Ahmed M. Hammad

Test Driven Development and User Stories

2011-11-12T15:19:00.000+02:00

In a presentation held to one of my companies I consulted, the overall cycle of TDD is not clear, I draw this diagram to explain the relation between story development and the TDD cycle. It helped the audience to grasp the idea easily.

The other process is when dealing with bugs, for each bug follow the normal TDD cycle, write a test that fails because of the bug, then Fix the code, see green bar, then refactor as required. See the following diagram.

Online expense tracking tools

2011-01-02T00:06:00.000+02:00

Online expense tracking tools

www.texthog.com deserve evaluation, it has web and iphone versions.

Quick Tip: Sync iPhone Notes With Google Sync: Apple «

2010-10-02T22:07:00.000+02:00

Quick Tip: Sync iPhone Notes With Google Sync: Apple «

Set Up Your Apple Device for Google Sync : Google Sync - Google Mobile Help

2010-10-02T19:41:00.000+02:00

Set Up Your Apple Device for Google Sync : Google Sync - Google Mobile Help

Sync emails, contacts and calendar.

Saurik’s Letter to the US Copyright Office | Apple iPhone School

2010-09-07T16:35:00.000+02:00

Saurik’s Letter to the US Copyright Office | Apple iPhone School

How to Make Custom iPhone Ringtones for Free | eHow.com

2010-08-29T12:07:00.000+02:00

How to Make Custom iPhone Ringtones for Free | eHow.com

Rapid Application Development: Forget Burndown Use Burnup Charts

2010-07-28T11:05:00.000+03:00

Agile projects traditionally use burndown charts to visually show work remaining over time. This could be for the current iteration or it could be for the duration of the project. Either way they can help managers (or the Project Owner in Scrum) track velocity, estimate either the project or iteration completion date, or find trends in past performance. But burndown charts have a major shortcoming: they fail to show what makes agile projects agile – new requirements. And that’s where burnup charts come in. But first let’s examine burndown charts.

Software Quality Engineer Certification - CSQE - ASQ

2010-07-02T23:42:00.000+03:00

A credible Quality certification, Software Quality Engineer Certification (CSQE)
See this link:

Software Quality Engineer Certification - CSQE - ASQ

To select a date:

http://www.asq.org/certification/software-quality-engineer/dates.html

Here is international chapters for exam preparations:

http://www.asq.org/certification/locations/international/index.html

Here is Egypt Examination center:

http://www.asq.org/certification/locations/international/egypt.html

Good Luck.

ISTQB Foundation Level Course @ FCIS

2010-06-30T10:55:00.000+03:00

ISTQB, International Software Testing Qualifications Board, Foundation Level course.

Course Targets:
1) Introduce the testing career option for this year graduates (4th year students)
2) Spread the awareness of the testing field regardless what will the attendee's career preference will be (or his current job is) to have a better understating of the role of their testers collogues at work
3) Help graduates who currently work in development field and are thinking of switching their career to testing in taking this decision.
4) Explain the ISTQB syllabus for those who intend to take the exam and get certified (can be already working in the testing field) and encourage others to get the certificate.

Targeted audience (prioritised):
1) 4th year Students
2) Previous years graduates
3) 3rd year students
4) 2nd and 1st year students are welcomed
*Attendees from other universities are more than welcomed.

Facebook | ISTQB Foundation Level Course @ FCIS

Continuum - Welcome to Continuum

2010-03-22T16:08:00.000+02:00

Continuum - Welcome to Continuum: "Continuous Integration and Build Server"

Apache Continuum is an enterprise-ready continuous integration server with features such as automated builds, release management, role-based security, and integration with popular build tools and source control management systems. Whether you have a centralized build team or want to put control of releases in the hands of developers, Continuum can help you improve quality and maintain a consistent build environment.

Continuous Integration

2010-03-21T11:28:00.000+02:00

Continuous Integration

Continuous Integration is a software development practice where members of a team integrate their work frequently, usually each person integrates at least daily - leading to multiple integrations per day. Each integration is verified by an automated build (including test) to detect integration errors as quickly as possible. Many teams find that this approach leads to significantly reduced integration problems and allows a team to develop cohesive software more rapidly. This article is a quick overview of Continuous Integration summarizing the technique and its current usage.

By Martin Fowler

KidRex - Kid Safe Search

2009-12-17T16:05:00.000+02:00

Safe Kids Search, depends on Google Search.

KidRex - Kid Safe Search

OpenXava - AJAX applications from JPA entities

2009-12-16T10:39:00.000+02:00

OpenXava is a productive way for creating AJAX Enterprise Applications with Java. Indeed, it's faster developing with OpenXava than with Ruby On Rails, Spring MVC, or any other MVC framework. This is because in OpenXava you only have to write the Model. The Controllers are reused, and the View are generated automatically.

With OpenXava you put your JPA classes and, in exchange, you will obtain a full featured application ready for production, and without code generation. See it vividly at Teacher demo.

OpenXava has been created by Java developers (who need developing Java Enterprise applications in a productive way) for their own use; hence it's powerful, extensible and enjoyable by a Java expert. In the other hand OpenXava allows to a new Java developer to start rapidly to be productive, therefore is a pleasant experience for beginners too.

OpenXava - AJAX applications from JPA entities

Google Solutions Marketplace - Cordys Process Factory - Workflow for Google Apps

2009-12-07T20:15:00.000+02:00

Google Solutions Marketplace - Cordys Process Factory - Workflow for Google Apps

This is very interesting to try.

Framework!

2009-12-02T20:42:00.000+02:00

Mike Krzyzewski

2009-11-26T09:20:00.000+02:00

Mike Krzyzewski: "'The truth is that many people set rules to keep from making decisions.'"

Mapping CMMI to Scrum

2009-11-24T06:48:00.000+02:00

http://www.cesar.org.br/files/file/SCRUMxCMMMI_IEEE-final03.pdf

Abstract - Over the past years, the Capability Maturity
Model (CMM) and Capability Maturity Model Integration
(CMMI) have been broadly used for assessing organizational
maturity and process capability throughout the world [20].
However, the rapid pace of change in information technology
has caused increasing frustration with the heavyweight plans,
specifications, and other documentation imposed by contractual
inertia and maturity model compliance criteria [4]. In the light of
that, agile methodologies have been adopted to tackle this
challenge. The aim of our paper is to present a mapping between
CMMI to one of these methodologies, the Scrum. It shows how
Scrum addresses the Project Management Process Areas of
CMMI. This is useful for organizations that have their plan-
driven process based on CMMI model and are planning to
improve its processes towards agility or to help organizations to
define a new project management framework based on both
CMMI and Scrum practices.

The Top 10 Open-Source CRM Solutions - Inside CRM

2009-11-16T21:09:00.000+02:00

The Top 10 Open-Source CRM Solutions - Inside CRM

10 Best Open Source ERP Software

2009-11-16T21:08:00.000+02:00

10 Best Open Source ERP Software

ATM (Appraisal Team Member) Qualification Requirements

2009-10-07T15:21:00.002+02:00

The ATM qualifications are documented in the SCAMPI Method Definition Document (MDD) Section 1.3.2 SELECT TEAM MEMBERS.

I have extracted the related text here.

Parameters and Limits

The minimum acceptable team size for a SCAMPI A appraisal is four people (including the appraisal team leader).
All team members must have previously completed the SEI-licensed Introduction to CMMI course.
With regard to engineering field experience, the team (as a group) must have an average of at least 6 years of experience, and the team total must be at least 25 years of experience in each of the disciplines to be covered in the appraisal.
With regard to management experience, the team (as a group) must have a total of at least 10 years of experience, and at least one team member must have at least 6 years of experience as a manager.
The team must, in aggregate, have representative experience in the lifecycles being appraised.

Optional Practices
Although not required in the Parameters and Limits section above, the following are considered recommended best practices and should be employed whenever feasible:

Each member should have good written and oral communication skills, the ability to facilitate the free flow of communication, and the ability to perform as team players and negotiate consensus.
At least half of the team members should have participated in a previous process appraisal.
Team members should be perceived by the appraisal sponsor as credible.

