IT Shopkeeping

NE IT Pro Community Leaders will feature Dan Hermes as a speaker on April 23rd, 2013, 3:00pm at the Microsoft Office at 1 Cambridge Center.  He will cover material from his forthcoming books, Softwareball: How to Play as a Team in the Software Industry and How to Interact with People: Human Communication in the Software Industry.
When: April 23rd, 2013, 3:00pm new time
Where: Microsoft Office, 1 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA map
REGISTER
Topic: Mastering Human Communication Patterns

The Back Bay Large Installation System Administration(BBLISA) group featured Dan Hermes as a speaker on March 13th, 2013, 7:00pm at MIT.  He covered material from his forthcoming book, How to Interact with People: Human Communication in the Software Industry.  For details, see: http://www.bblisa.org/
When: March 13th, 2013, 7:00pm
Where:MIT, Building E51, Room 149, 70 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA
Schedule:
7:00 – Announcements & Introductions
7:30 – Formal presentation
Topic: Mastering Human Communication Patterns
Missed human connections in the software industry account for most of our project failures.  Improving communication can dramatically improve individual and team performance.
Typical Frustrations
They …

On-Line Residential in New York City provides the city’s most authoritative online residential property listing service.  Founded in the 90’s, the company has moved through several technology platforms, most recently .NET.  

Application running slow?  The biggest challenge with improving application performance is finding the problems.  There are often more than one.  Narrow down the problem by tier, by machine, by application, then by functionality.   Using this approach, one of our client’s primary product performance improved by over 300%:

The Waterfall model has become the whipping boy of 20th century software development.  The idea that analysis, development, and testing are separate, distinct phases of a development project, where time must be allocated to each, and one must be completed before the next begins, is history.  Although it was seldom actually practiced, with time and budget constraints compressing schedules and steps, it was often an ideal to shoot for.  There was some integrity in it, as I recall.  For a long time, we regarded the model as a sign of …

MVC (Model-View-Controller) is the latest fad in Microsoft .NET development. As Agile and Scrum sweep the industry, a need has grown for continuous integration and deployment, requiring automated unit testing. Conventional ASP.NET architecture makes unit testing of page functionality difficult because form controls are tightly coupled to back end code-behind logic. That is, to simply unit test the selection of a dropdown list along with a Submit button isn’t straightforward. Enter MVC. By clearly delineating front end form functionality, the View, from back end business …

Dan has been asked to speak by New York City-based organization, Leaders in Software and Art (LISA).   He will speak on the use of software and video technology in the arts.  He was chosen by Erik Sanner for the originality of his portfolio of works and his use of video technology in production.

Pragmatic Programmers’ Ship It! by Jared Richardson and William Gwaltney(2006) still hasn’t gone out of style. It lays an Software Shop 101, 202 foundation that’s extensible by the modern flavors of Agile, Scrum, etc.    The upshot:

Thank you for your interest!
I’ll be in touch soon.
Best Regards,
Dan Hermes

The reasons can be many, and require a full analysis of the shop to determine the cause. Look first at the project plan. Is there one? Does it take all phases of development into account: analysis, QA, installation? Is there a clear process of requirements gathering or are new features developed as they arise? Is the project too large for the team? Do details seem to get lost due to tracking problems? Is the product delivered only to find that more requirement arise or new defects are found?
Break down the …

Flash vs. Silverlight: a useful technical comparison here at Smashingmagazine. And the winner by category:
Animation – Silverlight
File size – Flash
Scripting – Silverlight
Video/Audio – Silverlight
Sound processing – Flash
Accessibility – Flash
Platform compatibility – Flash
Text representation/SEO – Silverlight
Supported image formats – Flash
Socket programming – Flash
Webcam support – Flash
Deployment – Flash
Windows application – Flash
Media streaming – Silverlight
Other Adobe vs. Microsoft face-offs:
Silverlight vs. Flex C# is a real OO language vs. ActionScript which is not. Flex looks better.
Illustrator vs. Expression Design Expression Design is not a head-to-head competitor with Illustrator as a standalone graphics editor, …

Nov. 30th, 2010
7:30am-9:00am
Breakfast Roundtable
Panera, 120 Highland Avenue
Needham, MA 02492
Is your online presence current and noteworthy?
Learn about blogging tools and techniques and how they are used to raise your consulting profile.   Dan Hermes, the webmaster for our new IMCNE website will talk about how he built it using WordPress, a popular blogging platform with a free entry-level option.  We will examine how a blog site is built and maintained then how to customize and hire help to polish your online act.  We’ll discuss how to: 

Keep your web presence fresh and current
Minimize technical headache
Create …

Every prepared team has a playbook.  What does that mean in an IT Shop?  Poorly run shops have only job descriptions and deadlines.  Everyone is left to fend for themselves.  Instead of feeling like they’re on the same team, this can leave the players at odds with each other.  For example, if the analyst is only focused on their job, a developer who tells them that a spec item they wrote is not technically feasible  may be met with an argument instead of a conversation which may lead to a …

Why are tools so often an afterthought in the software shop? An expense?  A training burden?

Because no one bothers to do the math.

Track your teams activities for a week and in most cases you’ll find wasted hours, unneeded stress and frustration, and a range of festering problems that could be remedied by the use of a good tool.  Excel and Word are good pocket knives but your shop deserves more effective tools.

The way to win at softwareball is to produce a high quality deliverable which meets the business objectives without exhausting resources of time, money, and the trust and patience of the people involved.  Points are scored by the meeting of specific objectives of business functionality, schedule, and budget but it is the sum of successes across the broad range of possible wins which constitute a victory.  

I’m currently serving as an advisory board member to Art Technology New England (ATNE), and have conducted a technology review of this exciting organization’s web presence.
www.atne.org
arttechne.ning.com

What began as a little donation of web development to a local non-profit has evolved into a series of recommendations and a pilot program for a national organization.  I currently serve on the board of the Institute of Management Consultants – New England Chapter. (IMCNE)  As webmaster and marketing chair I am responsible for the public face of the chapter.  Much work has been done by the National organization to provide a unified web framework for all chapters and the New England Chapter led the charge in the uptake of this technology.  …

Among the inventors of the commercial Internet as we know it, Burst Media has assembled some of the most insightful and productive tools for the management and sale of online advertising. Burst creates formidable advertising assets out of the “long tail” of internet destinations by assembling Publishing Networks, constellations of similarly-themed web sites, which advertisers and ad agencies may tap in their targeted campaigns.
With customers eager for the Web 2.0 experience, Burst Media enlisted Lexicon Systems to facilitate an evolution of their product suites to .NET. Management planned to upgrade …

Focus on your job and you’ll get better at it?  True.  It may even lead to pay raises and promotions.  But sooner or later you will hit the social ceiling.   In spite of your long hours.  In spite of your top-notch work.  Here in this technical field where many of us fled to avoid people and human interaction which is messy and unpredictable compared to the reasonable, civil interaction that takes place between human and machine:
The social ceiling is our most dangerous career obstacle.

“Blow on that project plan, mamma. Baby needs a new pair of shoes! ”
How many times have we been locked in a conference room and told “We missed the last three dates, now what’s the REAL date gonna be?” The whole team gathered together to come up with another date. This next date is the NEW DATE. It’s got to be better than the OLD DATE, the date we missed. This NEW DATE is gonna be the ONE! It’s gotta be the one.
What does this sound like? The lottery, perhaps? …