Stuff I Have Found Interesting Today

The next Google

Seth wrote what I was thinking when I saw Bing & Wave. Microsoft is truly dying.

Ease at Work

A great talk by Kent Beck in 7 fairly short videos totaling roughly an hour. Worth the time if you are a programmer. He uses one of my favorite phrases "Schedule Chicken". He also claims it takes on average 13 times for an idea to stick.He introduces the phrase "novelty vampires" in video #7.

How to Teach a Child to Argue

I have done some of this but never looked at the topic deep enough.

The Kissinger Politics Stakes Law

My neighbor informed me of today's quote of the day:

University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
- Henry Kissinger

I had heard a version of this quote long ago and immediately fell for it! Years later I was working on a multi-million project at a multi-billion company and noticed that the politics seemed to fairly tamed based on my own experience. Once the project went live I noticed that slowly little stupid things crept up. I turned to my colleague who had been there many years and asked "What' going on? So and so seems to be treating me differently than before..did I do something wrong?" His reply stuck with me "It's not you it's BAU!"

I have long be a fan of organizational laws. Conway's Law is my favorite. I propose a new one:

The Kissinger Politics Stakes Law

As the stakes of an endeavour increase the politics will decline. As the stakes decrease the politics will increase.

If you think about it, it explains so many odd behaviors. Why during WWII did the US Government function so well and during the 90's boom do so poorly? Why do PTA elections seem to be more ferocious than US Presidential ones? It's the hidden law we have all been witness to!

I can't be the first to see this...Google provided the answer Sayre's Law. So it seems Kissinger gets credit where credit is not deserved....how Sayre-ian :-)

Stuff I Have Found Interesting Today

Agile (Wrongfully) Assumes Craftsmanship

Great post from Jurgen! I recommend everyone in the software field read this post. It isn't long, so no excuses! Just one quote because I can't help myself:

In his book Complexity and Management Ralph Stacey wrote:

”Rules are not what make an organization function. What people do despite the rules is what brings an organization success.”

You Should Get Out More

"A study finds that living abroad for long periods of time boosts creative thinking." Now how does one convince the family? :-)

Tips for Retrospective Facilitators

Good advice. My only addition is that sentence case writing only work if you have neat white board writing. I do not, thus ALL CAPS is better than two words that no one but me can read.

Latency, Throughput, and Variance

An interesting article by Kent Beck using diagram of effects with some anecdotes to show how automation and early delivery seem to slow you down, but in the system as a whole cause you to speed up. Old conclusion told using different means.

Stuff I Have Found Interesting Today

Annals of Medicine: The Cost Conundrum

An 8 page article on helath care costs. It starts with a fact that McAllen,TX is "one of the most expensive health-care markets in the country. Only Miami—which has much higher labor and living costs—spends more per person on health care." Here are some gems:

• "So here, along the banks of the Rio Grande, in the Square Dance Capital of the World, a medical community came to treat patients the way subprime-mortgage lenders treated home buyers: as profit centers."
• "Mayo recognized that the first thing it needed to do was eliminate the financial barriers. It pooled all the money the doctors and the hospital system received and began paying everyone a salary, so that the doctors’ goal in patient care couldn’t be increasing their income. "
• “When doctors put their heads together in a room, when they share expertise, you get more thinking and less testing,”
• "The lesson of the high-quality, low-cost communities is that someone has to be accountable for the totality of care. Otherwise, you get a system that has no brakes."
• "Any plan that relies on the sheep to negotiate with the wolves is doomed to failure."
• "The decision is whether we are going to reward the leaders who are trying to build a new generation of Mayos and Grand Junctions. If we don’t, McAllen won’t be an outlier. It will be our future. "

Too big to fail? Overcoming size disadvantages - JPMorgan Chase

Some great points about the danger of keeping failed institutions afloat. Even better are the two articles linked in the post "The Need for Failure" &"Jamie Dimon's Straight Talk Has A Good Ring". Some gems from "The need for failure":

• "It encourages banks to get bigger (or more interconnected), and it subsidizes risky behavior."
• "...the solutions that have developed on the fly have done severe damage to the notion that there is a well-ordered capital structure that means something."

Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave.

Looks cool. More details and opinions can be found at Tech Crunch and O'Rielly.

Bing!

Microsoft is going after Google! Tech Crunch has a detailed look. Looks interesting and one has to like competition is a stale market.

Freestyling: Beating Agile, Lean And Plan-driven Hands Down

I love it and I agree. We are all looking for "The Answer" when we are it!

Challenging convention

An article that makes sense about marketing...this is rare for me.

I just heard a great quote

Great post on change without real change. Favorite quote "to paraphrase Brian Marick "Gone from 'this is the best project i've ever worked on' to 'thanks for making my job suck less." And it's hard to get excited about that.""

The Best Part of Lean

Reminder why Lean has the principle 'Respect For People'.

PTOM: Black-box analysis of legacy applications

Story of replacing an legacy system. Good story with lessons to boot.

Stuff I Have Found Interesting Today

The Secret To Boosting Your Effectiveness As A Project Manager

My experience agrees with her statement "You know failure to communicate is one of the biggest causes of project failure, don't you?" The post reminds me of Gerald Weinberg's Quality Software Management books.

Anti-Patterns and Worst Practices – The Arrowhead Anti-Pattern

This article explains this anti-pattern well and has example code.