Additional appraisal team member selection considerations include

Consider the personal characteristics of individual team members (e.g., communication preferences and personality types) and how these characteristics may affect the dynamics of the team.
Use one or more authorized SCAMPI Lead Appraisers as team members.

And there is one more ATM requirement that is documented in the MDD errata. The Appraisal Sponsor cannot be an Appraisal Team Member.

Copied with some modifications from: http://ppqc.blogspot.com/2009/07/appraisal-team-member-qualification.html

Doxygen, Source Code Documentation Generator Tool

2009-09-17T12:49:00.002+02:00

Doxygen is a documentation system for C++, C, Java, Objective-C, Python, IDL (Corba and Microsoft flavors), Fortran, VHDL, PHP, C#, and to some extent D.
It can help you in three ways:

It can generate an on-line documentation browser (in HTML) and/or an off-line reference manual (in Latex) from a set of documented source files. There is also support for generating output in RTF (MS-Word), PostScript, hyperlinked PDF, compressed HTML, and Unix man pages. The documentation is extracted directly from the sources, which makes it much easier to keep the documentation consistent with the source code.

You can configure doxygen to extract the code structure from undocumented source files. This is very useful to quickly find your way in large source distributions. You can also visualize the relations between the various elements by means of include dependency graphs, inheritance diagrams, and collaboration diagrams, which are all generated automatically.

You can even `abuse' doxygen for creating normal documentation (as I did for this manual).

Doxygen is developed under Linux and Mac OS X, but is set-up to be highly portable. As a result, it runs on most other Unix flavors as well. Furthermore, executables for Windows are available.

http://www.stack.nl/~dimitri/doxygen/

Top Reasons to Try TestComplete

2009-09-16T21:50:00.000+02:00

TestComplete helps QA teams create comprehensive automated tests for a variety of application types, so that companies can deliver the highest-quality products. Here are the top reasons to try TestComplete for test automation...

Read details at: http://www.automatedqa.com/products/testcomplete/top-reasons-to-try/

ITIL Service Desk Software

2009-09-13T12:46:00.005+02:00

Don't reinvent the wheel, use open source, free or commercial tools.

ManageEngine have a very sophisticated service desk tool that is used by one the biggest Egypt Contact Center. The tool is not expensive , they have a full featured free edition that is limited to one technician.
http://www.manageengine.com/products/service-desk/download.html?trial

Generic issue management issue systems can be used to manage service requests. Here is a list of generic issue tracking systems that can be used:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_issue_tracking_systems

Eclipse Process Framework (EPF) Agile Practices

2009-09-10T23:08:00.003+02:00

This website lists all the practices included in the Eclipse Process Framework. It is intended to be used by a process engineer to learn about the practices in order to make decisions about which practices to include in a process configuration.

This set is based on Agile, and it is excellent source of quality material to understand or to present to your team.

Have a look at: EPF Practices

The practice library is also available for download at: http://www.eclipse.org/epf/downloads/praclib/praclib_downloads.php

OpenProj, an Open Source and Free Replacement to MS-Project

2009-09-10T22:31:00.004+02:00

OpenProj is a free, open source desktop alternative to Microsoft Project. The OpenProj solution is ideal for desktop project management and is available on Linux, Unix, Mac or Windows. OpenProj is a complete desktop replacement of Microsoft Project and even opens existing native Project files. OpenProj shares the most advanced scheduling engine in the industry with Projects On Demand. The OpenProj solution has Gantt Charts, Network Diagrams (PERT Charts), WBS and RBS charts, Earned Value costing and more. You can get more detailed information on OpenProj or download now!

Download OpenProj

OpenProj is bundled with StarOffice 8.0 that is distributed in Europe, see http://www2.projity.com/partners

If you want to start easily, after download and running, see http://openproj.org/wiki/index.php?title=Spreadsheet

Comparison of project management software - Wikipedia

2009-09-09T19:13:00.002+02:00

This is an extensive comparison of project management software, open source and proprietary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_project_management_software

Applications Performance Monitoring, Server Monitoring, Database Monitoring Software

2009-09-09T13:56:00.003+02:00

ManageEngine Applications Manager is an availability and performance monitoring software that helps businesses ensure high availability and performance for their business applications by ensuring servers and applications have high uptime. The application performance management capability includes server monitoring, application server monitoring, database monitoring, web services monitoring and an array of other application management capability that will help IT administrators manage their resources.

They have free edition with limited number of monitors. Evaluate and download at:

Download ManageEngine Applications Manager - Free Edition and Professional Edition Trial

Open Source Functional Testing Tools

2009-09-08T11:11:00.002+02:00

This is a web site that has a list of open source functional testing tools.

See at:
http://www.opensourcetesting.org/functional.php

Open Source Load Testing, Stress Testing and Performance Testing Tools

2009-09-08T10:47:00.003+02:00

The WebLOAD Open Source Load Generation Engine is an open source project sponsored by RadView Software. This project is based on fourteen years of code development invested in WebLOAD Professional, the award winning performance testing solution. This project is intended for ISVs, SIs and software developers who need to integrate a professional load generation engine into their applications.

Radview - Load Testing, Stress Testing and Performance testing tools

Open Source Workflow Engines in Java

2009-09-03T16:43:00.001+02:00

Open Source Workflow Engines in Java

Shared via AddThis

Top 10 Java Workflow Engine

2009-09-03T16:25:00.001+02:00

Top 10 Java Workflow Engine

Shared via AddThis

When to Stop Testing?

2009-08-23T21:52:00.004+02:00

You want to know when you should stop testing, you need measures of expected defects count, to know if you already discovered all defects or still more testing is needed. It can help you also to measure the product quality at any certain point.

The answer is in a book named, Software Project Survival Guide by Steve McConnell, chapter 15. Fortunately, he has an online article that explains different techniques in plain and simple language. Look at: Gauging Software Readiness With Defect Tracking [http://www.stevemcconnell.com/ieeesoftware/bp09.htm]

Google Reader's "Send to" Feature

2009-08-14T14:25:00.001+03:00

Generally Google Reader is my best and only feed reader. It has tons of features that makes you enjoy reading your feeds.

Recently, Google Reader added "Send To" feature that makes sharing the posts you like is so easy.
Have a look at Google Reader's "Send to" Feature

Carl Sagan

2009-08-14T14:16:00.000+03:00

Carl Sagan: "'Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.'"

FreeCommander and File Explorer

2009-04-02T14:21:00.004+02:00

I was suffering too much from Windows File Explorer. I always open many views to handle file. Spend much time in going to folders to do repetitive tasks. I was sure that there is a better solution. After some research and trail to some tools, I found a great tool called, FreeCommander.
I actually tried it and enjoyed it a lot. I hoped I use open source tool, but did not find anything usable. FreeCommander is free ware and much better than File Explorer.

Here is a list of features from their website:

Main features in FreeCommander:

* Dual-panel technology - horizontal and vertical
* Tabbed interface
* Optional tree view for each panel
* Built in file viewer to view files in hex, binary, text or image format
* File viewer inside archives too
* Built in archive handling: ZIP (read, write), CAB (read, write), RAR (read)
* Nested archive handling
* Built in FTP client
* Easy access to system folders, control panel, desktop and start menu
* Copy, move, delete, rename files and folders
* Multi rename tool
* Wipe files
* Create and verify MD5 checksums
* File splitting
* File properties and context menu
* Calculation of folder size
* Folder comparison / synchronization
* Modification of file date and attributes
* Folder / program favorites
* File searching (inside archive too)
* File filters for display
* User defined columns for detailed view
* DOS command line
* Multiple language support

I like the dual pane idea, and the ability to store many folder combination to switch between them easily.

Read full details and download from http://www.freecommander.com/

The camp? I swear that I would sacrifice my life for the camp!

2009-01-23T23:21:00.002+02:00

-The camp? I swear that I would sacrifice my life for the camp!

The camp means everything to me and to all its inhabitants.

