W@rfi Blog

All of you had definitely heard of a buzzword “Agile”. The mostly used words whenever some geeks discussing the development approaches, processes, management style blah blah blah. You will hear these terms Agile development, Agile design, Agile modeling, Agile testing, Agile project management, Agile roll out planning, Agile decision making, Agile Scrum, Agile languages, Agile database, Agile programming, Agile assembly, Agile game development, Agile thinking, Agile usability, Agile IT… You must be “Agile overload” now

I have all my sympathies with this word as its been used wrongly most often. Normally its being used to defend when someone is trying to hide his mistakes of violating company’s policies or processes etc. When I finally digged into real details for Agile after hearing a lot of differentiating opinions, I thought to share it with all of you as well.

Manifesto

First of all we should know who started thinking about Agile and what were the principles upon which its foundation had been built. In 2001 seventeen software anarchists met to agree upon the following principles that was later recognized as agile. These values are phrased as preferences for one aspect of software development over another:

• Individuals and interactions over process and tools.
• Working software over comprehensive documentation.
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
• Responding to change over following a plan.

For complete details, refer to this web page http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/mar07/pollice/index.html.

Is my project Agile?

After taking a look at manifesto, still what project should be regarded as Agile or non-Agile? Secondly, may we designate some part of a project as Agile and the rest as non-Agile? Does implementing continuous integration and unit test automation makes my project Agile? There are a lot of questions. I think we may come up with something like:

• You have frequent releases and deliverable.
• You welcome and manage change requests.
• Larger projects changing into smaller applications is also a possibility you need to provide for.
• You work closely with the client and/or business experts to provide a real business solution.
• There are no fixed bids.
• You wanted to be flexible and your client also wants the same.

May be you can add a couple of more items to the above list. The point is to know for yourself do you wanted to go for Agile and then really go for it. Remember one thing always “its not about Agile, its about success” as says Gary Pollice.

Drawbacks

Know for yourself what are the drawbacks or using Agile or let me re-phrase, when Agile should not be used:

• Do not use Agile if your team size is more than 80 and increasing.
• Do not go for Agile if the management style is not Agile. If the management is bureaucratic and you wanted Agile, you will definitely be pissed off.
• People are inflexible and/or unable to react to change, using agile will be too hard for them to follow.
• Stakeholders are unwilling to be involved actively. They like to invest time to make decisions.

At the end, before taking any decision do learn about it. Read this story about 6 blind men and an elephant, if you have not already read. As you take a decision think twice about this story to reach towards a good conclusion

admin Agile, Management Agile Assembly, Agile Design, Agile Development, Agile Programming, Agile Project Management, Agile Scrum, Anarchists, Blah Blah, Buzzword, Change Requests, continuous integration, Contract Negotiation, Customer Collaboration, Development Approaches, Frequent Releases, Game Development, Management Style, Test Automation, Unit Test, Working Software

I have always wondered why producing an error is sometimes OR often treated as a sin. One of the major reason is the illusion that software development is somewhat similar to production. On the basis of this illusion, it is considered that:

• Errors can be eliminated.
• Humans can be treated as interchangeable parts.
• Processes can be followed blindly

The above and a lot more illusions can be associated within a production environment but not within development environment. For a thinking worker, making an occasional mistake is natural and healthy as well. But an error on job should be discriminated from a sin. One very clear definition says that errors can be recovered but a sin is not reversible. So if something is reversible that should not be considererd a sin.

For instance, if a product is designed and somehow design changes are required such that the older design need to be thrown away. Management tend to be very strict about it but it needs to understand that it is part of the design activity and that is what design phase is all about. Managers feel this would pose an impossible  political problem for them. They seem to believe that they’d be better off using the same defective version even though it might cost more in the long run. Prevailing an environment that does not allow for error simply makes people defensive. They stop doing any experimentation and looking for new horizons. It happens usually when strict methodologies are imposed. Rather the people should be encouraged to make some errors by asking them what dead end roads they have been throw in their career. Think if any of your people says they have not produced any errors, it will make you feel the opponenet is either a dumb or making you a fool. All those dead end roads make up your experience after all.

Managers need to understand that they can kick the asses to make people active but not to make them creative. Creativity is required in every job that requires head rather than hand. Managers tend to adopt an attitude that everyone is replaceable. Using this mentality, it seems like manager may place an order in store like: “Send me a new Grady but make him less arrogant”.

admin Management Creativity, Defective Version, Design Changes, Design Phase, Development Environment, Job, Methodologies, New Horizons, Occasional Mistake, People, Production Environment, Sin, Software Development

In the beginning of this week, when I tried to log into my wordpress, I came to know my password has been modified. Then immediately as I opened my website, it was redirected to some other url. When I contacted my ISP, I came to know the server has been hit by brute force attack. Then this is what I have done:

- Copied index.php again from word press to my website so that it stops redirecting itself.