Assessing Agile

A 30 minute presentation on the state of IT and how getting to be more agile requires a deeper understanding of where you really are. Of course there is a pitch at the end, but it's not too bad.

The 5 dysfunctions of teams in code

I've always been a believer in Conway's law and I now know where I got the quote "no matter what the problem is it's always a people problem" - Gerald Weinberg.

Popular languages on GitHub ranked by number of bytes stored

I was surprised that C was #1, C++ was #4.

Stuff I Have Found Interesting Today

Top 10 Lessons Learned in Interpersonal Skills

Great post on an area we all need help in from time to time. In summary the lessons are:

Lesson #1: Make Useful Assumptions

Lesson #2 Assume Positive Intent

Lesson #3: Know What You Want

Lesson #4: Meet People Where They Are

Lesson #5: Listen To Go Deep

Lesson #6: Choose Your Words Carefully

Lesson #7: Relationships Are About Perception

Lesson #8: Project and Expect The Best

Lesson #9: Keep Your Wits About You

Lesson #10: Create Change In Stages

Anti-Patterns and Worst Practices – You’re Doing it Wrong!

Some new anti-patterns (Arrowhead, Heisenbugs) and some familiar ones (Monster Objects & Utils Class).

How TDD and Pairing Increase Production

Good article debunking familiar reasons for not trying these best-in-class practices. The conclusion is worth repeating:

If you want to increase the productivity of your team, then do these three things:

1. write a microtest that fails before you change any code;
2. adopt a “no-pair no-keep” agreement;
3. establish a shared understanding of internal quality.

Stuff I Have Found Interesting Today

Blind To The Whole

Analysis on units per dealer for Honda, Toyota, Ford & Chrysler before and after the trimming. The only change in rank ordering was that Ford went from #3 to # 5.

A Clarion Call For Leadership

An update to his "The Hollow American Economy": A Clarion Call For Leadership "a little more positive and motivating".

Why The American Civil War Is Important

Engaging and funny post on a much covered topic, but he still managed to bring something new.

In Praise of Silence

Short and to the point. I use my hammock for just this purpose.

Vanity Metrics vs. Actionable Metrics

Good post on web site metrics with recommendations.

The value of a fresh mind

A good post on stepping away to be more productive.

Ignoring the Wisdom of Crowds

Good post explaining the wisdom of crowds and how they aren't creative.

Review of "Outliers"

Malcom Gladwell's latest, "Outliers", is subtitled "The Story of Success". It is a good read with great stories, good facts and interesting theories. Given that in hardback it is only 285 pages it is definitely worth the time even though he failed in his mission to transform the way I view success. Though, I can't fault him for having a lofty goal. The book is story driven and the introductory story, "The Roseto Mystery", is fascinating. Roseto, PA was founded by immigrants from Italy and became the focus of a study by Stewart Wolf due to their abnormally low rates of heart disease. Their environment, nutrition, heritage were all ruled out. It was caused because they were a close nit community.

The book is divided into two parts. Part one, opportunity, starts with a chapter titled "The Matthew Effect" with a subtitle from Matthew 25:29. He goes into a discussion of Canadian junior hockey and how the two best teams in the best league are predominately born in the first third of the year. The cut off for each league is Jan 1, thus the kids that are just about to turn 10 are in the same league as kids who just turned 9. The biggest and fastest are selected to play more often thus they get better. It's not just sports. Kelly Bedard & Elizabeth Dhuey found a advantage of 4-12 points on the TIMMSS scores for fourth graders who were older.

This is followed by "The 10,000-hour rule". The rule is that about how long it takes to master a skill. Lots of stories, including Bill Joy & Bill Gates, but the one that stuck with me was the a study done by K. Anders Ericsson on music students at Berlin's elite Academy of Music. They divided the violin students into three groups based on ability. The star group had all put in at least 10,000 hours of practice while no one in the other two groups had. The good group was around 8,000 and the worst group was at 4,000. Is is talent or hard work? The second observation was around the richest people ever (BTW #1 was JD Rockefeller at 318 billion in current dollars! Gates is only #37 with only 58b :-). 14 of the top 65 were born in America between 1831-1840. Just old enough to be able to take advantage of the oil & railroad boom, but not old enough to dismiss it as a fad. They were in the right place at the right time with their 10,000 hours.

The next two chapters two parts titled "The Trouble with Geniuses". Some interesting stories (most notably Christopher Langan), but the one that grabbed me was about Lewis Terman and his obsession with IQ scores among children. He documented the best of the best and found that his life work was basically an error as his "termites" didn't all become the leaders of their generation. They basically fell into three groups much like the violinists. The next chapter was titled "The Three Lessons of Joe Flom". The three lessons were "The importance of being Jewish, demographic luck & the garment industry and meaningful work". The chapter was interesting and showed that success isn't predictable. The best law firms of the time passed on Joe Flom, but being from a hard working family and willing to take any work laid the ground work for the opportunity of the 1970 corporate takeovers legal boom.