The camp is our soul. Our life

and it will stand high and proud forever, it has always been so anyway.

Everywhere in the camp you find someone looking for a relative

There is not a single person at the camp who was not suffered.

looking for their home or a missing body.

But we will not give up

Yes they destroyed everything but we will re-build it despite their presence.

We will re-build everything on the basis of resistance and Sharon must be aware of the resistance of the Jenin camp for all his life.

I would like to say something which has nothing to do with hope or all that ensues but to the Israelis I have to say:

“Proud as eagles we will live Erect as lions we will die”

May each Israeli bear this in mind.

Jerusalem is ours.

Jerusalem is ours.

When I heard that Sharon was coming to the camp, I was so angry that I burst into tears

Because I had a great desire to take revenge on him, to torture him so to speak.

-Do you believe you can defeat Sharon?

-Yes I can, why not?

-He is stronger than you. How would you be able to?

-I am stronger than him thanks to my will. I can defeat him thanks to my will. Because I am defending my nation, because he murdered innocent people whom I knew very well. I can defeat him because he has dispersed our people.

He destroyed each corner in the camp without sparing one single house.

-what would you do if you had a million dinars?

-I would donate them to the injured to buy blood and to re-build the camp.

-Me too. I would donate them to the office to divide it amongst the homeless they could rent some caravans until their houses re-built so that the camp will look better than before.

If I were old enough I would have donated my blood to the injured.

Fighting the enemy, this doesn’t mean that I am cruel. I defend my motherland. I defend my camp.

We will never make peace with them. Even if our president does so .I will never make peace with them. It is true that I am a good person but Jews are hateful. They invaded us. We are defending our land.

If they capture your son wouldn’t you do anything to get him back?

So we feel the same for our land. Our land means everything for us.

As we used to say: Our woman still exists.

We will keep on having children. They will become stronger and braver than ever.

I am not afraid of these cowards.

They are like mice. Despite their great weapons.

They still hide behind their tanks. Afraid of civilians like us.

Their cowardice is legendary.

We are not afraid of them no matter what they do.

Their bombs came down on us like water because they
are losers and cowards…

Let the Jews come and see the camp and experience the bombardment we endured for just one day.

They would immediately forget their idea of a Great Israel and of Jerusalem as its capital.

If only a Jew could experience what we have been through for one day!

They would abandon their conquest of Jerusalem.

I saw died bodies…houses in ruins…and undescribable atrocities.

After all I have been through what will become of my life?

After they shattered my dreams what is left for me to say?

There is no life.

The camp is like a tall eminent tree the tree has leaves and each leaf of this tree bears the name of a martyr.

I would like to say to the Jews that even if they break a few branches others shall grow in their place were not able to reach the top of the tree.

-The camp? I swear that I would sacrifice my life for the camp

The camp means everything to me and to all its inhabitants

The camp is our soul. our life

My greatest wish…

My greatest wish is to go back home.

Ahmed Hammad Resume

2009-01-12T15:20:00.001+02:00

Ahmed Hammad

Profile

12 years of software development experience
8 years of software management experience
Successfully managed complex projects with multi-discipline teams
Goal-oriented, honest, trustful, and respectful leadership style
Fair and Fact based management style

Education

B.Sc., Computer Systems, Faculty of Engineering, Al-Azhar University.
Certified ITIL Expert.
Certified PSP Engineer.

Major Courses Attended:

ITIL Foundation course, 4 Intermediate courses, and ITIL Expert course.
Measuring for Performance-Driven Improvement, a 5 days course by SEI instructors.
Certified PSP engineer (the SEI standard of Personal Software Processes), two weeks.
CMMI Requirements Management, Project Planning and Tracking, Configuration Management and Quality Assurance.
Software Estimation.
Leadership skills, a 5 days course.

Experience & Accomplishments

Consultation

Consulted more than 20 companies to improve their software processes using CMMI.
Wide knowledge of software process improvement frameworks such MSF, RUP and Agile.
Consulting 2 companies in ITIL.

Management/Leadership

Evaluated and recruited to more than 30 technical persons.
Trained, supervised and evaluated developers, testers and project managers.
Managed complex software projects, such as LMS, and WebMail.
Managed multidiscipline teams, 23 developers, testers, and project managers.
Managed complex embedded projects, such as DMSS6025 FWT.
Understanding and experience in applying ISO 9001, and CMMI 1.2.
Experience applying Agile-Scrum best practices.

Software Programming

Develop desktop applications using Visual C++.
Develop embedded applications using eMbedded Visual C++ and CodeVision.
Develop web applications using Visual Studio .Net C#, and Java using Eclipse.
Web sites development using ASP and PHP.
Experience developing multithreaded applications.
Experience in Object oriented analysis and design.
Experience in relational database design.

Professional Employment

Software Quality Consultant, SECC, ITIDA 4/2007-present

Consulting companies to improve software management practices with the CMMI as a certification framework and Agile methodologies as a modern state of the art practices.
Attended more than 5 formal CMMI appraisals.
Consulting 2 companies in ITIL.

CDMA Software Dev. Manager, QuickTel3/2006 - 3/2007 (1year)

Software project management to CDMA software projects.
Technical leadership on tools and technologies used to develop products and management to the software team.
Team management to hire, evaluate and mentor technical team members.
Developed and managed FWT, and CDMA Module products.

Development Manager, Amadsoft 8/2003 - 2/2006 (2.5 years)

Researching competitor’s products and suggesting software requirements. Researching the best usable user interface.
Designed and managed the implementation of eBook Pocket PC software system including the device Arabization.
Developed and managed the development of Encyclopedia of Laws.

Internet Dept Manager, Harf 7/1999 - 8/2003 (4 years)

Managing dev team, testing team, graphics designers and project managers. ( 23 technical persons) to develop all web applications of the company.
Architecture and design responsibilities.
Leading process improvements using ISO9001 and CMM.
Major web systems managed: LMS (Learning Management System) and WebCD solution.
Managed and developed web based email application,

C++ Programmer, Sakhr 1/1995 - 6/1999 (4.5 years)

Developed CD products with Visual C++ using object oriented analysis and design techniques.
Developed Pioneers CD, Reporting engine, Bug tracking system using Delphi, Mini HTML viewer, Full-text-indexing engine, and many others.

C/C++ Programmer, SL 11/1993 -12/1994 (1 year)

Developing desktop applications using Borland C++. Later ported to Visual C++.
The software is developed on Winodws 3.1. Later ported to Windows 95.

Honors & Awards

Best Web Site in Gitex Dubai 2000. The whole team is awarded by Sakhr CEO.
Employee of the Year, Harf.

Languages

Arabic as native mother tongue.
Very good command of English.

Interests and Activities

Playing Tennis
Listening and watching selective music and movies
Reading news, articles and reports.

Windows Command Line Mailer : Blat

2009-01-09T09:32:00.002+02:00

Blat - A Win32 command line SMTP mailer. Use it to automatically eMail logs, the contents of a html FORM, or whatever else you need to send.

Enjoy it at http://www.blat.net/

ITIL v3 Service Operation Presentation

2008-12-24T10:48:00.003+02:00

It is a presentation I prepared and conducted internally at my current employer. It helped me a lot to understand Service Operation. It is amazing how much you learn when you educate others.
It is located at: ITIL v3 Service Operation Presentation

Eclipse Integrated Task Management, Mylyn

2008-10-18T16:51:00.004+02:00

I want task management tool that integrates seamlessly with my development IDE, as I am using Eclipse WTP mainly, I researched Eclipse plugins and found Mylyn.

I created local repository of tasks and simply starts, and mark task completed. Mylyn takes care of calculatig the time spent on each task. When I finish tasks and commit chnges to subversion, Mylyn automatically list tasks in my commit note dialog box.

