

1. To Lead A R& D team ? learn and distribute skills and knowledge from everything new, R & D , logiks and decision to best use of technology.

2. To train new developers for the best code done. Skills improvement plan , refractory and proper design pattern implementation both in code and database, knowing their goals and giving a hand to next stage. recommend & arrange certification , seminars and workshops.

3. To predict technology directions of a company.

4. To communicate with clients and development teams, business analyst and project manager filling up the gape between business management and technology management.

5. To assist organization in any process improvement CMMI , ISO and others.

6. To Lead design applications , business layers and Database using best design principals.

7. To help an organization to Adopt new process methodology Agility and RUP.

Regards

Dur-e-Sameen

Have playing any 'Table Games' helped you in your career path?

2008-09-08T10:58:00.000-07:00

This is very smart question, tricky.

I am not a table game type, coz it can never consume my mind total powers. I can not play any computer game either.

I am good to read books quickly, drive, explain, conceive and transform information. Just give me a new thing a book, music, food or painting and ask me to describe it.

I am all and all power of expressions, mostly It looks beautiful when I try to describe something total abstract.

But It is a trouble, when I exercise same activity for something more rigid and fixed that’s supposed to be already formed and working well. To me it is just an activity, nothing more than this..

I enjoy real life risks, stress and worse situations, something that makes me smile .. ..and almost at wrong time. :d

Chaoo

Sameen

-A respone to a question asked by Vaughn Akins Career/Business Coach - vakins@ieee.org at linkedin.com

Getting out of your own way!

2008-06-05T02:18:00.000-07:00

The room is silent as you ready yourself. You plot out your battle strategy as you slowly and methodically place each piece of your armor in its proper place. You steady yourself under the weight, as you rise to face your skillful foe.

You know every movement and every thought that they know, for you have battled this opponent day after day. Your opponent has a name that you know oh so very well. That name is your name. That name is YOU!

There are plenty of challenges in our lives and some of them are of our own making. Ok, I’m being kind here. Most of them are of our own doing! We undermine ourselves, and make assumptions about what's possible, that restrict choices in our lives, and let our fears stop us from even trying to reach our goals and dreams. Like a pig that is unaware of the mud that he is wallowing in, being stuck in old ways of thinking keeps us blind to the many opportunities that surround us outside of that mud hole.

How can we get unstuck? How do we get ourselves out of the mud we so readily find ourselves playing in? It won’t occur by thinking and doing things the same old way, but, by shedding the negative thoughts and self-defeating actions that we have found to be so predisposed to in times of difficulty.

Every day of our lives we have thousands of thoughts that race through our heads; some positive and some negative. Most of us carry over many of these thoughts into the next day. For some, there is a tendency to dwell on the past and over-analyze what we could or should have done. “Analysis equals paralysis” as the old saying goes. If those thoughts are not supporting you, you will no doubt have trouble getting the results you want and overcoming the challenges along the way. Being able to manage your thoughts is at least 80 percent of the battle in being successful.

The very first thing that we need to accomplish when we are ready to change and move out of our own way, is to recognize that we are the ones blocking the doorway.

The following is a list of ten Forms of Paralyzing Thinking. It’s these thinking patterns that perpetuate the obstacles of getting in our own way! Most of us live with these thoughts day in and day out, playing out over and over again like a broken record. As stated above, it is essential to recognize these unconscious patterns of negative thinking. For some, we have developed ways to influence our thoughts and act on them with positive results. Discover which of the following forms of paralyzing thinking infuses your mind and robs your motivation to get out of your own way.

Just becoming aware of these thoughts, and observing them, will weaken and starve their grip, as you begin to uncoil these negative thought patterns.

1. All-Or-Nothing Thinking
You see things in black-or-white categories. Anything short of perfection is seen as a total failure in your eyes. You make one mistake and it becomes a deal breaker! You have a slice of pizza, and think “I’ve blown my whole diet” and then polish off the entire pie. When this plus or minus type of analysis occurs, it’s usually because of all-or-nothing thinking.

2. Overgeneralization
You know this is happening when words like “always” or “never” enter your thoughts. You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat. A sales person hears “no” from a prospect, and thinks, “I’ll never get a sale.” You look at situations as “Universal Facts”. “Everybody knows this is the best sales strategy”. These overgeneralizations blind you from seeing new, different, or even better possibilities.

3. Mental Filter
You pick out a single negative detail and dwell and analyze on it exclusively. As a result, your vision of reality becomes gloomy, like a clear day turning cloudy. For example, you receive many positive comments about a sales or marketing presentation you made, but one person says something a bit critical. You obsess about his reaction for days, and ignore all the positive feedback that you did receive. You attend a sales meeting and focus on what is wrong with the meetings facilitation, missing the positive aspects of the meeting.

4. Discounting the Positive
You discount positive experiences by saying they “don’t count”. You do a good job and minimize it by thinking you could have done better, or that anyone could have done as well as you did. This extracts the pleasure out of life, and makes you feel inadequate and devalued.

5. Jumping to Conclusions
You interpret things negatively when there are no facts to support your conclusion. There are two forms of jumping to conclusions:

(A) Mind reading: without checking it out, you arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you.

(B) Fortune-telling: you predict things will turn out badly. For example, before a presentation, you think “I know I’m going to freeze up and forget what I was saying”, or “They’re going to hate my speech.”

6. Magnification
You exaggerate the significance of your problems and shortcomings and you minimize the value of your desirable qualities. One time after a seminar, I Brad, was working with a participant regarding his fear of presenting to his co-workers. I asked him to shut his eyes and imagine himself doing a presentation to his co-workers. I could visibly observe that he was anxious, so I asked him what thoughts were going through his mind. He replied, “Every single one of my co-workers is thinking, I don’t know what I’m talking about”. Every one of them, I asked? This was a classic case of magnification.

7. Emotional Reasoning
You assume your emotions reflect the way things really are. “I feel uncomfortable asking for a raise, so it must be an inappropriate thing to do”. Or, “I feel a deep sense of inadequacy and if they want excellent service they should go to my competitor”. Our emotions are like the weather. They can change day to day and moment to moment for a variety of different reasons. Our emotions are valuable, because they point to our perceptions of ourselves and the world around us. To equal measure, they are often not reflective of what’s really going on. So, we need to be careful about how we respond to our emotions by examining the evidence with our intellect.

