Pencils Down

So, we are in a waterfall cycle.  We are attempting to fit in ‘agile’ like pieces where possible.  The largest so far is the use of Spring as the overall platform with a version of Faces on the front end.  Really pretty cool stuff.

We are in ‘detail design’.  Remember that from CS101 as part of Top-Down Design Principles?  I had expected pseduo-code or similar for the messier, logic intensive components.  Wrong!

We have spent, as a team, a good part of this phase determining how to get the product to work within the framework.  The real detailed design pieces have not been done in lieu of figuring that out. 

Also, we get a physical data model in this phase.   Only, then we can determine what entities are available and start to use them in a design.  Wow!  This stuff is a never ending surprise.

I guess it had to be done anyway, but how does someone start coding in the next phase when there are no details?

Uncategorized Waterfall

I didn’t know what it meant either.  The idea is to be able to re-create the complete condition as of a certain point in time.  It is widely used in clinical studies on test subjects.

I dismissed it as something I could never use.  Then I thought about it:

• At a brokerage software company I worked at it would have been interesting to evaluate client portfolios and broker commissions over time.
• At a marketing communications company it would have been interesting to see sales people’s use of marketing dollars over time, in relation to their position in the sales hierarchy.
• At a security system it would have been interesting to see the sweeping effect of key rollovers over time.
• At a police log company it would have been interesting to see patterns of criminal behavior over time.

It would be a royal pain to maintain complete hierarchies or portfolios or whatever every time something changes.  However, if we move the delta recording down to the line item (police incident, key in one device, one sale, etc…) I think recording a little more info wouldn’t be real hard.  The storage demands could be very large, but only recording deltas might limit the demand enough.  Then we start working with well-known algorithms for versioning.

Uncategorized Neat

Safari is pretty cool - for a fixed fee get access to ALL technology books you can imagine.  I love it.  I have always hated actually buying books since I know I will never open them again after a month or two.

Heard about a really neat way to get this for free:

1. Signup online for an eLibrary Card from the Boston Public Library.  This is really a big user id and a password.
2. Do a Google search for “Boston Public Library Safari”.  The first hit is an “electronic” books resource page for BPL.
3. Click on the “Safari Online” link.
4. Enter your eLibrary Card number.
5. You now have complete access to Safari sans bookmarks, favorites and downloads.

Uncategorized Neat

As you would expect it is fairly common on larger projects in the defense arena where multiple tiers of subcontractors are used as needed.  Sounds good.

However, it appears that the typical subcontractor has no experience or skill in the subcontract that they have been awarded (I guess lowest price keeps winning).  Examples I have seen recently:

• Subcontractor making authorization wizard is basing the algorithm on the availability of ADSI.  However, ADSI will not be available on the target platform.  LDAP may be available.  All parties are aware of this but progress and time-lines keep moving on.
• Subcontractor responsible for lower level protocol handling in a secure environment has no expertise in networking or cryptography.  Subcontractor has to ask for designs from lead contractor so they can make any progress.

These subcontractors are making a lot of money doing the wrong thing or the unknown thing.  I don’t think its supposed to work this way.

Uncategorized Practice

I usually have one or two side projects running at any time.  Most are pretty small, so just pay me the few hundred when done.

Once in a while a bigger project comes along in the 5-10K range.  In these cases I ask for 1/3 upfront, 1/3 on code complete and 1/3 on acceptance.  I think this is pretty reasonable.  This avoids dreamers who have no money and a**h****s that don’t plan on paying.

Why is this a surprise to the project sponsors?  Could someone get a carpenter to come to their house for nothing?  Some people appear to get really upset and walk from the project and I don’t think they fit into the cases I was trying to exclude above.

Uncategorized Clients

Our company is teamed up with another big defense contractor on a project.  This appears to be a standard operating procedure for the DOD: hire multiple vendors bidding on a project and make them work together.

The project is mostly software.  So, it stands to reason that one team might provide re-usable widgets that the other should re-use.  The emphasis on “should”.

One widget wraps Hibernate as to be non-usable:  All queries must by static, lazy collections are not supported, session is not exposed, etc… That type of thing.

So, the other team has to “prove” that the widget is unusable.  Our team is small.  Two people have been spending easily 50% of their time for a few weeks proving their case.  Also, need to account for unknown amounts of politicking occurring at management levels.

It’s still not settled.  I don’t think it will ever  be settled.

Uncategorized Practice