After two years and three months I’m happy to announce that I’m back at InfoSupport again.

In those two years I did some interesting work at Getronics on their Getronics Delivery Process (a RUP based Software Factory), worked on several project for the Dutch Taxservice, participated in several CMMI appraisals and was given the opportunity to take a close look at Getronics Indian development partner Mindtree. My one week visit to their office at Bangalore was a real eye-opener for me and was the beginning of several close personal relationships.

When I left InfoSupport some two years ago, the option to return was explicitly kept open and I’m glad to be back as a member of the Infosupport Professional Development Center.

My first two weeks are interesting from the start. I participated as a scribe in a SCAMPI-C CMMI level 3 Assesment supporting the Lead Appraiser Simon Porro from SPI Partners. Next job is working together with Ivar Jacobson International on process improvement using EssUp.

I wil pick up blogging and jumping to conclusions right now at http://blogs.infosupport.com/harryn/default.aspx

Hope to see you all back there.

Harry Nieboer

Last months I was too busy to keep up blogging, but better times are coming!

I have spent lots of time getting things organized for my mother. After a long wait we found a good place for her in a home for elderly right here at Nijmegen (Netherlands) at 10  minutes biking from my place.

So last months we did her removal to Nijmegen, emptied my mothers house, sold lots of furniture and other things on internet and finally, this week,  sold the house.

For my company, Getronics, I also participated in a trip to our offshoring partner Mindtree in India. That made another busy week with long, interesting days. I must say that I’m really excited about the things I saw at Mindtree. I’ll blog on that soon.

Tomorrow night I’ll deliver a presentation on our Indian trip (Getronics organizes an Indian Night with food and presentations). I’m having 40 sheets, 30 minutes, expect 20 questions and have 10 long answers. Not exactly the 10-20-30 rule on presenting from Guy Kawasaki.

After that, I’m going to take it easy for a couple of evenings, read some articles and books (especially Karl Wieger’s More about Software Requirements) and pick up blogging again.

See you all soon

Harry

Guy Kawasaki (from my post last year on top ten lies of engineers) has a 10/20/30  rule for any PowerPoint presentation aiming to reach agreement.

It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points.

An example are presentations used to convince venture specialists to invest in your product. According to Guy, the ten slides should be:

1. Problem
2. Your solution
3. Business model
4. Underlying magic/technology
5. Marketing and sales
6. Competition
7. Team
8. Projections and milestones
9. Status and timeline
10. Summary and call to action

As you can see, another use for the RUP problem statement (1. Problem) and product-position statement (2. Your Solution).

How To Be A Good Product Manager is a blog written by Jeff Lash that provides regular tips on good product management practices. While it focuses more on managing technical and online products, most of the concepts are appropriate for broader product management purposes.

I especially like the format of the posts, which follow the format:

If you want to be a bad productmanager, <follow some things you should not do>

If you want to be a good productmanager, keep reading ->

I was attracted to this site by the post stating Track customer requests appropriately and gave some RUP-related advice there: use your problem statement and product-position statement as tools for deciding which customer requests to include in your next release.

In a fine article on “The Toyota way”, Howard Artrip, a Toyota manager in the assembly area examplifies his habit of constant improvement:

“When I’m mowing the grass, I’m thinking about the best way to do it. I’m trying different turns to see if I can do it faster.”

This constant drive to do things better and smarter is what distinguishes the best workers at the best companies.

Constant improvement is what happens when being on level 5 of CMMI.  Reaching level 5 means you must pass levels 2, 3 and 4. For all of these levels CMMI sets specific goals, and that seems to differ from the Toyota way.

As John Shook (“a widely regarded consultant on how to use Toyota’s ideas at other companies”) states in the article, “… Managers keep trying to make their management objectives. They’re moving forward, they’re improving, and they’re looking for a plateau. As long as you’re looking for that plateau,it seems like a constant struggle. It’s difficult. If you’re looking for a plateau, you’re going to be frustrated. There is no ’solution.’”