8. “Should” Statements
You tell yourself that things should be the way you hoped for, or expected them to be. “Musts,” “ought tos” and “have tos” are similar offenders. These statements reflect rules that we have adopted either explicitly or implicitly. When these statements are directed against our selves, they lead to guilt, frustration and storytelling. When directed toward others, they often lead to anger, frustration and jealousy. They rarely put you in a practical position to change behavior. Instead, they will often make you feel either rebellious (and give you the urge to do the opposite) or hopeless (and make you want to do nothing).

9. Labeling
This is an extreme form of all-or-nothing thinking. Instead of saying, “I made a mistake,” you attach a negative label to yourself: “I’m a loser”. You might also label yourself “a fool” or “a jerk”. This labeling is totally irrational because what we do is not who we are. These labels are useless thoughts that lead to anger, anxiety, frustration and low self-esteem.

10. Personalization and Blame
Personalization occurs when you hold yourself personally responsible for an event that is not entirely under your control. A classic example is the person who regularly takes the blame for other’s unhappiness or anger. Although we may be able to influence other people’s feelings, we certainly are not responsible for them. We can only keep our side of the street clean, not theirs. Another example is when a mother finds out her child is having difficulties in school and thinks, “This shows what kind of mother I am”.

Personalization leads to guilt and feelings of inadequacy.
Some people do just the opposite. They blame other people or their circumstances for their problems, and they overlook ways that they may be contributing to the problems in the first place. “The reason I have such difficulty at work is because I have an unreasonable boss”. Blame doesn’t work because other people will resent being the scapegoat, and will toss the blame right back in your court. It’s like a game of hot potato. No one wants to get stuck with it.
Becoming aware of these types of thinking is the first step to creating change. Once you’re aware, you can begin to “shift” your thinking and engage more rational responses to the events you encounter.

thepowerofthanks.com

Power of Personality

2008-05-29T03:16:00.000-07:00

Abstract

Everyone has noticed that with a given level of knowledge, skill or ability, some people accomplish little, while others surprisingly achieve far beyond their expected level. These differences are often based upon differences in certain psychological factors. If these psychological factors can be modified, it is often possible to help a person achieve at a level more consistent with their full potential.

Introduction

Good character is more to be praised than outstanding talent. Most talents are, to some extent, a gift. Good character, by contrast, is not given to us. We have to build it piece by piece —by thought, choice, courage and determination.

— John Luther

No matter what you do or where you are, your personality counts. When you try to get along better with others, when you exercise or eat better or get more sleep to improve your disposition, when you learn to handle stress or conflict or nervousness or depression a little better — it makes a difference. On an engineering team or at the top of a mountain or at the water cooler down the hall, it makes a difference. Personality counts.

The Company

You need to understand the company objectives, priorities, structure and organization. You need in depth knowledge about them because they will define your potential growth premises. You need to know their working environment. What kind of structure do they have? Is it rigid, flexible or standard? You need to confirm job security and working habits. When you join a new company, there are two possible cases it wills either enhance you or you will enhance the company with your skills and experience.

Management works in the system; Leadership works on the system. - Covey

Career Planning

There are times in our lives when we are compelled to go beyond the limits of who we believe ourselves to be and explore the contents of our own life. Discover yourself; find out what you want and how to achieve it. Choose one field and focus on it try to achieve expertise in it. Ambitions needs complete dedication and planning of objectives.

· Is this job is your career job?

· What is your career objective within the organization?

· What are your objectives for the next two years?

There will be chances you move from a task-oriented job to human oriented jobs as you gain experience.

Plan to learn executive skills and human networking along with technical learning right from the beginning of your career.

Role/Skill Balance

Success on any major scale requires you to accept responsibility. In the final analysis, the one quality all successful people have is the ability to take responsibility.

Do you possess the skills required to fulfill the responsibilities assigned to your role? If your answer is “yes” then you are capable in managing the process and if “no” then you need to improve your skills.

The gap between skill and role creates stress. This stress is good and creates potential and motivation to do more and do it right. It is good up to a limited extent but don’t let it drive your life. The exceed stress will destroy your health and social life.

In a career start it is a tough to achieve balance in role/skill. You need to give your all to get the work done in the scheduled period. As time moves on you will get experience and the task will take lesser time. You would be able to predict time and effort required by you for a given task.

Why not develop skills to predict your productivity from the beginning of your career?

Human Network Building & Maintaining Relationships

Human Network is a backbone of your progress in career. A network; in organizations and out side them. You should always have some people around you who have the same technical level as yours. They will be helpful to you in any unforeseen circumstances. Publish your talent to people; tell them about yourself and your capabilities.

Increase your ability to get along with people and improve your disposition. When you talk to people, think of them as relatives. Notice something you appreciate and tell someone.. Make this effort a couple of times a day and your relationships will work better. You’ll also be in a good mood more often.

Your Boss

Tact is the ability to tell your boss that he is open-minded when you know he has a hole in his head.

In your official environment understand the human hierarchy .Who is you boss? To whom do you report? Discuss things with him/her; publish your expertise to him/her. He/She should know you very well so he/she can use your potential in right way. This is the person who will make you, like an artist who carves a sculpture out of stone. There may be issues you hate or dislike but in long run you will see the good he brought up in you. Always select a job where your boss is more talented than you, so you can learn more.

A well-skilled, talented and structured boss who is never afraid of the subordinate progress and always ready to provide courage and motivation is the seed of your success.

Helping/Assistance

How do you feel about asking help form others? If you are goal-oriented person and you want to learn by putting effort and time you will rarely go to someone for help, but in case you are on critical timeline project where all preferences goes to provide a quick and easy solution, attempt the problem and know all technical detail then seek help from your seniors or your human network.

Offering a helping hand is a good technique to create a network around you. But you need to organize it in your leisure time. In office, when someone asks you for help, defer it until you complete your recent activity.

Another good way to do this is by answering help questions in forums or by writing articles. It should be detailed with a personal touch. Which doesn’t only solve the problem but also represent your strength in the subject.

Team Up

The ideal experience you should wish to gain from a job is working in a team, which has members with different expertise levels. With experience you will learn how to be the best part of a team? How to create a best team?

Bridge up the communication gape
Listening and documentations
Focusing team strength

Social Relationship

What kind social relationship can you have at workplace? Colleagues can be your friends, have lunchtime together and share work ideas. But never make a group to bad mouth about your company because it reveals a lot about your. All those who enjoy listening to you, will likely backstabber too.