Part two, legacy, starts off with "Harlan, Kentucky", but I would have called it culture of honor after the book where he got the idea. The chapter can be summed up in the fact that your heritage (going back generations) effects who you are in profound ways. The next chapter, "The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes" continues this idea in a discussion of world cultures and their effect on airline cockpits. Cultures with high Power Distance Index (PDI) had higher rates of crashes than one's with low HDI. I'm glad they figured it out before I had to get on a plane with a Brazilian (#1 HDI) crew :-)

The next chapter is "Rice Paddies and Math Tests" which has some fascinating facts. Rice paddy farmers work an average of 3000 hours a year and the case is made that hard work is highly correlated to good scores on math tests. The TIMSS test has a questionnaire with 120 question. Erling Boe found that he could predict TIMSS outcomes based on the number of questions filled out in the questionnaire. The is followed by "Marita's Bargain" which tells the amazing story of the KIPP Academy. The part most interesting to me was the work of Karl Alexander. The city of Baltimore gave CATs at the beginning and end of the school year. They found that the poorest kids did the same (+189) if not better than the richest kids (+184) during the school year (the best performers where the middle class +214.) During the summer though the poorest kids gained 0.26, where as the richest kids gained 52 points!

He ends with a touching personal story, "A Jamaican Story", about his parents and his mother's parents. It is amazing and if you read nothing else it is worth the time of getting the book out of your local library just for these 16 pages. All in all a good book and one that makes you challenge assumptions we all make from time to time.

Stuff I Have Found Interesting Today

Understanding the President’s CAFE announcement

Very long and detailed. If you want to be informed please read.

Tesla now worth half GM's value

How far the mighty have fallen.

Jumping The 20 Fence

Good read. Some good stories with a point to boot. "...by “winning” I mean the client and their clients were stoked, and it literally made people cry...one of our User Acceptance participants (an actual rep) started to cry. "

Stuff I Have Found Interesting Today

60 Second Guide ot the US Budget 

A picture is worth a more than a thousand words in this case.

 

The Hollow American Economy

His draft paper is a good read. While I'm not sure manufacturing is the only answer the paper has these gems:

• "While Bernie Madoff will rightfully go to jail for his crimes, it can be argued that our entire economy has become a grand pyramid scheme – borrowing money we don’t have to buy real estate at ridiculous prices, to make money by selling it to someone else at an even greater price, and on and on until we inevitably run out of buyers and reality sets in – we have way more houses than people who really have the money to live in them and, like all pyramid schemes, the whole thing collapses. Only this has been a government sanctioned pyramid scheme – government urged for that matter – and the perpetrators are not going to jail – they are being made whole with even more borrowed money."
• "Very important questions must be asked and answered: If manufacturing cannot compete with American wage rates, how is it that Toyota and Honda do so well? Can legacy costs for old union agreements really account for the entire gap? Or is there more to it than that? What is the reason for the disparity between publicly and privately held companies – why do the privately held companies do so much better, and why are they less apt to outsource? "

 

More Good News

Hopefully this economist knows what he is talking about :-)

 

Shocking Survey Results about Performance Appraisal

I agree with this completely. I wonder when organizations get this simple fact.

 

RunPee.com Suggests the Best Movie Bathroom Breaks

A web app designed just for me!

 

Chartle.net Creates Venn Diagrams, Interactive Maps, and More

Looks cool.

 

The perils of not logging out

A 3 yr old buys a $15K digger on an auction website!

The Coming California Bailout

Will is particularly diatribic in this one. California is typically the leading indicator for political reform. I see higher debt and taxes for all.

 

Comparing Kanban to Scrum

Some good points. "Scrum like all early (first generation) Agile methods really do not change the project management paradigm very much." Kanban might be the next step in the evolution of software development. The key is to think of it as a step that is built upon/using good ideas of today (e.g. TDD).

 

CopyPasteTool is a Tiny, Dead-Simple Clipboard Helper

Small download and simple usage for those of us who live by copy and paste.

C# 4 and the dynamic keyword - Whirlwind Tour around .NET 4 (and Visual Studio 2010) Beta 1

A good description of the the "dynamic" keyword in C# 4 also some references to other dynamic languages as well as a high level review of the new DLR.

 

Clean Code and Battle Scarred Architecture

Most interesting to me is his formula "comp(f)² X (1 – cov(f)/100)3. + comp(f) Where comp(f) = the cyclomatic complexity of the function f. and cov(f) = the unit test coverage of function f." He aims for .1%. I wonder why such a complicated function is necessary, although I like the idea of a simple metric to keep a system from having a hidden ogre.

Stuff I Have Found Interesting Today

Measuring Perfomance on SCRUM & Re: Measuring Perfomance on SCRUM

Age old bad question and a rather decent follow up. Responses worth reading 38623 & 38638

 

Getting to Zero Defects

I didn't learn much, but I thought this post was well put together.

Metrics, Schmetrics & Metrics, Schmetrics - II

Good posts on metrics the good and the bad. Part II provides a good example of a project dashboard. I have been doing something similar for a few years and highly recommend it.

 

Kanban is a tool for tapping people's potential by fostering creative tension in the workplace

Has a good quote The Birth of Lean, a book I think I might like.

Australian doctor uses household drill to save boy

There is nothing more fascinating than reality.
 

ASP 4 - Whirlwind Tour around .NET 4 (and Visual Studio 2010) Beta 1

A good synopsis of C# 4.0 with examples. He covers Interop & COM changes in detail with CLR and DLR and BCL, oh my!. 

Stuff I Have Found Interesting Today

Everybody's Lying to You

The Motley Fool at its best! "Lie No. 1 -- Consumer spending will solve our problems... Lie No. 2 -- Housing will bounce back... Lie No. 3 -- (Insert name here) is too big to fail."