- In order to recover my admin password for my word press, I googled and came across this url: http://www.zappersoftware.com/Help/md5.php which helps generating password in MD5 format. I copied the MD5 password and connected to my word press database and modified my admin password. This time I included special characters as well for more protection.

admin Wordpress Brute Force Attack, Isp Server, Md5 Password, Password Word, Recover Password, Recover Word, Url, Word Press, Wordpress

Belonging to software industry, you must have faced times some project failing you were a part of. Have you ever thought, why a software project fails? You will think there could be unlimited scenarios. Yes, you are right there are unlimited scenarios but just handful of advices.

See there had been thousands of ERP projects finished since someone started working on them but still today some ERP project will be failing somewhere. Imagine, some project requiring no technical invention is still failing. By this we can think more often technology is not a barrier to project failure but the culprit is somewhere else.

According to a survey conducted by Tom and Timothy, 15% of smaller projects around 5-10 man years and 25% of bigger projects 15-25 man years failed. The real name of game is “Politics”, yes the filthy thing absorbed into our organizations that don’t let people do work and spoil them as well.

Under “politics” I would put things as communication problems, staffing problems, disenchantment with the boss or with the client, lack of motivation, and high turnover. If you see a problem as political in nature, you tend to be fatalistic about it. You are confident you can stand up to technical challenges, but honestly, who among us can feel confident in the realm of politics? Only a technical politician that can cause real problems   Always look around for them and beware

Sociology is something that seem outside of our field of expertise but its not beyond our capabilities.  Whatever we name these people-related problems, they may cause issue in our next project or task that we should be capable to handle it.

Most Managers know for themselves that they’ve got more people worries than technical worries. But you will seldom see they manage that way. They manage as technology is the prime concern. They spend their most of the time resolve puzzles that they people have to solve, as they themselves have to do the work rather than managing it. Moreover, they are always looking for some magic that can automate most of their work. The most strongly people-oriented aspects are often given the lowest priority.

This is due to the fault in our the upbringing of the average manager. S/he is educated on how the job is done, not how the job is managed. They’ve got very little management experience and no meaningful practice. So how do new managers succeed in convincing themselves that they can safely spend most of their time thinking technology and no time to think about people related issues.

admin Management Boss, Capabilities, Communication Problems, Culprit, Handful, Invention, Lack Of Motivation, Politician, Prime Concern, Puzzles, Resolve, Scenarios, Sociology, Software Industry, Software Project, Technical Challenges, Turnover, Worries

I feel deep sorrow over the incident happened with Sri Lankan team here in Pakistan. As a Pakistani, I feel sorrow and ashamed as well not being able to provide you (Sri Lankan Team) with the hospitality and security that you (Sri Lankan Team) deserve. We Pakistanis condemn all such terrorist activities and would like to stand by you. Please accept our sorrow, and grief over this incident. We would like to play with your team again and again. And please do not consider this incident to stop playing cricket with us OR may it effect Pakistan’s relationship with Sri Lanka.

I do not have a lot of words to condol you as I am short of words and words might not heal all of it.

Please send this message of condolence to all of the following:

Duleep Mendis
Chief Executive Officer
Email: ceo@srilankacricket.lk

Charith Senanayake
Head of Marketing
Email: homarketing@srilankacricket.lk

Ashley de Silva
Head of Operations
Email: dco@srilankacricket.lk

Jerome Jayaratne
Head of Coaching
Email: coachingdepartment@srilankacricket.lk

Chandramalie Korale
Head of Finance
Email: hofinance@srilankacricket.lk

Media Manager
Email: media@srilankacricket.lk

B H Perera
Administration Manager
Email: admin@srilankacricket.lk

Chandima Mapatuna
Manager – Tournaments
Email: tournament@srilankacricket.lk

Ronnie Gunaratne
Manager – Umpires
Email: umpires@srilankacricket.lk

Chanaka Senanayake
Head of Legal & HR
Email- legal@srilankacricket.lk

Above addresses are taken from http://www.srilankacricket.lk/contact_us.asp

admin Misc Administration Manager, Chief Executive Officer, Cricket, De Silva, Deep Sorrow, Duleep Mendis, Grief, Hospitality, Marketing Email, Message Of Condolence, Pakistanis, Sri Lankan Team, Srilankacricket, Terrorist Activities

Sometimes during dot net development, you face this error while trying to open a web application project

Error Creating Control – control_Name

‘/LM/W3SVC/1/Root/Project_Name’ is not a valid IIS application. This error normally occurs if you have defined a sub folder as a virtual directory that is already within a virtual directory.

Solution

You can resolve this error by following the below steps , the root cause of this error is the incorrect mapping between web application project and the virtual directory in your IIS.

Follow these steps to resolve this issue:

1-Right click – you web application project and select Properties -> Web

2- In the server section choose Use IIS Web Server -> then click Create Virtual. If the URL is already provided but not correct one, modify it accordingly.

3- Clean your project and compile again.

You are done

admin .Net .Net, Application Solution, Control, Net Control, Net Development, Project Control, Root Project, Virtual Directory, Web Application Project, Web Control, Web Server