Building social relationships are good as they increase your cooperation and understanding at workplace. Balanced this and don’t make yourself an easy target for non-professional comments and object. Keep some distance between yourself and other people. Don’t seek advice for your personal problems from so many people, as self-experience is the best teacher.

Workplaces where people have time to socialize can create politics. To remain impersonal and safe, make yourself unavailable in these open ended chats.

Confidence

You are prepared, then you’re able to feel confident. Robert J Ringer

This means that you have to make concerted efforts to build your self-esteem and develop self-confidence - not forgetting your spiritual growth and unbounded trust in God allowing him to direct your path. These are the first steps in self-growth to achieving self-improvement and experiencing a happy and rewarding life.

Confidence comes from knowledge. Learn new things keep yourself aware and available to what is to come in life.

Communication

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists. Charles Dickens

Verbal

Communicating effectively is one of the hardest things we can do. Professionals say that communication is “effective” when the person receiving a message understands it exactly the way we mean it. Should be easy, but it’s not. Usually, we can use the same words for different meaning.

Reading

How fast do you read the things and conceive knowledge? Reading skills are highly important especially when you need to deal with distributed human network. To increase reading skill, read and read everything that seems interesting to you and increase you vocabulary. A good speed-reading can supercharge your brain’s capacity to interpret, digest, remember and implement huge amounts of information.

Written

Written communication skill or documentation is great milestone. You may need to write progress, schedule and other reports. There is increasing trend of using chat software in official communication. Hence you should know how to discuss things.

Time Management/Quantitative Productivity

Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river, which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire. ~ Jorge Luis Borges ~

With good time management skills you are in control of your time and your life, of stress and energy levels. You make progress at work. You are able to maintain balance between your work, personal, and family lives. You have enough flexibility to respond to surprises or new opportunities.

Prioritizing techniques save your time and energy
You do not need to do work faster or to eliminate gaps in productivity to make better use of your time. You need to spend more time on the right things..."

Prioritizing skills allow you to focus on what is most important. Prioritizing is about making choices of what to do and what not to do. To prioritize effectively you need to be able to recognize what is important, as well as to see the difference between urgent and important.

The important or high priority, tasks are the tasks that help us achieve our long-term goals or can have other meaningful and significant long-term consequences.

What is planning and why you need to plan

Planning is preparing a sequence of action steps to achieve some specific goal. If you do it effectively, you can reduce much the necessary time and effort of achieving the goal.

A plan is like a map. When following a plan, you can always see how much you have progressed towards your goal and how far you are from your destination. Knowing where you are is essential for making good decisions on where to go or what to do next.

Action plan techniques

How to write an action plan

When writing an action plan to achieve a particular goal or outcome, you can get much help from the following steps.

Clarify your goal. Can you get a visual picture of the expected outcome? How can you see if you have reached your destination? What does make your goal measurable? What constraints do you have, like the limits on time, money, or other resources?
Write a list of actions. Write down all actions you may need to take to achieve your goal. At this step focus on generating and writing as many different options and ideas as possible. Take a sheet of paper and write more and more ideas, just as they come to your mind. While you are doing this, try not to judge or analyze.
Analyze, prioritize, and prune. Look at your list of actions. What are the absolutely necessary and effective steps to achieve your goal? Mark them somehow. After that, what action items can be dropped from in the plan without significant consequences for the outcome? Cross them out.

Effective delegation skill

Delegation skill is the ability to effectively assign task responsibility and authority to others. Or, in other words, delegation skill is your ability to get things done by using work and time of other people.

Procrastination

"Hard work is often the easy work you did not do at the proper time."

Causes of procrastination

What are typical causes of procrastination? Here are a few of the most common situations to consider.

It can be as simple as

Waiting for the right mood
Waiting for the right time

Then look at the way you organize your work. You may notice things like

Lack of clear goals
Underestimating the difficulty of the tasks
Underestimating the time required to complete the tasks
Unclear standards for the task outcomes
Feeling as the tasks are imposed on you from outside
Too ambiguous tasks

And there are also many connections with

Underdeveloped decision making skills
Fear of failure or fear of success
Perfectionism

Decision making skills and techniques guide

We use our decision-making skills to solve problems by selecting one course of action from several possible alternatives. Decision-making skills are also a key component of time management skills.

Decision-making can be hard. Almost any decision involves some conflicts or dissatisfaction. The difficult part is to pick one solution where the positive outcome can outweigh possible losses. Avoiding decisions often seems easier. Yet, making your own decisions and accepting the consequence is the only way to stay in control of your time, your success, and your life.

A significant part of decision-making skills is in knowing and practicing good decision making techniques. Main decision-making techniques can be summarized in those simple decision making steps:

Identify the purpose of your decision. What is exactly the problem to be solved? Why it should be solved?
Gather information. What factors does the problem involve?
Identify the principles to judge the alternatives. What standards and criteria should the solution meet?
Brainstorm and list different possible choices. Generate ideas for possible solutions.
Evaluate each choice in terms of its consequences. Use your standards and criteria to determine the cons and pros of each alternative.
Determine the best alternative. This is much easier after you go through the above preparation steps.
Put the decision into action. Transform your decision into specific plan of action steps. Execute your plan.
Evaluate the outcome of your decision and action steps. What lessons can be learnt? This is an important step for further development of your decision-making skills.

Final remark. In everyday life we often have to make decisions fast, without enough time to systematically go through the above action and thinking steps. In such situations the most effective decision making strategy is to keep an eye on your goals and then let your intuition suggest you the right choice.

Time log techniques

Time tracking with a time log is much more than a boring exercise in bookkeeping. If you approach it right, it will become a very effective time management-learning tool. A few minutes of writing and analyzing your time and activity logs will eliminate many hours of wasted time.

Embrace the reality of your personal time

Unless this has already happen to you before, your time log is more than likely to surprise you. You will see how much time is wasted in many unexpected ways. Often it appears that the busier you feel the more time is wasted.

Another important discovery is how much time things really take. One of the most common problems in personal time management is underestimating the time needed for each specific activity. First this is one of the reasons why planning and scheduling do not seem work well for some people. If you always expect much more than you can fit in your time, than writing plans and to do lists just gets you more stressed.

Get a realistic picture of your time and you will feel much more in control. In fact, you will move much faster with less stress.