However, Mylyn have wider scope of what I am using, see the following Mylyn description from its web site: http://www.eclipse.org/mylyn/

Mylyn is a task-focused interface for Eclipse that reduces information overload and makes multi-tasking easy. It does this by making tasks a first class part of Eclipse, and integrating rich and offline editing for repositories such as Bugzilla, Trac, and JIRA. Once your tasks are integrated, Mylyn monitors your work activity to identify information relevant to the task-at-hand, and uses this task context to focus the Eclipse UI on the interesting information, hide the uninteresting, and automatically find what's related. This puts the information you need to get work done at your fingertips and improves productivity by reducing searching, scrolling, and navigation. By making task context explicit Mylyn also facilitates multitasking, planning, reusing past efforts, and sharing expertise.

If you want richer features of Mylyn, try its commercial version TaskTop at: http://tasktop.com/tasktop-for-eclipse/

ArgoUML for Database Modeling

2008-10-18T14:29:00.004+02:00

I use ArgoUML for database modeling, just add some stereotypes such as Database, Schema, Table, PK, FK with class diagram.

For a typical example, see these useful page:

Java Service Launcher; or Quartz !

2008-10-17T11:08:00.003+02:00

The Java Service Launcher is a small executable to start JAVA-programs as a Service under 32bit versions of Windows NT 4, Windows 2000, Windows 2003 and XP.

I used it successfully to run background services to maintain index files. See it at: http://www.roeschter.com/index.html

As I really need to run scheduled tasks in the background, say each 1 hour, I found Quartz a better solution.

Quartz is a full-featured, open source job scheduling system that can be integrated with, or used along side virtually any J2EE or J2SE application - from the smallest stand-alone application to the largest e-commerce system. Quartz can be used to create simple or complex schedules for executing tens, hundreds, or even tens-of-thousands of jobs; jobs whose tasks are defined as standard Java components or EJBs. The Quartz Scheduler includes many enterprise-class features, such as JTA transactions and clustering.

I am not yet used Quartz, but it is in my TODO list.

Launch4j , Java to Exe

2008-10-17T10:52:00.003+02:00

I am using java actively and sometimes want a simple exe file for easier usability to my users. The problem with batch files is the black command consol that should appear in the background. Also, most java desktop software now has its exe file, as example Eclipse, Netbeans.

I found a very nice article at, http://www.javalobby.org/articles/java2exe/, I tried many but became very satisfied with launch4j at http://launch4j.sourceforge.net/

Launch4j is a cross-platform tool for wrapping Java applications distributed as jars in lightweight Windows native executables. The executable can be configured to search for a certain JRE version or use a bundled one, and it's possible to set runtime options, like the initial/max heap size. The wrapper also provides better user experience through an application icon, a native pre-JRE splash screen, a custom process name, and a Java download page in case the appropriate JRE cannot be found.

ArgoUML

2008-10-17T10:45:00.002+02:00

I need to draw some UML diagrams, I tried StartUML and ArgoUML. StarUML is not updated since 2005, so there is doubtes about the future of it. In contrast ArgoUML is actively developed and improved over the years.

I seamlessly downloaded it as a standalone project and as an Eclipse plugin, both worked without problems. However, the Eclipse pluging version is defferent from the standalone version, so I can't edit the same file by the plugin and standalone tool.

Try them at:

ArgoUML home page at, http://argouml.tigris.org/
ArgoUML Eclipse Plugin at http://argoeclipse.tigris.org

CommitMonitor, Monitor SVN Commit

2008-10-07T12:04:00.006+02:00

To be able to monitor several SVN repositories, I have to check periodically using any SVN client toole. Of course this is not a good solution. As a better solution I installed SVN hook on each repository to send me an email on each commit. It works good, but some of the repositories is from other sources that I have no control on it.

I found CommitMonitor tool which you can register any number of SVN repositories and it will periodically check for new commits and will report it.

I tried the tool and found it easy to install, configure and use. Look at: http://tools.tortoisesvn.net/CommitMonitor

Google Sites

2008-06-23T10:47:00.005+03:00

Google just opened a new web site building system called Google Sites. I created my own website their, and I am very lucky to reserve the "ahammad" name. Please visit http://sites.google.com/site/ahammad/

The Google site has a very good editor, you can organize your pages in categories and can attach files also. It is a groups site, not just a personal site. I believe this will help me add my articles and no thing will prevent me from adding some blog entries. I like flexibility and it is right their at Google Sites.

Again, here is my new website:
http://sites.google.com/site/ahammad/

Page 2 RSS Converter

2008-05-08T18:12:00.003+03:00

There is a website to convert any webpage to an RSS. It makes it very easy to track websites that has no RSS feed. It is at http://page2rss.com/

New Mobile, iPhone!

2008-05-01T21:34:00.004+03:00

I bought a new mobile last month during my visit to a software conference in Florida, US. It is the famous Apple iPhone. It is amazing phone that changed my idea about mobiles capabilities. Just google about iphone and look at YouTube.com movies and you will know amazing information about it.

iPhone enjoy large third party applications. It is based on Mac OS X. But remember that several years ago, Apple dropped here Macintosh OS and used Unix as base for all new operating systems. So many of the Unix tools are ported easily to work on Apple machines and hence on iPhone.

SECC and Agile Conference

2008-03-03T15:23:00.004+02:00

SECC has organized Agile conference in Grand Hyaat, Cairo, Egypt. For more details visit:
http://www.agileegypt.com/
http://www.secc.org.eg/

I note that, some of the presenters gave the impression that Agile is anti process which I believe is false. XP and Scrum are processes. May be flexible and lean processes but still are processes. I like the idea I learned from RUP that you should balance and select the right ceremony for your exact project. Ceremony is the level of documentation and formalism in doing you software activities.

Requirements Managemetss Eclipse PluginRequirements Managements Eclipse Plugin

2008-03-03T14:41:00.000+02:00

1- XML based SRS

The SRS Eclipse plug-in is meant to provide an intuitive means to edit an XML based Software Requirements Specification. The xml schema derives from the growing consensus that requirements can effectively be identified through Use Cases. The use case strategy of asking "What do you need to accomplish with this system?" keeps users and developers focused on visualizing how the application ought to perform a required function. Eventually, well written Use Cases start to look similar to a Users Manual, leading to the secondary function of the SRS, the generation of a skeletal User's Manual in a format suitable for editing on any platform. Additionally the plug-in supports tractability throughout the development process by tracking which components "realize" the Use Cases.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/eclipsesrs/

Look also at the example document generated.

2- Reqs Modelling

The eclipse plugin product facilitates requirements management within the Eclipse integrated development environment by providing a plugin. The plugin provides perspectives and views for maintaining a set of requirements.

http://eclipse-plugins.2y.net/eclipse/plugin_details.jsp?id=718

OpenUP and Eclipse Process Framework

2008-02-09T17:35:00.002+02:00

Today there exist many process libraries for software development. As example, we have MSF (Microsoft Framwork), RUP (Rational Unified Process), and OpenUP (Open Unified Process). Most of the process libraries are augmented by process editing tools and process support tools.

Process Editing Tools:
One of the common problems of process definition is inconsistencies and hence errors. Process editing tools make editing visual, structured and consistent. EPF (Eclipse Process Framewrok), Rational Method composer are a famous examples.

Process Support Tools:
MSF is supported by TFS. A sophisticated and integrated solution for software teams to collaborate and organize their work. RUP also come with many of Rational sophisticated tools such as Rational Requisite Pro to manage requirements, Rational ClearCase for version control. EPF as an open source can be supported by many open source tools such as OSRT for requirements management and Subversion for configuration management.

Process support tools manage the work items greatly and can easily provide detailed reporting and statistics, however it requires a steep learning curve and formal training.

For more info, google with the the keywords stated here and you will find the details in the first hit!

Self-esteem check: Too low, too high or just right?

2008-02-09T09:05:00.000+02:00

Self-esteem — Learn characteristics of low self-esteem and benefits of healthy self-esteem.
http://health.msn.com/health-topics/mental-health/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100167124

Self-esteem: Boost your self-image with these 5 steps

Step 1: Identify troubling conditions or situations
Step 2: Become aware of beliefs and thoughts
Step 3: Pinpoint negative or inaccurate thinking
Step 4: Challenge negative or inaccurate thinking
Step 5: Change your thoughts and beliefs

http://health.msn.com/health-topics/mental-health/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100167125

New Google Group, SPEG

2007-12-14T14:53:00.000+02:00

I have just created a new google group to share software process engineering and management issues. To join, visit http://groups.google.com/group/speg. You can also use the box below for subscription.

