IT Shopkeeping

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

A HealthcareSource spinoff startup, Healthcaresource.com, enlisted me to help build a new product for them called Sourcing Manager.  It’s now done and successfully brought to market.  Users are clamoring for demos and signing on to for year-long license contracts.  The value this product provides is so significant that users can recoup the costs of the product in a matter of weeks.  Not bad, HealthcareSource.
Congratulations Troy Hatlevig and team!  Special thanks to Susane, Sindhura, Todd, Heather, Les, and Syrinx Consulting.

It’s easy for a software team to become so mired in their daily concerns that they lose sight of the ball.  What is the ball in Softwareball?  Let us answer with another question:  Why do people work in a software shop?
Most people work in the IT industry because it can be a reliable way to make a living.  Making a living requires a paycheck.  This paycheck is the difference between hackers coding on their own time and professionals in the software industry.  Where does this money come from that ends …

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, …

Who are those other people running around your office with numbers on their backs? What base do they play?  Which way should you turn to throw to them?  Who’s on first?  Knowing your own job is fine, but it won’t make you an MVP.  An all-star knows what everyone around them is doing and how to make plays on a team.

Is your software project steep and rocky? Can you predict the weather in your office? How many bodies lay on the side of your project trail?
The best sherpas on Mt. Everest expect failure and death as the most likely outcome. They assume that any grey cloud in the sky may develop into a dangerous fog bank, cold front, or blizzard. Recent powder on angled slopes above could pose an avalanche risk. Too quick a pace could dehydrate the team. Too slow a pace and nightfall may come before they reach …

class ITShopHumanInterfaces
/// by Dan Hermes

{
public object resource;
public object need;
public object product;

public interface ICustomer
{

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 …