Preparing and writing your time log

You don't need to keep writing a time log permanently. It is sufficient to do it for 3-7 days, and repeat this procedure time after time. Yet, when you write a time log, make sure you don't miss any even minor activity. Don't let your time wasters to hide there. So that not to waste much time on writing time tracking records, take a little preparation step. Take a sheet of paper and divide it into columns named like

Time
Activities
Scheduled
Interrupted
Urgent
People (involved)

Then continue with activities you would normally do that day. On the way, update your time log. Do it either every time you switch to new activity or at some short time intervals, like 10-20 minutes. Add entries to your "Time" and "Activities" column, and try to put marks like "Yes" or "No" in the "Scheduled", "Interrupted", and "Urgent" columns. Where relevant, make short notes on what people you spend time with too.

What does your time log tell you?

When you have your time log written, you can move to the most important part, the analysis. Review your records and try to get answers to the following questions.

What percentage of your time is spent in each of different areas of your life? How is it divided between Work, Business, Family, Recreational, Spiritual, Health?
What percentage of your activities is important?
Are urgent?
What people you spend more time with?
What percentage of your activities go as planned?
What are main interruptions?

Then think of possible adjustments and action steps. For example:

Are there any activities you can cut back on?
Is there anything you can delegate or simplify?
Can you save time by grouping related tasks, like shopping?

You can find a few extra times log tips in those short notes on using a time log and analyzing time wasters.

It will get you over the psychological barrier

Have you ever tried to convince anyone to change his or her view of him- or herself? Was it easy? We often feel resistance to external judgments of our personality or habits. It is much easier to accept a change if we discover things for ourselves, if the judgment is our own.

Something similar happens with time spending habits. When you discover how you really spend your time, and do it yourself from your own time log, you will feel much more comfortable when changing your time management attitudes and habits.

Brainstorming tips for better time management

With very few exceptions, everyone already has a natural ability of creative thinking. Yet, that creative ability is fragile. It is easy to block it just by the way you use it, by your attitudes, by the way you think.

Here is a selection of brainstorming tips that can help you to unlock your idea generation ability. Those tips are like brainstorming tools that you can use systematically every time you need new ideas.

The best practical way to have good ideas is to have many of them first, and then to select the best ones. Generating many ideas fast is what brainstorming is focused on.

In your brainstorming session you can follow these steps.

First, take a few minutes to think about what it is you would ideally like to accomplish. How clear a picture you see in your mind? Try to refresh and extend your view of the problem. In particular, think of 5 people you know that come from different background than yours. Imagine what each of those people, one by one, would see in your problem, how they would approach it.

Now it is time to start the actual brainstorming exercise. Take a sheet of paper, a pen, and your watch. Set a goal to write a certain large number of options (over 10 or 20) or ideas within a specific short time interval (minutes). A good example is a goal to write 20 ideas within 5 minutes.

What is important in this activity is that you focus on quantity of ideas, not quality. When you brainstorm, you just write in a list manner whatever comes into your mind, and write fast. You let your imagination flow, you play. Forget all judging or analyzing, common sense, rules, or practicality.

A pressing, almost unrealistic, deadline plays an important role in the brainstorming session. It mobilizes your subconscious and conscious minds. It helps to paralyze your judgment, analysis, and other mental blocks, freeing your imagination.

After the time is up, take a few more minutes to brainstorm a few more ideas, until you feel you cannot squeeze anything more out of your mind. Often those last ideas will be the most valuable ones.

At the end of this brainstorming exercise you have a long list of ideas, options, and thoughts. You will discard most of them later, at the judgment stage. Yet, the ideas you eventually select tend to be much better than something that would logically follow from what you had in your mind before the brainstorming exercise.

The outcome may surprise you. It is worth every minute you spend on it.

http://www.time-management-guide.com/time-management-skills.html

http://www.youmeworks.com/netfo/powerofpersonality.html

http://psychologydoc.com/self-imp.htm

http://www.speed-reading-world.com/

http://relationships911.org/

http://www.mirrorgate.com/test.eprowork.htm

www.HigherAwareness.com

April 08, 2004

Pathways to Process Maturity: The Personal Software Process

2008-05-29T02:07:00.000-07:00

Inroduction

The Personal Software Process (PSP) is an SEI technology that brings discipline to the practices of individual software engineers, dramatically improving product quality, increasing cost and schedule predictability, and reducing development cycle time for software

PSP(personal software process) is a guided framework of activities that provide Software engineers regular coaching and support to sustain high levels of personal performance. Using PSP, engineers can plan their work, measure it as they do it, analyze the measures and improve their performance.

Watts Humphrey developed PSP and TSP at the SEI in the mid-1990’s. (Watts Humphrey is widely recognized as being the originator of the CMM concept.) The PSP project was aimed at demonstrating that a CMM level 5 process could be used by an individual to develop high quality software without excessive process overhead

The PSP framework

The PSP has a maturity framework much like that of the CMM. The figure below shows the PSP framework. Each process improvement phase is briefly described; the description concentrates on the design, code and test phase; however, these phases are only examples. The PSP applies not only to them but also to almost any other aspect of the software process, including requirements specification, product maintenance, test planning, and documentation development.

PSP0: The baseline process

The first step in the PSP is to establish a baseline that includes some basic measurements and a reporting format. This baseline provides a consistent basis for measuring progress and a defined foundation on which to improve. PSP0 should be the process currently used to develop software, but enhanced to provide measurement. The PSP0 is enhanced to PSP0.1 by adding a coding standard, size measurement and the process improvement proposal (PIP). The PIP is a form that provides a structured way to record process problems, experiences and improvement suggestions.

Level PSP0 :

Current Process

Time Recording

Defect Recording

Count of defects in your code at compile and test time per KLOC . You can drive a defect matrix. It will provide you indicator pattern of your performance.

Defect Type Standards

Count of Defects identified by your internal QA and your client and their type standards. Whats the likelyhood of these error occurance.

Level PSP0.1

Coding Standard

Make your code more readable, integrateable by using coding standards. so make code portable among the team.

Size measurement

Your task size measurement , use any automate tool for measuring size in KLOC .

Process Improvement Process(PIP)

Improve your own planning , envision ,development and test process. Improve your communication by remaining aware of requirements and bringing up issues predictions.

PSP1: The personal planning process

Using the data from the previous step, PSP1 adds planning to PSP0. The initial increment adds a test report and size and resource estimation. In PSP1.1 task and schedule planning are introduced. Once an individual's performance rate is known, he or she can plan the work more accurately, make commitments more realistic, and meet those commitments more consistently.