Software Reuse, an Integrated Approach

2007-11-26T19:29:00.000+02:00

>>This article is published at SEPG Egypt at http://www.secc.org.eg/

Software reuse is a comprehensive issue; without taking into account all perspectives, it could fail. Here we are trying to look at different angles and highlight several issues.

Business View:

First, senior management should take reusability into consideration. Loading technical team alone with the reusability efforts will not normally succeed. It should start from top management. As opposed to seeing the business as developing a certain product for some customer, senior management should look at the business as developing an application family to satisfy different client’s needs. The business focus here will affect all efforts after it. As example, HP shifted their thinking from developing a new printer driver for each new printer to developing a reusable family of drivers. The result was a huge saving in cost and improved quality.

Requirements:

After focusing on a new business perspective regarding what is really required, reusing is shifted to create requirements with focus on reusability. Requirements even could be restated to match certain reusable components features. Requirements analysis phase will follow by creating use cases focused on variability points. The following example will explain the concept of determining variability points:

Vacation Request:

1. Employee requests vacation from his direct manager

2. Direct Manager retrieves balance from Human Resources

If there is no balance

3. The vacation request is rejected

If vacation is more than 3 days, Direct Manager forward to Senior Manager

4. Senior Manager approves or rejects the vacation request

If vacation is more than 3 days

5. SM needs to receive email notification

6. Direct manager approves or rejects the vacation

In some companies they don’t escalate to senior manager the vacation for whatever reason. The Direct manager always has permission to approve or reject the vacation request. We will mark variability with curly brackets {}.

1. Employee requests vacation from his direct manager

2. Direct Manager retrieves balance from Human Resources

If there is no balance

3. The vacation request is rejected

If {StrictSMFollowUp}

If vacation is more than [ApproveLimit] days,

4. Direct Manager forwards to Senior Manager

5. Senior Manager approves or rejects the vacation request

If vacation is more than {NotificationLimit} days

6. SM needs to receive email notification

7. Direct manager approves or reject the vacation

The StrictSMFollowUp is variable; it could be true or false based on the way the organization work. In our example, we classified the businesses that will use our application, some have strict SM follow-up, and others have not.

ApproveLimit states the max number of days Direct Manager allowed to approve without consulting Senior Manager. NotificationLimit states the max count of days that need no notification.

The above is just an example to identify variability points in the requirements. We can use many ways to mark variability in the requirements that makes sense for our own applications.

Variability Implementation:

Inheritance: As an example, in a typical application we wanted to support different database servers. You can select the basic reference dbase and create classes to implement it. Each other new dbase could inherit from the base classes and override essential operations. As the basic SQL construct are the same between databases, you should centralize the variability in specific classes.
Parameter: You can have pages or screens with customization parameters. Administrators have the permission to customize the system. As example, the timeout of waiting the response from the external bank server.
Configuration: In many cases you can use extensive configuration files to adapt the behavior of the system. In some systems you can even specify a complete alternate component through the configuration file. As example, specifying another XML parser. In this case, your application should use standard XML parser interface and the new parser should implement the same interface.

Architecture and Design:

Building the architecture and design in a way that makes configurability and reusability easier is an important issue. Layered architecture and components based design make it easier for you to achieve better designs.

Focusing on using known architecture and design patterns will make it easier for you to build state of the art architecture and design. Explaining patterns is outside the scope of this article, but some references will be listed in the references section.

Reusable Asset Library:

Having a reusable assets library with processes that define how to reuse a certain component, how to add new component and how to update existing component is important of reuse success.

A traceability table that traces each component version with which products are using it is required to guide in updating the applications with new components updates if necessary.

Asset library should be organized so that each one item should has:

Version number. A unique version number to the library item.
Status: is it ready for reuse or still in beta state.
Bin reusable component (if exist) such as DLL files or OCX files.
Documentation: A simple document that specify how to use. A sample code will help component users to use it effectively.
Release notes: This can specify what bugs are solved, new features, or knows issues compared to the earlier version of the same component.
Source code: if applicable.

Process Support:

We will describe basic processes to help managing the reusable asset library. We will not state the details of each one.

Add new reusable code item: The steps needed and standards that should be satisfied in the new reusable code item.
Delete reusable code item: Remove a typical item as it is no longer used nor supported.
Update reusable code item: A new revision is created and needs to be available in the repository.
Use typical reusable code item: reusing should be organized to know the full dependencies between reusable code items and applications that use it.
Requirements development process should have activities for requirements development to guide in stating techniques and methods to state the variability points.
Architecture and design process should be stating using typical techniques to help focusing on reusability.
Testing processes should take into account testing variability points comprehensively.

Before adding a new version to the library, an extensive test and peer review is done to make sure the component is meeting quality requirements.

A common challenge is what to do with a large set of reusable code, should we create a project to organize them and add them to the new empty asset library? Or just focus on the new reusable components?

Without first closing the sink that continuously diminishes reusable code, we will always have the case of old code that need cleaning to be added to the reusable code repository. So first establish a system to close all waste holes and in parallel clean up and restructure old code.

Conclusion:

Whatever your company size and experience are, you can not simply order reuse or install it at once and expect it to happen. Rather, you should encourage reuse by following many steps as described in this article. Although reusability conceptually is a simple idea, many efforts should be done to realize its benefits. This article was an attempt to highlight many of these issues.

References:

Software Reuse, Architecture, Process, and Organization fir Buisess Success by Jacobson, Martin Griss, and Patrik Jonsson
Design Patterns, GOF, by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides.
Pattern Oriented Software Architecture, a system of Patterns, Volume 1 by Frank Buschmann, Regine Meunier, Hans Rohnert, Peter Sornmerlad, and Michael Stal.
Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture, By Martin Fowler, David Rice, Matthew Foemmel, Edward Hieatt, Robert Mee, Randy Stafford.

Presentation Skills Observation

2007-11-21T11:19:00.000+02:00

This is my hints and observations after attending a one day ITIL awareness session and saw many speakers at the same day.

Don't ever joke or even smile. Be very serious. People expect being very serious.
Don't read slides. You are expert in the area of presentation, isn't you?
Keep a distance between you and the audience. You are the teacher and they are the students, at least in this session. Don't let them feel your are friends or you are their servant.
You are educating your audience. You many even challenge them by questions to keep them awake.
Asking questions should be at the end only.
Don't ask after each slide, "Is it OK to move to next slide?" Move on, you are the teacher. Some attendees are not prepared enough to follow you, you can't slow down much for them. The other good guys will suffer.
Use attractive images from nature and may be human pictures, of course if related.
Use wisdom quotes. It will inspire people.
Don't ever show you are tired or disappointed. Be very confident and serious. If you feel that, show the reverse.
If you are asked to give them the presentation (i.e. PowerPoint presentation file) (and there is no problem). Give it to them but let them feel a favor. I mean, let them feel they are getting a valuable asset.
Don't ever slow down. You should move on to keep the flow of conversation. and to keep time. Keeping time is your own responsibility. Everyone will blame you if you did not.
Don't ever give a speech in a subject you feel you are not expert in it.
You own the slides. Even if prepared by someone else, you must tailor it, practice it and test yourself before the training session.

My hints focused on giving training or session to strangers that most of them you are seeing them the first time. Many of these points are not applicable to in-house sessions/training where everyone know everyone else.

ITIL Awarness Session by SECC

2007-11-21T10:40:00.000+02:00

Yesterday, SECC organized a session about ITIL in ITIDA building in Smart Village, Cairo, Egypt.

Here are some of my personal notes, I just wrote it as it may be useful to someone else.