 

The Best Advice I have Received

Some interesting advice. My favorite is "If you get to thirty and you still think persuasion is about making a logical argument, you have already lost"

Old Growth Media And The Future Of News & The rebirth of news

Good articles on the potential future of news.

New Features for Amazon EC2: Elastic Load Balancing, Auto Scaling, and Amazon CloudWatch

Fascinating all of the things you can control on their cloud. This cloud idea has some legs.

Stuff I Have Found Interesting Today

Must read book: Brain rules

I have placed a hold at the library already. The author has a website (http://www.brainrules.net/) and a blog. Brain Rules for public speaking is particulary interesting and short. Here are some teasers from the review:

• Sleep makes your smarter - your brain processes information you need in your sleep

• Exercise makes you smarter - our brains and bodies work best when moving
• There is no scientific basis for how schools or courses are structured
• The left vs. right brain thing is waaaay overblown
• True multitasking is biologically impossible

When there's disagreement on feedback data

Some decent sounding advice on giving negative feedback.

 

Survey for Software Quality Attributes - Where Should We Focus?

I'm not a big into Quality Attributes, but I have found them useful in certain situations. The post has a nice Excel spreadsheet that would be useful if I need them again.

 

97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know: Book Review

Looks like a good book as it parrots many ideas I have. "Use before Reuse" was a term I used back in 1996.

 

Why Isn't My Encryption.. Encrypting?

Latest by Codinghorror is a good story and a lesson in "Understand All Parameters to Library Functions".

 

The Death of Richard Dawkins

A short story by Steve Yegge. It is humorous, a little confusing and makes me think, maybe I should just call it "Classic Yegge". I'm not sure how this story fits into his series "A programmer's view of the Universe" (part 1, part 2, part 3) I might find out in his next installment, but I might not.

Stuff I Have Found Interesting Today

Making history: President Obama's call to Gov. Jon Huntman Jr.

Obama picks a Republican Governor to be ambassador to China. I'm impressed.

 

The Dunbar Number as a Limit to Group Sizes 

An exploration of group sizes. The graph at the end is fascinating if it is true...group satisfaction is highest at 7 and then again around 50, with a dip in between.

Greed's Saving Graces 
Will on efficient markets versus regulation. The article is best summed up in this quote "Greed is worse than a moral defect; it is a cause of foolish pricing. That is why markets know it when they see it. And when markets are allowed to operate, greed generates its own punishment." The key is information flow.

Google patent on floating data centers

Instead of SkyNet it will be OceanNet that is the ruin of civilization :-)

How to Start with Kanban

A simple overview of a Kanban process. Has a lot in common with other process improvement techniques, but the focus is on pull rather than push. 

The LoC Misintegration

Some interesting points about the nature of programming languages. Introduces the term "referential transparency" and dismisses Java as impractical. All in 10 paragraphs!

Review of "The Element"

I recently finished "The Element" subtitled "How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything" by Ken Robinson. I think it is worth the read as it is only 260 pages and has some good ideas and some great stories. It starts off with the title of the book and entices you with stories and a general criticism of public education as done today. He then goes into a decent discussion of intelligence with extra attention debunking IQ tests.

Creativity is the next topic. I loved the relative pictures of the planets. Some great stories including one on my favorite physicist, Richard Feynman. He ends with a great quote from William James "...if you change your mind, you can change your life." Next topic is the zone which wasn't new for me, but his history of Myers-Briggs was. He claims they were unqualified to make such a test and research shows it to be unpredictable for judging anyone. He recommends the HDBI.

Finding your tribe is next. The stories were good, but the material was lacking. I think the Internet and it's various ways of connecting with people would have fit nicely here. Maybe I should read "Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us" by Seth Godin. Next was what could be stopping you is your fear of other's opinions. Again, nothing new but some good stories.

Luck was next and it made up for the last two chapters by shining a light on "The Luck Factor" by Richard Wiseman. Wiseman identified 4 principles that characterized people who call themselves lucky:

• Maximize chance opportunities
  
• Listen to their intuition
  
• Expect to be lucky
  
• Don't allow events to deter them
  

People who call themselves unlucky have the opposite. In Wiseman's eyes luck is attitude!

Next he covers the roles of a mentor (recognition, encouragement, facilitating & stretching). He follows that by talking about a fear of age, "is it too late?" Good coverage of how age and health are affected by creativity and doing something you love, shockingly the point of the book. Next is on doing something for love or money. Nothing new there. His last chapter is a condemnation of how we run our public schools and a Utopian, highly impractical approach he recommends. 

While I agree that test driven education is completely wrong, I'm not sure his recommendation is actionable. Maybe I'm wrong, but I haven't met a teacher who thinks that time spent preparing the students for standardized tests is beneficial to the students. Education is tricky because it is so dependent on the one being educated.

Stuff I Have Found Interesting Today

What Ms. Pelosi Knew - It's a good question, but not the only important one in this torture debate
I am not interested in either party's attempt to make the other look bad, but this article isn't about that and it had a good quote at the end " It was a collective failure in which a number of officials and members of Congress and staffers of both parties played a part . . . Precisely because this was a collective failure it is all the more important to comprehend it and learn from it." 