“Once you realize that it’s the process itself–that you’re not seeking a plateau–you can relax. Doing the task and doing the task better become one and the same thing,” Shook says. “This is what it means to come to work.”

Amazing,

A nice video of a great big Lion hugging a woman .

Julia Torres, who runs the Villa Lorena animal shelter in Cali, fed and nursed Jupiter the African lion back to health years ago after it was found abused and emaciated in a traveling circus.

There is a game of Blog-tagging going on, which works like a kind of chain-letter.

The idea is that the person (owning a blog) that gets tagged, shares five little-known facts about him or herself and tagges five other persons (owners of blogs).

I got tagged by former collegues Raimond Brookman, who shared five secrets of which I new three (he’s tall, plays squash and loves meat) and Jeroen Leenarts (of which I knew about the Apple, but was surprised about the alcohol).

So here are my five little known facts:

1. At the age of 18, I was homeless for two months in Utrecht, Netherlands. In that period I slept in a shopping centre and in the weekends worked in a bar that opened at 01:00 and close at 06:00. 

2. One of the jobs I had before entering Computer Science was wedding photographer.

3. I ordered a new car, a Ford S-Max.

4. I’m married with Betty, have three daughters (Lieke 16,Ellen 14, Manon 12) and a dog (Sieta)

5. Harry is my usual name, but my original name is Harm, and I’m having my aniversary on Christmas Day.

I would like to blog-tag the following bloggers:

1. Scott Sehlhorst 

2. Marcus Ting-A-Kee

3. Micahel Hunter (The Braidy Tester)

4. Stephan Okhuijsen

5. Dilbert

Many efforts are being made to integrate security into software and software development. I lately read several interesting posts about the subject, two of them from Gunnar Peterson

• In Top Ten Information Security Considerations in Use Case Modeling he discusses ten ways that Use Case models can be developed in a more security-focused way.

In an IEEE Security & Privacy Journal he co-wrote an article on Misuse Cases with John Steven on Defining Misuse in the Development Process.

Here’s in short what is the core idea:

I remembered having seen the idea before, as Richard Claassens, a former collegue and Architect at InfoSupport showed some examples that came from the original ideas behind Misuse Cases came from Guttorm Sindre and Andreas Opdahl.

Here’s a nice example:

Johanna Rothman wrote about avoiding the “Crossing the desert syndrome” some years ago.

“A project team focuses on an interim milestone, works like the devil to meet that milestone. They meet the milestone, look up, and realize they’re not at the end of the project–they still have to finish the darn thing. They’re living the Crossing the Desert syndrome”

Recently she gave advice on how to recover from the syndrome.

At Tyner Blain, Scott gives advice on how to prevent from hitting the syndrome: 

• Improved estimation of tasks
• Realistic effort allocation
• Writing verifiable requirements
• Managing smaller work chunks
• Feedback into the estimation cycle
• Better communication of release content

As I read his advice I thought: “yes I agree that’s good advice, but somehow good advice is seldomly followed”.

 BTW: Patrick van Lee, a relative from my wife,  rides the Dakar race on an Aprilia motorbike

Recently I became interested in outsourcing. Partly because we addressed the subject in reaching CMMI level 2, partly because I recently read the book “The World is Flat” in which “Thomas L. Friedman believes the world is flat in the sense that the competitive playing fields between industrial and emerging market countries are leveling. Friedman recounts many examples in which companies in India and China are becoming part of large global complex supply chains that extend across oceans …” (from Wikipedia).

In Managing outsourced teams. Balancing innovation with predictability. two different approaches to create a remote engineering organization:

• Assembly line (requirements are sent overseas to be built there as specified; prerequisite is that the requirements are really good and stable)
• Extended team (requirements are sent overseas and interpreted, a design or prototype will be created overseas and approved by the main office, emphasizing on collaboration).

Based on their experience the authors suggest that the best way to go about this problem is to start on the Assembly line “mode” and to transition to the “Extended team” mode as soon as you feel comfortable to do so.

I think that’s a sound suggestion! Beware that on both approaches, there are lots of hidden costs when outsourcing.