ITIL have certified training for individuals, no certification per the organization. However, you can be certified by ISO20000. ITIL will help you in your certification. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_20000
HP helped Microsoft to has its own framework, called: Microsoft ITIL based framework (MOF), see: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/solutionaccelerators/cits/mo/mof/default.mspx
HP has their own efforts based on ITIL, "HP ITSM Reference Model v3.0".
HP provides ITIL help and automation tools: Service View tool that let you understand your infrastructure dependencies. They have also Service Level Agreement monitoring software. I expect them to have many other tools.
HP has their own way to assess ITIL implementation level.
The importance of proper training. The presenter presented a very nice graph representing the transformation of data, to information, to knowledge to wisdom through professional training. He assumed written words in books like data and the experienced talented trainer help move the audience very fast to wisdom.
Start (ITIL implementation) with the part in your organization that has the most pain. I generally like pragmatic approach!
Let process drive the tools not the reverse. The tool buyer can push you in the wrong direction, be careful, I warned you.
Deployment planning is so important to avoid service interruption.
For me, the real experience of Mansour Auto and Orascom was exciting, more than the theoretical description of ITIL.
In a big organization, agreeing on service level between internal dept is important in your excellence journey.

I recorded many notes about presentation hints, but I will post it in a separate post.

Amazing Iceberg

2007-11-21T10:12:00.001+02:00

Many problems that could seem simple actually very big and requires a lot of efforts to be resolved. In some other cases, complex problems could have simple solutions.

I saw this picture, or some one like it, at a presentation about ITIL organized by SECC at ITIDA building in SmartVillage yesterday. See http://www.secc.org.eg/

> The image is from : http://www.starstore.com/acatalog/Starstore_Catalogue_PHOTOGRAPHIC_POSTER__PHOTOGRAPHIC_POSTERS_3691.html

A Definition of Best Practice

2007-11-18T14:01:00.000+02:00

The application of common sense; not rocket science
Proven and practical activities which are in common use
Replace "Chaos", "random results", or "best effort" with "order", "predictable quality" and "optimization"
And by the way, when was the last time you needed an ROI justification to apply common sense?

Copied from PinkElephant.com public presentation.

My New Nokia N800

2007-11-18T11:37:00.001+02:00

I am fond of Nokia N800 Internet tablet, but it is not yet available in Egypt. I asked friends in KSA, Dubai, and Kuwait with no success. I finally decided to buy one from amazon.com but amazon does not ship outside USA.

Look at Nokia N800:
http://www.nseries.com/products/n800/#l=products,n800

The solution came finally few days ago from one of my friends. Aramex has a service called Shop&Ship. They will give you two addresses, one in USA and the other in UK. If you ordered any thing from USA, give the seller your address in USA. Once Aramex receive your shipment, they will re-ship it again to you at your home country. Look at: http://www.aramex.com/shopandship/default.aspx

The service was very exciting and finally I got my Nokia N800 Internet tablet.

As Nokia N800 is Linux based, you can download the source code and find tons of free open source programs at http://www.maemo.org/

Fired or Not?

2007-11-18T11:04:00.000+02:00

In the case of a manager leaving his position, if you want to know if he is fired or moved to a better position, notice his speech in his farewell:

If he is not fired:

He speaks about his past achievements with pride.
He speaks about his future with enthusiasm and excitement.

If he is fired:

He speaks about past achievements with a pity tone.
He speaks about his future with doubts and almost have no concrete or exciting plans.

Process Improvement, a Parallel Documentation Project

2007-11-18T10:53:00.000+02:00

One of the pitfalls of applying process improvement is to stay using the same old process and having a parallel project that just produce the required documentation. Project documentation is actually important but it is just documentation.

To make things clear, here is an example. If you developed a design document early as opposed to documenting the design after the actual implementation. The process improvement approach will change the way you do your work and will direct you to think and plan using design document. You will make reviews and inspection on time per the defined process. The other approach lets you developer design in the same old way and before QA audit or before appraisal, you will create a design document.

SNEEZES Around the World

2007-10-11T11:00:00.001+02:00

This is very interesting article about sneezes in different cultures. I enjoyed it.

http://www.netlaputa.ne.jp/~tokyo3/e/sneeze_e.html

It is very interesting for me to find other cultures says something like Muslims in case of someone sneezed. It is something like international culture. In English, "God bless you" or "Bless you".

8 signs it's time to change jobs before you get fired

2007-10-03T17:01:00.000+02:00

This article about "8 signs it's time to change jobs before you get fired" is interesting from the point that, these signs - from employee point of view - let him left his company. I know many development managers who suffer from turnover. This article could help them avoid making things that enforce employees to seek new workplace.

http://biz.yahoo.com/hftn/070925/092407_change_jobs_fortune.html?.v=2&.pf=career-work

I hope it is useful.

Pidgin, a nice chatting tool

2007-09-26T22:57:00.000+02:00

I really hate distractions and interrupts, but nowadays I am very busy that I begin to lose contacts with my close friends. Chatting although annoying to me but at least an initiation channel that could lead to phone calls or meetings. I found pidgin (http://www.pidgin.im/) a nice tool that can read many protocols at the same time. Here a list of supported protocols:

AIM
MSN
Google Talk
ICQ
Yahoo!
IRC

And other protocols also:

Groupwise, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, MySpaceIM, QQ, SILC,SIMPLE, Sametime, XMPP, and Zephyr

Pretty more than I need, I just have accounts for Yahoo, Google, and hotmail. Now I am connecting to all my friends at once.

I want also to mention that, it is a GNU software. Enjoy the open source movement!

Move Outlook Data Files

2007-09-04T20:51:00.000+03:00

If you sadly have to use Outlook. You should save your emails data location to a convenient place so you can easily backup and restore them.

Here is a useful link: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA011124801033.aspx

Thunderbird and Firefox Profile Location

2007-09-04T20:40:00.000+03:00

I like to have all my data at a convenient place, so I can easily backup and restore it. Nowadays email data is crucial to any person. I hate the idea of saving my valuable (I hope so) emails in some cryptic location under C:\Documents and Settings. I want to put my profile on some other location like d:\docs\D:\docs\Thunderbird\my-profile-name.

Here URLs that could help you do it easily.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_:_FAQs_:_Changing_Profile_Folder_Location
http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/profile

As a simple example. My Thunderbird profile file is located at: C:\Documents and Settings\My Account Name\Application Data\Thunderbird\profiles.ini

I have modified entries in the file to be:
IsRelative=0
Path=D:\docs\Thunderbird\my-profile-name

Of course make sure your profile is copied to that location.

Artistic Style 1.21

2007-08-19T14:16:00.000+03:00

http://astyle.sourceforge.net/

Artistic Style is a source code indenter, formatter, and beautifier for the C, C++, C# and Java programming languages.

When indenting source code, we as programmers have a tendency to use both spaces and tab characters to create the wanted indentation. Moreover, some editors by default insert spaces instead of tabs when pressing the tab key, and other editors (Emacs for example) have the ability to "pretty up" lines by automatically setting up the white space before the code on the line, possibly inserting spaces in a code that up to now used only tabs for indentation.

Since the NUMBER of space characters showed on screen for each tab character in the source code changes between editors (unless the user sets up the number to his liking...), one of the standard problems programmers are facing when moving from one editor to another is that code containing both spaces and tabs that was up to now perfectly indented, suddenly becomes a mess to look at when changing to another editor. Even if you as a programmer take care to ONLY use spaces or tabs, looking at other people's source code can still be problematic.

To address this problem, Artistic Style was created - a filter written in C++ that automatically re-indents and re-formats C / C++ / C# / Java source files. It can be used from a command line, or it can be incorporated as classes in another C++ program.

http://astyle.sourceforge.net/

Fully Elaborated Documents As a Completion Criteria ...

2007-08-12T10:06:00.000+03:00

In May 1988, Bary W. Bohem published an article about Spiral Model. He described the available, at this time, software models and write some of its advantages and disadvantages. I liked the following paragraph from his article.

"A primary source of difficulty with the waterfall model has been its emphasis on fully elaborated documents as a completion criteria for early requirements and design phases. For some classes of software, such as compilers or secure operating systems, this is the most effective way to proceed. However, it does not work well for many classes of software, particularly interactive end-user applications.
Document driven standards have pushed many projects to write elaborate specifications of poorly understood user interfaces and decision support functions, followed by the design and development of large quantities of unusable code."