 

The Invisible Hand Hoax 
I always wondered about this quote from Adam Smith...now I now the REAL "TRUTH" :-)

 

Keeping Your Pints Honest

I can almost get behind this idea as I hate "pints" that are small, but come on...a LAW?!?

 

PHOTO: Ian Hall writes: "Last night I was passively

A great example of easy customer service via technology from NetFlix.

 

Search Options
Google had added some cool search options.

 

Congratulations, Google staff: $210k in profit per head in 2008
I had no idea Google was making this much and I'm a sucker for graphs!

Go Fragile! Fear-Driven Development

Some Friday humor.

 

Statistical Data Mining Tutorials

Not an interesting read, but a neat reference. 

 

Why I don't use CouchDB

I almost didn't read this as I thought is was going to be a rant. I was pleased to find a well done critique that asks some good questions and provides examples of other products that do it better. I am no DB expert, but I find articles like this one informative.

 

The Security Implications Of Google Native Client

I did not read this as security implications typically bore me, but it was cool that Google's Native Client can run Quake!
 

To Test or Not to Test? That’s a Good Question  

Fairly long story to get to his point, but I liked the story.

 

Priyesh's Law of Excessive Separation | Elegant Code

Funny and short..now to use it myself :-)

Project-wide controller survey through reflection

Cool .NET 3.5 code using LINQ with reflection...very cool.

 

Null Is Not Empty

Great post about NULL and C# nullable types. 

Stuff I Have Found Interesting Today

Comparison Shopping: The real reason CEO compensation got out of hand

Much like pro-athletes CEO's get more because of their peers, but with CEO's the peer selection process is usually skewed. This gem near the end sums it up nicely "We all want to be a little better than average, and for board members who like to think they have an above-average CEO, this may translate into the choice of a relatively favorable pay package and a set of peers to match."

Total Company Involvement

Good story and a point to boot.

Why Do Computers Suck at Math?

It is always good to review the basics, but I can't help but think we need to get to a place where programmers shouldn't care and let the computer figure it out. While computers are bad at thinking they are excellent at computations.

 

Tincture of Lawlessness

George Will's latest rant. Admittedly he is not objective, but the he is reliable and this is disturbing:

• "California...trimmed $74 million...cost the state $5.42 billion last year...But the Service Employees International Union collects nearly $5 million a month from 223,000 caregivers who are members. And the Obama administration has told California that unless the $74 million in cuts are rescinded, it will deny the state $6.8 billion in stimulus money. "
• "The administration proposes that Chrysler's secured creditors get 28 cents per dollar on the $7 billion owed to them but that the United Auto Workers union get 43 cents per dollar on its $11 billion in claims -- and 55 percent of the company."

 

Present.io Sets Up No-Software-Needed Web Presentations

Cool service (free with limits). Watch out WebEx!

Anxiety or Boredom Driven Process Improvement?

I do not agree with the reasoning in this blog, but I like the graph.

TeamCity.CodeBetter Project List

An interesting list of projects to check out when one has the time.

 

Nuts & Bolts: Campfire loves Erlang.

Erlang love from a Ruby shop...interesting in it's own right!

Stuff I Have Found Interesting Today

Is the Stock Market an "Efficient" Market?

Long but very informative of how/why bubbles exist. Some gems "...Federal Reserve should have lanced the housing bubble no later than 2006..." and ended with "Even if the Federal Reserve could not have spotted the housing or credit or stock market bubbles before they burst, it knew or should have known that these booms could be bubbles and that if so they would burst and when they burst they could bring down the economy. This made the expected cost of the booms high, even though that cost could not be quantified...high enough to justify intervention, or, at the very least, the formulation of contingency plans to deal with worst-case scenarios." We don't need more regulation/government but we need action by the organizations we already have.

 

Let’s Avoid Other New Deal Policy Blunders

Good read on the past, present and future of Government spending in the name of recovery. Some gems:

• "Based on budget deficits as a share of G.D.P., Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were the most Keynesian presidents with budget deficits exceeding 4 percent of G.D.P. in seven out of their 12 years in office."
• "The largest Bush deficit was 3.2 percent of G.D.P. in 2008. ...President Obama and the Democratic Congress agreed on a fiscal stimulus package of nearly $800 billion in mid-February. This appears to be a true Keynesian push. ...budget deficit of nearly 10 percent of G.D.P. for 2009."

 

Why Jeff Bezos Is Obsessed With Waste

A good post with this gem at the top "...one of our Kaizen experts asked me, “I’m in favor of a clean fulfillment center, but why are you cleaning? Why don’t you eliminate the source of dirt?” I felt like the Karate Kid."

 

Bug Squash – Another Software Team Anti Pattern

Good story that I have experienced..this was preaching to my choir!

 

REST – Good, Bad and Ugly

Best one pager on REST that I have read.

 

why even defect prevention isn’t enough

A good story on defect prevention and root cause analysis.

 

We have a Knol for Dummies.com winner!

The winner"How to Talk to Your Doctor" is good advice.

  

The Evolution of a Website Design

The guy goes through his design of a new website blow by blow over 4 days. I see some flaws, but I think it is a good design. You can see the final version @ http://stackoverflow.carsonified.com/.