Level PSP1:

Size Estimation

Test Report

Level PSP1.1:

Task Planning

Schedule Planning

PSP2: Personal quality management

One PSP goal is to enable early learning of how to deal realistically and objectively with the software defects that result from the errors and mistakes made. To manage the defects, you must know how many you make. PSP2 adds review techniques to PSP1 to find defects earlier when they are least expensive to fix. This is done by gathering and analysing the defects found during compiling and testing from earlier software programs. With this data it is possible to establish review checklists and make individual process quality assessments. PSP2.1 addresses the design process. The PSP does not prescribe how to design but rather how to complete a design. That is, when the design is finished what should be the output. PSP2.1 establishes design completeness criteria and examines various design verification and consistency techniques.

Level PSP2:

Code Review

Reading your coding before you compile and run for looking output. Read the lines again as you are computer that will execute the code. There are two kind of code reading technique.

See Refrence for detail A research publication by University of Maryland show perspective based reading of code.

Design Review

Drive GUI standards for urself, Like the locationization information of culture in date, address, name ,money fields appearance and so own.

Level PSP2.1

Design template

PSP3: Cycle personal process

Until PSP3, the PSP concentrates on a simple linear process for building small programs. In PSP3 an interative approach is introduced for developing larger programs. In each iteration, a complete PSP2 process is carried out, including design, code, compile and test. Each enhancement builds on the previously completed increments, so the PSP3 is suitable for large programs. The cyclic PSP3 process effectively scales up to larger programs only as long as each successive increment is of high quality. A very important part is the performance of regression testing; re-running earlier tests to verify that the new increment did not cause problems with previously working functions.

Level PSP3

Cycle Development

Once you have good code , you can observe the likely hood of appearance of same code several places you can seperate and drive common/generic framework layers for yourself.
You can also seperate the code on business functionality , make it enough good for just plug and play type code. Its called packaging your code.

Benefits/Industrial results with the PSP

A growing number of organizations are using the PSP, such as Baan, Boeing, Motorola, and Teradyne for their employee training and their participation inCMMI process.

Effort estimation/Schedule estimating error

improvement from a 55 percent estimating error to a 27 percent error or a factor of about two.

Engineer get able to give more accurate time estimates.

Quality results

the improvement in compile and test defects is most dramatic.

From PSP0 to PSP3, the engineers’ compile and test defects dropped from 110 defects per 1,000 lines of code (KLOC) to 20 defects per KLOC, or over five times shows that even with their greatly improved planning and quality performance .

acceptance test defects decreasment.

test cycles Improved with mininm time requirements.

Productivity results

Why You need A PSP(Personal Software Process)

Software engineers develop their personal practices when they first learn to write programs. Since they are given little or no professional guidance on how to do the work, most engineers start off with exceedingly poor personal practices. As they gain experience, some engineers may change and improve their practices, but many do not. In general, the highly varied ways in which individual software engineers work are rarely based on a sound analysis of available methods and practices.

Engineers are understandably skeptical about changes to their work habits; although they may be willing to make a few minor changes, they will generally stick fairly closely to what has worked for them in the past until they are convinced a new method will be more effective. This, however, is a chicken-and-egg problem: engineers only believe new methods work after they use them and see the results, but they will not use the methods until they believe they work.

PSP Implementation

Although the PSP can be introduced quickly, it must also be done properly.

First, the engineers need to be trained by a qualified PSP instructor.

The second important step in PSP introduction is to train in groups or teams. When organizations ask for volunteers for PSP training, they get a sparse sprinkling of PSP skills that will generally have no impact on the performance of any project.

Third, effective PSP introduction requires strong management support. This, in turn, requires that management understand the PSP, know how to support their workers once they are trained, and regularly monitor their performance. Without proper management attention, many engineers gradually slip back into their old habits.

The problem is that software engineers, like most professionals, find it difficult to consistently do disciplined work when nobody notices or cares. Software engineers need regular coaching and support to sustain high levels of personal performance.

The Personal Software Process Given all this, how could we possibly convince engineers that a new method would work for them? The only way we could think of to change their behavior was with a major intervention. We had to directly expose the engineers to the new way of working. We thus decided to remove them from their day-to-day environment and put them through a rigorous training course.

References:

http://www.sei.cmu.edu/news-at-sei/features/1999/jun/Background.jun99.pdf :Rate :5

http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/189775.html

http://csdl.computer.org/comp/proceedings/cseet/1999/0131/00/01310135abs.htm

http://www.sysmod.com/psp.htm http://www.sei.cmu.edu/tsp/psp.html

Free PSP template: http://www.sysmod.com/pspmatls.htm Rate: 4

Personal Software Process Studio http://www-cs.etsu.edu/psp/

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=253757&coll=portal&dl=ACM

http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~mikeg/cmsc645/se_psp.pdf

Synergy of review techniques from PSP(SM) to Formal inspections Rate : 5

http://www.stpp.com/dmr_pap.htm

http://www.cse.dcu.ie/essiscope/sm5/approach/psp-1.html Rate : 5

http://www.softwaresixsigma.com/Tsp_Main_PspTsp.htm

http://www.softwaredioxide.com/Channels/ConView.asp?id=5317

Software Reading :www.di.uniba.it/~lanubile/papers/sew96.pdf Rate =5

Experimentation in Software Engineering: Reading Studies II Scenario-Based Reading Definition www.cs.umd.edu/class/fall2001/cmsc735/9bexperimentation.pdf Rate=5

Process Improvment by Software Measurement : Insight Software Metrics

2008-05-27T06:39:00.000-07:00

Abstract

This is not overnight story to bring a company on plight of success and persistent in international market , the process improvement is ongoing event which start from red-eyed aggressive , over committed manager and doubly stressed staff with all their maximum efforts but very little add to company profit . The story turns smooth with the experiences learning and success/failure when they gain a planned vision of success by error-and-trail methods, but luckily we have methods to get right from the very start without learning from a longrun suffering. I am trying to bring a collative view of two vast topics process improvement and software metrics, and another one Business Ethics , though we can speak volumes on all these separately but I want to pointout the relativity among these aspects and impact.