It is risky to treat software process improvements initiatives as just a punch of documents as Bohem stated above.

Create your First Mobile Application in 1 Hour!

2007-07-21T14:40:00.000+03:00

Recently I bought a new mobile, Nokia E61i. It is actually not just a mobile, look at: http://europe.nokia.com/A4344018

I want to create my first mobile application on it, I know I have the choice between C++ and Java. I want to start the easy way so I decided to give java a try.

I tried a Netbeans Mobility Pack. E61i is compatible with CDLC 1.1 and MIDP 2.0, so install the CDLC version.

Using graphical drag and drop I have created my first application very easily, I encourage everyone to try it.

FireFox Profiles

2007-07-16T09:00:00.000+03:00

I access the Internet using my Laptop from work, home and at many clients sites. I always adjusting FireFox proxy settings to match my current location settings. I want to have an end to this repetitive task. I found that FireFox can have multiple profiles feature. So I can have profile for "Home" with direct connection to the Internet and "Work" configured for the work proxy and so on.

I found the solution at:
http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/profile

I just added -ProfileManager switch after the FireFox exe name. When I start FireFox you I see the following dialog.

So you can manage as much profiles as you want.

Software Process Improvement

2007-07-13T21:26:00.000+03:00

In this article, the author highlights a software process improvement approach that works effectively in his opinion. Next, he will highlight the importance of having central knowledge base to store organization assets. Finally the IDEAL methodology is briefed.

SPI in a nutshell:

For Software Process Improvement (SPI) new comers, process improvement seems to be confusing. In the following paragraphs I will try to explain process improvement intent and rational behind it.

Any software Company has 3 basic elements that work together to develop software products. They are People, tools and processes. People use tools in a certain way to develop products. People need leadership, ethical management, and rewarding. Tools require proper selection and training to be used effectively. The remaining part is the way people collaborate together to plan and execute development projects. The way people collaborate and use tools is called processes. Software process improvement focuses on improving the management procedures used by team members to manage work tasks and the way and order tools are used.

Still confused! Process improvement can be called management practices improvements. As many people believe they lack proper management to their human and non-human resources. SPI helps you learn how to manage your team members, projects and tools in an organized and scientific way.

First Steps in SPI:

Every company has processes, even if large parts of it are not written and not consistently followed. Regardless of your organization size and characteristics, if you have developed products, then you have used some processes to develop it, even if known verbally.

The first days of process improvement should focus on discovering the current way you manage your projects, whether they are good or bad. Start by documenting your organization structure, job description, responsibilities, the processes/procedures used in the company, and any assumptions in action. Now you have something to start improvement efforts.

Second step is to focus on your business needs and critic your system. Document your current problems, challenges, advantages, disadvantages, and areas you believe you should improve.

Now you have basis to start with and rational behind your SPI activities. Trying to ignore your company culture, strengths, weaknesses and experience in doing software development in favor of a suggested magic solution that will overnight convert you to a mature company is unrealistic.

The idea is to discover your system, document it, and retain your strengths. Study your current problems and your business needs. Learn from other’s method of doing development, and then find ways to improve your weaknesses.

What if you reuse ready made process descriptions to move faster and use a reliable quality system that is proven to be perfect? Sure you will start fast but in the wrong road. It is not yours, so the gaps between what is been already documented and the actual practices will be widened. Even if you enforce team members to follow it, they will find ways to avoid it.

And what is next in SPI?

Most of the companies, probably your company have the foundation of project management. So treat software process improvement as high priority project. Define requirements (i.e. what to be achieved), tasks, assign resources, and define budgets. Then track tasks completion and cost. Make the project as a 6 months project, and at the end of the project evaluate your position and plan for the next 6 month project.

Software process improvement is a continuous effort, so the 6 months projects will never end. You should move from initial software process improvement to CMMI level 2 then to higher levels. The only level that you can stay at is level 5. Level 5 is the “Optimizing level”, which means continuous process improvements.

Start by documenting your best practices that work great with you, the current processes and procedures that you use, then document current organization structure, job descriptions, and document all templates used in your company. It is easy to create Plan templates from the best plan you have.

Define clearly what is good in your organizations and what works bad, what are the future challenges you have to meet. Define your business goals and how they will affect your current processes.

Make 3 or 4 iterations per project, which is 6 months time frame. In all iterations, follow the IDEAL model. Although there are several improvement models that you can use such as PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act), PDSA (Plan, Do, Study, Act) or Six Sigma DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control), I suggest IDEAL for its comprehensive guidance.

Organization Repository:

If you don’t have a content management system hosted in your current Intranet, you should have one very fast.

Many organization experience, culture, knowledge are stored in the memories of team members and on many emails stored on personal computers. Some have file server, but have never being up to date and are usually incomplete. File server in my experience is not efficient in organizing organization assets. It is inefficient to browse for a certain document and you can’t effectively search.

Organization should move from vocal knowledge to written knowledge. When human invented writing, it was the first time people can share knowledge between them even if they have never met. Your organization should have central repository to host all of the company documents, all project artifacts, lessons learned, guidance to current and new employees, and all digital asset. By doing so, you will build a real organization asset that foster team learning, sharing, and reusing across your organization.

Happily there exist many open source and commercial systems, selecting which system to select is a critical task and beyond the scope of this article.

IDEAL brief description:

Here is a brief about IDEAL, for full description look at: http://www.sei.cmu.edu/ideal/ideal.bridge.html

IDEAL is a model for continuous improvement. It helps by describing the main steps necessary to establish a successful improvement program.

IDEAL is acronym for Initiating, Diagnosing, Establishing, Acting, and Learning.

I – Initiating: Laying the groundwork for a successful improvement effort.

Stimulus for change: Change for the sake of change rarely results in significant improvement, so state business reasons for process improvement. When the business reasons for change are more evident, there is greater buy-in throughout the organization and there are greater chances for success.
What benefits (such as return on investment or improved capabilities and morale) will result?
Sponsorship: It is necessary to maintain sponsorship levels throughout an improvement effort. Sponsors can be most effective if they give personal attention to the effort and stick with it through difficult times.

D – Diagnosing: Determining where you are relative to where you want to be.

Characterizing the current and desired states is similar to identifying the origin and destination of a journey. A good starting point is "stimulus for change" activity in Initiating phase.
Develop Recommendations

E – Establishing: Planning the specifics of how you will reach your destination.

Set Priorities
Develop Approach
Plan Actions

A – Acting: Doing the work according to the plan.

Create Solution: Write the new process descriptions (or the modifications proposed), templates and procedures that are best guess solution.
Pilot/Test Solution: Try executing the process on a pilot project to make sure of applicability.
Refine Solution: Once the pilot done, refine per the lessons learned in the Pilot project.
Implement Solution: You are ready now to apply the new process changes organization wide.

L – Learning: Learning from the experience and improving your ability to adopt new technologies in the future.

Analyze and Validate: In what ways did the effort accomplish its intended purpose? What worked well? What could be done more effectively or efficiently? Lessons are collected, analyzed, summarized, and documented. The business needs identified during the initiating phase are reexamined to see if they have been met.
Propose Future Actions: During this activity, recommendations based on analysis and validation are developed and documented. Proposals for improving future change implementations are provided to appropriate levels of management for consideration.

Note: many statements are just copied from “The IDEAL(SM) Model: A Practical Guide for Improvement” at http://www.sei.cmu.edu/ideal/ideal.bridge.html

References:

http://www.sei.cmu.edu/ideal/
http://www.sei.cmu.edu/ideal/ideal.bridge.html
IDEAL: A User's Guide for Software Process Improvement at http://www.sei.cmu.edu/publications/documents/96.reports/96.hb.001.html
http://www.jspwiki.org

ANT hate white space

2007-06-05T10:22:00.000+03:00

I am trying to install Bonita workflow engine, it uses Jonas application server. Jonas requires ANT. I have ANT installed in "C:\Program Files\ant". Bonita gives me very misleading error messages. After some research I got the idea to put ANT in a path without spaces. I moved ANT to be on "C:\ant" and every thing worked fine. So I believe now that, ANT hates whitespaces a lot!