Stuff I Have Found Interesting Today

The Epitome of Waste

This consultant dug through the Chrysler bankruptcy papers to see they had "...40 people at the average dealer to sell and take care of 1.5 cars sold per day.  Plus another 3 or 4 people back at Chrysler to handle the paperwork." Toyota sold 1.5 times the number of cars with less than half the number of dealers. "As the lean community knows all too well - DIRECT LABOR IS NOT THE PROBLEM!" Great quote from Will Rodgers to boot "If advertisers spent the same amount of money on improving their products as they do on advertising, then they wouldn't have to advertise them."

Ignore sunk costs

Great point that is useful for everyday life.

 

A planetarium in your pocket 

I now want an android phone...too cool!

ManagementSpeak

"He operates at a strategic level, not the day-to-day work you’re involved in. Translation: He sits in his office, reading the Wall Street Journal and playing Sudoku, and will get the credit for anything you achieve."

One of the toughest job-interview questions ever 
Good story on the validity of problem questions. BTW I had never heard of the cuckoo hashing algorithm either!

John Heintz on the Lean & Kanban 2009 Conference 
Kanban is the new BUZZ WORD. I haven't seen anything worth reading until this one line: Kanban is "...Limit the number of things in work to a fixed number." I'm not sure that a fixed number is all that important, but I'm not omniscient.

 

Axum – Introduction and Ping Pong Example 

This is looking like a cool project. It in reminiscent of ROOM (Bran Selic) in that it uses Actors and Ports. I also like their attitude "Download it, use it in anger, and give the team feedback on the MSDN forum."

Debugging: Get to a stage where it works

Another good use of version control.

Sneek Peek at StoryTeller (i.e. my FitNesse killer for .Net)

Interesting tool and competition is always a good thing.

Stuff I Have Found Interesting Today

The Screw-Me Scenario

Rands on meeting preperation and how to handle the time when someone tries to give you the screw. Thought proking and useful as ususal.

 

Vote for the national Doodle 4 Google winner

Some neat doodles from all school age groups. Look even if you don't care to vote.

 

Tackling the risk early on at a task level

A short story about how one person uses risk to decide what to tackle first. I recommend taking the most valuable feature slice first with TDD. Hook up the GUI last and then do basic testing before acceptance testing by the user. I have done things described in this story, but I find them to be less productive then a user slice first mentality.

 

Sam Maloof, master furniture craftsman 
Fascinating man who builds furniture by hand and is 93. My favorite line is "He doesn’t take measurements before he starts a project."

The American Press on Suicide Watch

Good article that asks some good questions about the current state of the news media.

 

Why the sea is boiling hot

A post in response to We need both engineers and artists in programming which was a post in reponse to Uncle Bob's keynote at  the latest Rails Conference. Even if you are now confused, this post by Uncle Bob is worth reading if you are in the software field or call yourself a professional.

Stuff I Have Found Interesting Yesterday & Today

Take the Initiative

Oswald Chamber's reiterating that God will not force us "We have to take the initiative where we are, not where we have not yet been."

Magic Ink

I haven't read something this good and thought provoking in a long time. If you write software please read this. The current state of UI is bad. Hopefully some of these ideas will be incorporated into tools for designers to use when building web apps. It will happen one way or another. 

What happened to Microsoft?

Paul Graham predicted Microsoft's decline in April 2007. This guy further outlines the decline. I wouldn't put any money on MSFT. I think they are "too big to succeed".

Smalltalk: Our Death has been Exaggerated

RT by Uncle Bob. Shows he is open to being told he is wrong...I like that.

A re-introduction to JavaScript & Javascript in Ten Minutes

I am reading and learning more about JavaScript lately. Given that it's Google language of choice I might have no choice in the near future (when Google rules the world ;-)

Stuff I Have Found Interesting Today

Correction: Facebook Does Not Make You Stupid

I can finally use Facebook without harm ;-)

Does WalMart Have the Right Idea? 

A link to a paper that shows what I have always felt about unions in the 21st century.

Eight Best Practices for Building Scalable Systems

A concise list for scalability. I can't think of anything else to add.

The First Axum Bits Are Now Available

Looks neat...if I only had time to play with it!

Thanks to Reginald Braithwaite for correcting me on his review of the book "Learned Optimsm" that I linked to on 5/2.

Stuff I Have Found Interesting Today

A Textbook Example of What’s Wrong with Education 

A former schoolbook editor parses the politics of educational publishing.

A trio of Google posts (all hail the overlords)

• Tuning in to TV data Have you ever read 1984? This is interesting and a little scary.
• Reducing our carbon footprint Google has a Green Energy Czar??? I think they are doing some cool things, but they are starting to scare me a little.
• The 2008 Founders' Letter Sergey's founder letter in the Google annual report. Some interesting history as well as some cool projects are mentioned, but it is long.

The Obama Administration's Adventures in Running Chrysler and General Motors

George F. Will latest is just preaching to my choir. I can not stand the fact that a failed company gets billions in TAX PAYER money. I disagreed with Bush's bailout, but this UAW owning large voting shares it's #1 employers is too scary to fathom. The ultimate loser is Ford Motor Co.

More chess, less violence

I would like this to work, but I can't help being pessimistic.

Formula for Success?  
Interesting dive into the formula for deriving disbursement of the transportation stimulus funding to the states.

Risk is the Water in Which the Agile Fish Swims

Great line and picture worth seeing from Ron Jeffries' newly reincarnated blog

Gold Card Days

Interesting idea. I am more of the mind that Part of your job should be to learn, but I think it is worth the read and maybe even more.