Why process improvement is necessary for organization progress? or The Return on Investment of Software Process Improvement

Organizations can follow various process pattern like somewhere process is defined , analysis and project emphasized, developer are independent in application architecture and technology decision all project are separate entities, no central approach, no experience library. Management Learn by error-and-trail methods i-e project failure and success and on other hand technology Oriented approach where developer are dependent to follow a technology but application's business less valued resulting in creation of unattainable software. "Client will pay for all the changes!!" I don't think its a good reason to write bad software , Whenever you ignore the analysis to incorporate effectively in solution you dig a grave for your application and surely for yours developers too.

Can we select a mid and balanced approach to bring more stability and accountability to system which less panic for the company staff while bring maximum ROI to company. Balance is always a beauty. Its ongoing process to oranganize and knowing your teams, to bring quality to commitments , comforts to clients and stressless continuous add-on-skills improvement to the your employees.

You can have corporate/bussiness ethics well-developed in your company by process improvements, playing a fair game with defined/published rules with client and employees. Raising awareness of companies to the issues and by helping them to build relationships of trust with their customers, employees, suppliers, owners and the communities in which they work. If you are looking for new job or switch confirm this issue prior to put your head into any new mud.

It takes time to learning from happening we need to record the present to forecast the future. are we ready for it?

What kind of technologies\methods can be used for process improvement?

There are different aspect to consider growth of an organization process to confirm the stabilization, healthy environment and max RIO. So there are different standards recommended. The goal is clear to make your process repetitive, organized, accountable and well-planed.

1. PSP^SM Personal Software process: http://www.sysmod.com/psp.htm

Management principles embodied in the SW-CMM as applicable to individual software engineers. The resulting process was the PSP

2. TSP^SM http://www.northhorizons.com/methodology.htm (wow!!!)

if managers do not provide a supportive environment and do not ask for and constructively use PSP data, engineers soon stop using the PSP. Humphrey then developed the Team Software Process to build and sustain effective teams.

3. SW-CMM^®

The Capability Maturity Model for Software (also known as the CMM and SW-CMM) has been a model used by many organizations to identify best practices useful in helping them increase the maturity of their processes.

4. ISO 9001, www.iso.ch

ISO: International Organization for Standardization ISO: International Organization for Standardization Worldwide federation of national standards bodies concerned with consistent rules or guidelines of technical specifications

5. CMMI^SM http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/adoption/cmmi-start.html

Capability Maturity Model^® Integration (CMMI^®) fundamental concepts. CMMI models are tools that help organizations improve their ability to develop and maintain quality products and services. CMMI models are an integration of best practices from proven process improvement models

along with this the above list, in this article , I will mainly focus on applying quantitative methods like Software Metrics to improve the process of an organization.

Software Metrics :

http://sunset.usc.edu/classes/cs577b_2001/metricsguide/metrics.html

Software metrics are numerical data related to software development. Metrics strongly support software project management activities. They relate to the four functions of management as follows:

1. Planning - Metrics serve as a basis of cost estimating, training planning, resource planning, scheduling, and budgeting.

2. Organizing - Size and schedule metrics influence a project's organization.

3. Controlling - Metrics are used to status and track software development activities for compliance to plans.

4. Improving - Metrics are used as a tool for process improvement and to identify where improvement efforts should be concentrated and measure the effects of process improvement efforts.

A metric quantifies a characteristic of a process or product. Metrics can be directly observable quantities or can be derived from one or more directly observable quantities. Examples of raw metrics include the number of source lines of code, number of documentation pages, number of staff-hours, number of tests, number of requirements, etc. Examples of derived metrics include source lines of code per staff-hour, defects per thousand lines of code, or a cost performance index.

The term indicator is used to denote a representation of metric data that provides insight into an ongoing software development project or process improvement activity. Examples of indicators used on a project include actual versus planned task completions, actual versus planned staffing, number of trouble reports written and resolved over time, and number of requirements changes over time. The metrics to be collected provide indicators that track ongoing project progress, software products, and software development processes.

Why Measure Software

Software projects are notorious for running over schedule and budget, yet still having quality problems. Software measurement lets you quantify your schedule, work effort, product size, project status, and quality performance. If you don’t measure your current performance and use the data to improve your future work estimates, those estimates will just be guesses. Because today’s current data becomes tomorrow’s historical data, it’s never too late to start recording key information about your project.

You can’t track project status meaningfully unless you know the actual effort and time spent on each task compared to your plans. You can’t sensibly decide whether your product is stable enough to ship unless you’re tracking the rates at which your team is finding and fixing defects. You can’t quantify how well your new development processes are working without some measure of your current performance and a baseline to compare against. Metrics help you better control your software projects and learn more about the way your organization works.

Measurement alone will not improve your software performance, but it provides information that will help you focus and evaluate your software process improvement efforts. Link your measurement program to your organizational goals and process improvement program. Use the process improvement initiative to choose improvements, use the metrics program to track progress toward your improvement goals, and use your recognition program to motivate and reward desired behaviors.

What to Measure

You can measure many aspects of your software products, projects, and processes. The trick is to select a small and balanced set of metrics that will help your organization track progress toward its goals. Goal-Question-Metric (GQM) is an excellent technique for selecting appropriate metrics to meet your needs.. With GQM, you begin by selecting a few project or organizational goals. State the goals to be as quantitative and measurable as you can. They might include things like:

Reduce maintenance costs by 50% within one year
Improve schedule estimation accuracy to within 10% of actual
Reduce system testing time by three weeks on the next project
Reduce the time to close a defect by 40% within three months.

For each goal, think of questions you would have to answer to see if you are reaching that goal. If your goal was "reduce maintenance costs by 50% within one year," these might be some appropriate questions:

How much do we spend on maintenance each month?
What fraction of our maintenance costs do we spend on each application we support?
How much money do we spend on adaptive (adapting to a changed environment), perfective (adding enhancements), and corrective (fixing defects) maintenance?

Finally, identify metrics that will let you answer each question. Some of these will be simple data items you can count directly, such as the total budget spent on maintenance. Other metrics you will compute from two or more data items. To answer the last question listed previously, you must know the hours spent on each of the three maintenance activity types and the total maintenance cost over a period of time.

Notice I expressed several goals in terms of a percentage change from the current level. The first step of a metrics program is to establish a current baseline, so you can track progress against it and toward your goals. I prefer relative improvement goals ("reduce maintenance by 50%") rather than absolute goals ("reduce maintenance to 10% of total effort"). You can probably reduce maintenance to 10% of total effort within a year if you are currently at 20%, but not if you spend 80% of your effort on maintenance today.

Your balanced metrics set should eventually include items relating to product size, product quality, process quality, work effort, project status, and customer satisfaction. Table 1 suggests metrics that individual developers, project teams, and development organizations should consider collecting. You would track most of these over time. For example, your routine project tracking activities should monitor the percentage of requirements implemented and tested, the number of open and closed defects, and so on. You can’t start with all of these, but I recommend including at least the following measurements early in your metrics program:

Product size: count lines of code, function points, object classes, number of requirements, or GUI elements
Estimated and actual duration (calendar time) and effort (labor hours): track for individual tasks, project milestones, and overall product development
Work effort distribution: record the time spent in development activities (project management, requirements specification, design, coding, testing) and maintenance activities (adaptive, perfective, corrective)
Defects: count the number found by testing and by customers and their type, severity, and status (open or closed)

Creating a Measurement Culture

Fear is often a software practitioner’s first reaction to a new metrics program. People are afraid the data will be used against them, that it will take too much time to collect and analyze the data, or that the team will fixate on getting the numbers right rather than building good software. Creating a software measurement culture and overcoming such resistance will take diligent, consistent steering by managers who are committed to metrics and sensitive to these concerns.

Table 1. Appropriate Metrics for Software Developers, Teams, and Organizations.

Group	Appropriate Metrics
Individual Developers	Work effort distribution Estimated vs. actual task duration and effort Code covered by unit testing Number of defects found by unit testing Code and design complexity
Project Teams	Product size Work effort distribution Requirements status (number approved, implemented, and verified) Percentage of test cases passed Estimated vs, actual duration between major milestones Estimated vs. actual staffing levels Number of defects found by integration and system testing Number of defects found by inspections Defect status Requirements stability Number of tasks planned and completed
Development Organization	Released defect levels Product development cycle time Schedule and effort estimating accuracy Reuse effectiveness Planned and actual cost

To help your team overcome the fear, you must educate them about the metrics program. Tell them why measurement is important and how you intend to use the data. Make it clear that you will never use metrics data either to punish or reward individuals (and then make sure that you don’t). A competent software manager does not need individual metrics to distinguish the effective team contributors from the slackers.

Respect the privacy of the data. It is harder to abuse the data if managers don’t know who the data came from, Classify each data item you collect into one of these three privacy levels:

Individual: only the individual who collected the data about his or her own work knows it is his or her data, although it may be pooled with data from other individuals to provide an overall project profile
Project team: data is private to the members of the project team, although it may be pooled with data from other projects to provide an overall organizational profile
Organization: data can be shared among all members of the organization.

As an example, if you are collecting work effort distribution data, the number of hours each individual spends working on every development or maintenance phase activity in a week is private to that individual. The total distribution of hours from all team members is private to the project team, and the distribution across all projects is public to everyone in the organization. View and present the data items that are private to individuals only in the aggregate or as averages over the group.

Make It a Habit

Software measurement doesn’t need to be time consuming. Commercial tools are available for measuring code size and complexity in many programming languages. Activities like daily time tracking are more of a habit than a burden. Commercial problem tracking tools facilitate counting defects and tracking their status, but this requires the discipline to report all identified defects and to manage them with the tool. Develop simple tracking forms, scripts, and web-based reporting tools to reduce the overhead of collecting and reporting the data. Use spreadsheets and charts to track and report on the accumulated data at regular intervals.

Tips for Metrics Success

Despite the challenges, many software organizations routinely measure aspects of their work. If you wish to join this club, keep the following tips in mind.

Start Small. Because developing your measurement culture and infrastructure will take time, use GQM to first select a basic set of initial metrics. Once your team becomes used to the idea of measurement and you have established momentum, you can introduce new metrics that will give you the additional information you need to manage your projects and organization effectively.

A risk with any metrics activity is dysfunctional measurement, in which participants alter their behavior to optimize something that is being measured, rather than focusing on the real organizational goal. For example, if you are measuring productivity but not quality, expect some developers to change their coding style to expand the volume of material they produce, or to code quickly without regard for bugs. I can write code very fast if it doesn’t actually have to run correctly. The balanced set of measurements helps prevent dysfunctional behavior by monitoring the group’s performance in several complementary aspects of their work that lead to project success. Never attempt to use metrics to motivate performance.

Explain Why. Be prepared to explain to a skeptical team why you wish to measure the items you choose. They have the right to understand your motivations and why you think the data will be valuable. Use the data that is collected, rather than letting it rot in the dark recesses of a write-only database.

Share the Data. Your team will be more motivated to participate in measurement activities if you inform them about how you’ve used the data. Share summaries and trends with the team at regular intervals and get them to help you understand what the data is telling you. Let them know whenever you’ve been able to use their data to answer a question, make a prediction, or assist your management efforts.

Define Data Items and Procedures. It is more difficult and time-consuming to precisely define the data items and metrics than you might think. However, if you don’t pin these definitions down, participants may interpret and apply them in different ways. Define what you mean by a "line of code," spell out which activities go into the various work effort categories, and agree on what a "defect" is. Write clear, succinct procedures for collecting and reporting the measures you select.

Understand Trends. Trends in the data over time are more significant than individual data points. Some trends may be subject to multiple interpretations. Did the number of defects per function point found during system testing decrease because the latest round of testing was ineffective, or did fewer defects slip past development into the testing process? Make sure you understand what the data is telling you, but don’t rationalize your observations away.

Technology of Participation (ToP)

Show rather than tell. Rather than telling teammates about all the neat concepts you learned -- show one or two in action. When you change how you respond to situations, the system will shift, too.

Work by attraction. Sooner or later, someone will notice the change and ask about it. That's the time to tell about what you learned.

Expect some push back. The (human) system may try to revert to the comfortable status quo. Some people may not want the situation to change, especially when the old way worked to their advantage. Even when the old way didn't work, what's familiar is more comfortable than the unknown. That's natural. Persist.

Be patient. People usually need to be exposed to a new idea several times before it sticks.