Art of distributed

An interesting article on distributed processing models. Specifically Grid Computing, Master/Worker and MapReduce. Good explanation of the three and recommendations for which type of app fits each one. 

Aristotle's Error or Agile Smagile 
Uncle Bob called it back in 2003! Agile Smagile is my new favorite phrase :-)

Three Designing Bears

Is Kent Beck saying he is Goldilocks? Good read on how to not spend too much time generalizing a solution you don't need now.

 

DOM Storage: a Cure for the Common Cookie

Finally a standardized solution to the stupid cookie!

Microwaving Beats Boiling for Veggies

That's news to me!

 

http://www.foundationsof.com/

Has free e-books and links to some cool tools. My favorite (I haven't used them all) is Balsamiq Mockup for UI mock ups.

Another TDD Tutorial

Has a link to a list of TDD tutorials as well as a link to a draft book.

Stuff I Have Found Interesting Today

I Just Logged In As You: How It Happened

A funny story about how a famous software blogger got hacked by not following his own advice. I concur that outsourcing credentials is a good idea. If you don't trust Google OpenID then who can you trust as they have the keys to the kingdom right now.

Negotiate Your Salary More Effectively

I don't think I could do this as it requires silence on my part :-)

Mega-Regions and High-Speed Rail

Long article on high speed rail, capitalism and politics with some stats to boot. Good read.

Links from Tom Hume

Some gems include

• http://graphjam.com/ An online Graph sharing service. Looks cool.
• T-Mobile sold 1 million G1s
  
• Jeff Patton on kanban Long read on how a group at Yahoo applied Lean Kanban to Scrum. I like the idea, but I think it is less than ideal. I like and have used MMF (minimal market feature) but I like to call them features. I then pan using feature slices that are done in 1-3 days. I like one week interations for the development team, but not for the customer. The customer does not care about slices. They want MMFs that they can sell, market and or use to make money.

How to know what Oracle will do with Java

Interesting take on the purchase. I hope JavaFX lives as it sounds like cool technology.

Freezer Helps Make Cooking Cheaper and Easier

Some of these I knew and do. Others where interesting.

Six Easy Ways to Graph Your Life

Lots of cools ways to track stuff you do for those who like to track stuff.

A GPS for the TPS

Targets TPS, but can be easily adapted for any improvement effort.

A testing survey on a large project

Some real life examples of how you can't use just one testing strategy on a large project.

Re: TDD and up-front design

Great response to a common question. I love the quote "...early days of TDD had a bit of a "Look ma! No hands" quality to them."

Stuff I Have Found Interesting Today

Spolsky: Why Circuit City Failed, and Why B&H Thrives

Sad epilogue to what once was a Richmond jewel. OTOH why didn't he write about B&H BEFORE I spent spring break in Manhattan!

True believers: The biggest cults in tech 

Entertaining list. My favorites are "Brotherhood of the Ruby" and "The Commodorians".

“Scala and Lift — Functional Recipes for the Web” (PDF)

As I browsed this I see that Scala has Actors and Messages for concurrency. When I worked at the Consortium we ran across a great book on real-time OO (Real-Time Object-Oriented Modeling) by Bran Selic who I had the fortune of meeting a few times. Is Scala taking Selic's ideas and extending them into the 21th century?

Agile is designed to deal with... 
I didn't look at the referenced 95 slides, but I did like the one.

Re: What's a good velocity?

Great response "Velocity is not a goal; it's a measurement." It has more including a link to Should we measure velocity?

To MVC or to WebForms?

Short and funny about the .NET blogs wars over the web app development on .NET.

Stuff I Have Found Interesting Today

Ten Things I Have Learned 

Part of AIGA Talk by Milton Glaser. Good read about life.

A New Look at Old Demographic Myths

Fascinating quote “In 2050, according to United Nations projections, it is possible that nearly as many babies will be born in the United States as in China.”

Structural Waste

Good story about waste and your perspective.

The Partial Project Manager 

Great description of how a PM interacts with a project. Definitely matches my experience as a PM on a multi-million dollar project. I had no real power and no way to talk to everyone, but I managed to be effective.

The Lean System is Making the Most of What You've Got

Good post on why lean isn't just a Japanese car manufacturing technique.

Re: BTUF (was Skewering management theory)

Ron's Response to message 4287. I never read it quite that way before. Good representation of why/how Agile works with respect to acceptance tests and interaction with the customer.

Top ten geek business myths

Fun read and I bet some of you believe some of these :-)

Can we avoid tooling to prevent spaghetti code?

Interesting use of a tool to point out where the spaghetti is. Quite long, but the pictures are cool.

Guis, Processes, Threads, Simplicity - A Personal Manifesto

Great post if you are a programmer. This is my favorite section:

Recently I have wasted more time than I care to mention on the

intersection between threads and processes... and have written these

rules into my soul.

a) Prefer single process to multi.

b) Prefer multi-process to multi-thread.

c) A process may invoke a multi-threaded app (if it must), but

invoking "fork" from a multi-threaded app is too fraught with

subtleties. It can be done, but if you want it reliable... don't.

Stuff I Have Found Interesting Today

Is There Anything Good About Men?