Build a support team. Everything is easier with support. We have a cultural myth about individual achievement -- in reality most "star" individual achievers have support from other people

Special Thanks

Timo Wizoreck twi1973@yahoo.de

References

[1] Software Metrics Guide by Center of Software Engineering - University of Southern California

http://sunset.usc.edu/classes/cs577b_2001/metricsguide/metrics.html

[2]. A Software Metrics Primer by Karl E. Wiegers -Process Impact
http://www.processimpact.com/articles/metrics_primer.html

[3] Experience Factory Model Designed by NASA with University of Maryland

http://www.umd.edu/

http://sel.gsfc.nasa.gov/website/exp-factory/gqm.htm

[4] Software Metric's Free Tools for KLOCs recording

http://swmetrics.mockus.us/metrics2004/

[5] Software Engineering Insititute of Carnegie Mellon University

http://www.sei.cmu.edu/publications/documents/cms/cm.012.html

[6] Some Others

http://www.estherderby.com/weblog/blogger.html

http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/pri/pri.htm

http://irb.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/sw-eng/us/index.shtml

2006-11-22T23:08:00.000-08:00

Work f or Outcome

"It’s not my fault" is rarely true. "It’s all your fault" is usually
equally incorrect.

•If you are n’tmaking any mistakes, you’re probably not trying hard
enough.

• It’s not helpful to have QA argue with developers whether a prob-lem
is a defect or an enhancement. It’s often quicker to fix it than
argue about it.

• If one team member misunderstood a requirement, an API call,
or the decisions reached in the last meeting, then it’s very likely
other team members may have misunderstood as well. Make sure
the whole team is up to speed on the issue.

• If a team member is repeatedly harming the team by their actions,
then they are not acting in a professional manner. They aren’t
helping move the team toward a solution. In that case, they need
to be removed from this team.2

• If the majority of the team (and especially the lead developers)
don’t act in a professional manner and aren’t interested in moving
in that direction, then you should remove yourself from the team
and seek success elsewhere (which is a far better idea than being
dragged into a "Death March" project.

Reference: Practices.of.an.Agile.Developer

An Agile Toolkit

2006-11-16T06:12:00.000-08:00

Wiki. A Wiki (short for WikiWikiWeb) is a website that allows
users to edit the content and create links to new content
using just a web browser. Wikis are a great way to encour-age
collaboration, because everyone on the team can
dynamically add and rearrange content as needed.

Version control. Everything needed to build the project—all
source code, documents, icons, build scripts, etc.—needs
to be placed in the care of a version control system. Sur-prisingly,
many teams still prefer to plop files on a shared
network drive, but that’s a pretty amateurish approach.
For a detailed guide to setting up and using version con-trol.

Unit testing. Using code to exercise code is a major source
of developer feedback; we’ll talk much more about
that later in the book, but be aware that readily avail-able
frameworks handle most of the housekeeping details
for you.

Build automation. Local builds on your own machine, as well
as centrally run builds for the whole team, are completely
automated and reproducible. Since these builds run all
the time, this is also known as continuous integration.As
with unit testing, there are plenty of free, open-source and
commercial products that will take care of the details for
you.

Reference: Practices.of.an.Agile.Developer

N-Tier Web Applications using ASP.NET 2.0 and SQL Server 2005

2006-01-13T20:18:00.000-08:00

Well all recent three months I was greatly busy with my sickness specially my bad stomach. But we have a happy end of this big crisis. I am partially back to the world now. Yah, World of my own with knowledge and creations.

In past couple days I was trying to find out if VS2005 with SQL Server 2005 is ready to be for any serious commercial development. There are some concerns about stability of hosting providing for it but most of people agree that with time there will more better solution for this issue.

The next thing to dig for is the proper architecture for new paradigm .I found a very interesting link regarding this issue N-Tier Web Applications using ASP.NET 2.0 and SQL Server 2005 - By Thiru Thangarathinam

Eight Signs Your Job is Doomed

2005-08-11T00:13:00.000-07:00

Kate Lorenz, CareerBuilder.com

Have you been feeling uneasy at work lately? Is your sixth sense telling you that there is some impending doom related to your job? Are co-workers avoiding you or whispering when you walk by? Follow your hunches and watch for these eight signs to determine if your days at work are numbered.

1. You've been cut out of the loop.

Have you seen your whole team walking out of the conference room after a meeting you were not informed of? Have you become the last to know anything and everything that is going on in your office? In the workplace, knowledge is power. Your company's act of keeping information from you and keeping you out of the loop might be one way of preparing for life without you.

2. You are losing responsibilities.

Has your workload gotten a lot lighter in recent weeks while your colleagues seem to be taking on more? Is your input suddenly not needed in planning sessions for next year's budget? If your projects and past responsibilities have been passed on to others, it is another good sign that the team is making sure your work gets done once you are out the door.

3. Your job title has been changed, and it's not an upward move.

If you have received a new job title or new job description, pay attention to the differences. Is the new job a lateral move? Have you been demoted? The way you want to be moving in an organization is up -- not sideways or down.

4. Times are tough at your company.

Have you noticed several closed-door meetings full of executives with concerned faces? Are the HR managers and the head of compensation and benefits pulling all-nighters? Is your company experiencing mounting losses or declining profits? Is there a hiring freeze in place? Many companies' first money-saving measure in difficult times is a personnel cut. If your job function is not essential, you might be one of the first to go.

5. You are suddenly being micro-managed.

If you have always had a great deal of autonomy in the past and are now being scrutinized at every turn, there might be a serious reason behind this new form of management. Whether you feel you need your hand held or not, new scrutiny in the workplace can sometimes mean less confidence in your abilities.

6. You have received one or more negative reviews.

Good companies try to help employees recognize and understand ways in which they need to improve. Most have some kind of review system in place to help employees track their progress. If you have received a performance review that is negative, you need to take it to heart and make some changes. If you have multiple bad reviews under your belt and still haven't learned from them, your days probably are numbered. Just as bad, if you've had stellar reviews in the past and suddenly you are no longer regarded as a star performer, watch out!

7. The company is "reorganizing."

Mergers, acquisitions and restructuring can all be good for business, but bad for employees. Are there rumors about another company buying your business? Is your company merging with another that has employees who do the same job as you? Pay attention to what you hear in the grapevine regarding the future of the business -- it can also have a dramatic effect on your future.

8. You just haven't been performing.

When it comes right down to it, you know your performance better than anyone. You know that you've been surfing the Internet when you should be finishing your reports; that you have spent hours making personal calls; and that your once hour-long lunches have grown increasingly longer. If your heart just has not been in your job lately, your superiors probably have taken notice. Think about it -- if you were the boss, would you fire you? If so, you might want to start making plans for your exit strategy.

Kate Lorenz is the article and advice editor for CareerBuilder.com. She researches and writes about job search strategy, career management, hiring trends and workplace issues.