A fascinating long article about sexual differences. Some gems:

• men outnumbered women both among the losers and among the biggest winners

• On theTitanic, the richest men had a lower survival rate (34%) than the poorest women (46%)

• To maximize reproduction, a culture needs all the wombs it can get, but a few penises can do the job

• Men go to extremes more than women, and this fits in well with culture using them to try out lots of different things, rewarding the winners and crushing the losers

• I’m not saying it’s right, or fair, or proper. But it has worked.

Optimism

An interesting post by Reginald Braithwaite about how he applied the book "Learned Optimism". Optimism can be learned and has a huge effect on your environment(be it work or home). I didn't articulate his review very well, so thanks Reginald I now have:

When criticizing be specific, temporary, and impersonal, when praising be general, permanent, and personal.

Why ugly teams win
A good article from what appears to be a good book. Worth the fairly short read.

Three Chopt Elementary chess team is fourth in U.S

Pretty cool that a school in my area did this well and is covered by a chess blog I read daily! I have met the Wolfe's and had no idea the kid was this good when I said we should play....luckily he decided not to embarrass me.

Soft Skills - What do they have to do with Scrum?

The focus is Scrum, but I think the skills put forth are interesting (Well Developed "Theory of Mind", Value Orientation, Clarity of Communication, Transparency, and An Open Heart)

Top YouTube Videos of All Time

Amazing numbers...#1 has over 356 MILLION views! Some classics in here. My favorite is #13.

Top 10 Battery Hacks, Tips, And Tricks [Lifehacker Top 10]

I follow some of these already, but there are some neat tricks here.

Stuff I Have Found Interesting Today

Commitment-based iteration planning 

I agree with this post.I think points get in the way more than they help. The goal is to have the business decide on priority and have the team commit to delivery. The only numbers I would use would be for helping the business prioritize by tells them rough levels of effort. If option A is 10 times more effort than option B, option A becomes less important even though it is the preferred option.

A group of cavers exploring the Vietnamese jungle say they've come across the world's biggest cave 

From a chess blog no less.

How to Motivate Developers - A three step framework

The embedded Dilbert strip is worth the click. A decent article that has some basic advice. If anything seems surprising then you are either a bad manager or have always had bad managers.

Top Project Management Postings: April 2009

I haven't had the time to peruse this list just yet...let me know if they are as good as they look.

There is Something Wrong at UPS

This story beings on a happy note. For Christmas, my lovely wife gave me VA Wine of the Month. It's great. Every month I get a red and a white from a different Virginia winery with an article on the winery and detailed description of each wine with matching recipes! This month's wine first came to my door on Tuesday. I get home to see the ugly UPS sticker. I had to get my son to baseball so I placed on the counter to deal with later. We won the game and came home tired around 8pm. My wife asks about the package. I read the fine print and after a bit I see the phone number and the fact that you have to call before 7pm to effect delivery. I hope that on the second attempt the delivery person comes at a time when we are home. Also this is just the first attempt ( a little foreshadowing :-)

Wednesday I get home to yet another ugly sticker. That's two straight days before 5pm...hmmm I think I should call them. My wife had to run an errand and the kids needed dinner so low and behold it is after 7pm before I remember to call. I see on the "helpfull" sticker that you can also do this from ups.com! Great! I go through the broken process of trying to find out how to change my delivery and enter in Friday with a note that I will be at home after 1pm. All is going well until Thursday. I get home to....you guessed it..another bloody sticker. The delivery times were all between 2 and 3pm on three consecutive days. I call customer service because now I am a little upset and I need to find out how to get my package. The lady of phone was nice enough and told be that the 7pm deadline applied to online as well (what's the point of having it then?) She politely gave me the address of the location to pick it up. It was 28 miles from my house and 12 miles, in the opposite direction, from where I work!

I was leaving early on Friday so I figure I'll just "swing" by and get home about an hour later than planned. A hassle, but the wine is worth it :-) I show up and there are two employees and one customer in the customer service area of the massive shipping facility (with two guards at the entrance no less). One employee tells me the other one will be with me shortly as she quickly departs the area. The customer leaves and the employee takes my slip (the one from the FINAL shipment notice) and quickly walks out of sight. Two more customers come in. One with a pakcage and another in my line to pick something up. 

I engage in conversation to learn she called just before 7pm to change shipment to today, but when she asked to speak with a person to verify she would be home, the person told her it was after seven, so they couldn't change delivery! She was told to call at 7am on Friday to verify the package would be at the shipment facility before she picked it up between 10am and 6pm. She called at the required time and was told they couldn't find her package in the system and it would be best if she called the facility when it opened at 10am. She called at 10 and after escalating she got someone to say they would find her package and have it waiting for her by noon. She asked them to call her when they found it, but no call came. She called at noon and they had it. At this point I am thinking "at least I have it better than her."

Another employee entered and took care of the other customer and then she takes the slip from the lady I was talking to. She comes back in seconds with her package...my first hint there a problem. I ask the employee if everything was OK with mine as I hadn't seen the person who took my slip for a while and I hoped it wasn't being delivered to my home right now. The employee that took slip walks in and asks me if anyone will be home around 3pm. I say yes, then she tells me it is on the truck!?!

I drive the 28 miles home trying to forget this whole ordeal. My mom arrives and we go to the bus stop to get the kids just after 2pm. As we are waiting a UPS truck drives by. My wife tells me to hurry home. I walk as fast as possible to catch the guy waiting for me with my wine! A happy ending after all.

I know I only have two data points, but I gotta believe the shipping market is ripe for the picking with customer service as bad as this!