Still Researching for a Wiki

2007-05-29T10:19:00.000+03:00

These are useful links for research:

Open Source Projects Metrics

2007-05-26T20:35:00.000+03:00

Ohloh.com is a new kind of web site, it monitors open source projects, crawl their source code repositories and give you some interesting metrics.

Try JSPWiki (A Java based Wiki) and you will find interesting facts like:
Code Base: 65,670 LOC
Estimated Effort: 16 Person Years
It will cost you $879,389 if the average programmer salary is $55,000. You can change the average salary to your local market salary. I am sure you can save a lot by using open source tools.

Try it at: http://www.Ohloh.com

The Three Elements of Communication

2007-05-24T06:56:00.000+03:00

Albert Mehrabian stated in his theory that verbal communications have 3 components:
1) words,
2) tone of voice and
3) body language.

He stated that words stands for 7%, tone of the voice is 38% and body language is 55%.

Look at this example: "You are a smart man", you may mean it or mean "you are supposed to be smart", or "you are really stupid", it depends on your tone and body language.

To properly interpreter his theory, apply it specially on emotional expressions, but words alone in factual expressions should express more than 7%.

If you feel a little angry, feel you don't trust the other party, or the situation became ambiguous, it it better to hold a meeting for full bandwidth of communications.

If you feel greatly angry, stop doing anything and relax. don't email, speak, or meet. Just do nothing and you can take a shower if possible. In extreme cases, you can do nothing and relax for a few days.

Thunderbird and Calendar

2007-05-18T11:19:00.000+03:00

I am a fan user of Thunderbird, but I was missing a calendar features. Today I am happy to find what I was dreaming of. I found addon that did more than what I wished.

It also exist also a separate application for tasks and calendar if you wish. Enjoy all of these at:

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/

Look at: Choosing an open calendar manager

Software Process Improvements. The Fastest Way!

2007-05-16T21:05:00.000+03:00

You want process improvement. Let me tell you about the fastest way ever. Just buy that commercial package that has complete Quality System that let you achieve CMMI maturity level 2/3/4/5, whatever you want. Just copy and paste and you are almost done. What is remaining? Just enforce your team to follow the new Quality System processes and you are done. Enforcing them to follow it is not so hard especially if you used the management power (sometimes called sponsorship). Is this fast? yes, but you have achieved nothing.

When you get ready made process description and templates, you instantly have a system but simply isn't suitable for you. A clothes that does not fit your size. After a while, you have a good process and your implementation is always lagging and struggling. Sure your team productivity, creativity and moral will be degraded as well.

To give an analogy. Look at clothes variety. What is the probability of getting a complete formal suite of someone else that match your size, favorite style and color. The probability is very low.
Organizations needs quality systems that is suitable for them. There exist many factors like team size, skills, structure, type of products, ... etc. This makes reusing others processes will not help you, but typically will hurt you much.

Improve your quality system step by step completely synchronized with your actual implementation. Don't start with great process that no one needs to follow.

Copy and paste ready made process description and templates is very easy while applying them in real business life is much harder and tedious.

So, stop using other's processes and templates and develop your own. Time consuming? Yes, but this is the fastest way for real process improvement if not the only way.

Is Waterfall Still Valuable?

2007-05-09T20:40:00.000+03:00

I wonder if Waterfall methodology still valuable. I see many companies that apply CMMI L2 is just using waterfall. Is it consistent to be a small business and still work with strict Waterfall?

I think many companies are comfortable using waterfall as the artifacts required are classic and generally simpler. One complete requirements document with some revisions based on limited number of change requests. I hope we can move the software industry to use iterative methodologies to increase work progress visibility.

Read more details about waterfall and iterative methodologies at:
Iterative and incremental development
Waterfall model

[Wikipedia quotation]

In summary, the criticisms of a non-iterative development approach (such as the waterfall model) are as follows:

Many software projects must be open to change due to external factors; the majority of software is written as part of a contract with a client, and clients are notorious for changing their stated requirements. Thus the software project must be adaptable, and spending considerable effort in design and implementation based on the idea that requirements will never change is neither adaptable nor realistic in these cases.
Unless those who specify requirements and those who design the software system in question are highly competent, it is difficult to know exactly what is needed in each phase of the software process before some time is spent in the phase "following" it. That is, feedback from following phases is needed to complete "preceding" phases satisfactorily. For example, the design phase may need feedback from the implementation phase to identify problem design areas. The counter-argument for the waterfall model is that experienced designers may have worked on similar systems before, and so may be able to accurately predict problem areas without time spent prototyping and implementing.
Constant testing from the design, implementation and verification phases is required to validate the phases preceding them. Constant "prototype design" work is needed to ensure that requirements are non-contradictory and possible to fulfill; constant implementation is needed to find problem areas and inform the design process; constant integration and verification of the implemented code is necessary to ensure that implementation remains on track. The counter-argument for the waterfall model here is that constant implementation and testing to validate the design and requirements is only needed if the introduction of bugs is likely to be a problem. Users of the waterfall model may argue that if designers (et cetera) follow a disciplined process and do not make mistakes that there is no need for constant work in subsequent phases to validate the preceding phases.
Frequent incremental builds (following the "release early, release often" philosophy) are often needed to build confidence for a software production team and their client.
It is difficult to estimate time and cost for each phase of the development process without doing some "recon" work in that phase, unless those estimating time and cost are highly experienced with the type of software product in question.
The waterfall model brings no formal means of exercising management control over a project and planning control and risk management are not covered within the model itself.
Only a certain number of team members will be qualified for each phase; thus to have "code monkeys" who are only useful for implementation work do nothing while designers "perfect" the design is a waste of resources. A counter-argument to this is that "multiskilled" software engineers should be hired over "specialized" staff.

ActiveCollab, Project Collaboration Application

2007-05-09T12:51:00.000+03:00

http://www.activecollab.com

ActiveCollab is an easy to use, web based, open source collaboration and project management tool. Set up an environment where you, your team and your clients can collaborate on active projects using a set of simple, functional tools. 100% free!

My experience installing, using, some advantages and disadvantages:

- Very easy to install especially if you used WAMP to install Apache, MySQL, PHP in one shot. It has simple and friendly installation. After installing it say to your c:\webapps\activecollab, just point your browser to it and the setup page will show up asking you a few installation questions.

- The system is simple and easy to use.

- You can have client companies and as many projects as you need, add users and give them permissions.

- You can add milestones and tasks. Tasks can be related to a specific milestone and assigned to a specific person. The idea of havig deadline to milestones only is simple. Tasks are done or not, no deadline or duration assigned to it. We can name it management by objectives, I think Agile teams will like this simplicity.

- It have a message features which you can use it like a blog. You can add message and anyone can add notes. The feature is totally under control by the assigned permissions.

- You can have attachments, and folders. Files have revisions, so you can track file changes. You can enable comments on files uploaded. This feature alone deserve using ActiveCollab.

- You can search if the simple browsing they have did not help you find what you want.

- Fast, and stable, actually I fond no problem using it.

Disadvantages:
- Although milestones and tasks are nicely done, you miss having metrics, like task estimates and actual effort spent. But they are working to improve it.

- This is the light version, they are planning to have commercial version, I am afraid in the future that, all nice features to be in the commercial version.

I enjoyed experiencing this tool and hope some of you find it useful.

Select the Best Wiki, Weblog, Forum, or Podcast

2007-05-03T14:56:00.000+03:00

When I try to decide about a new open source product, I get overwhelmed by the number of choices available. Always I have no no guidance on what to choose.

Today I found 5 websites that helped me to know about many alternative products and select the suitable one for my needs.

Select a Wiki with the help of http://www.wikimatrix.org/
Select a weblog with the help of http://www.weblogmatrix.org/
Select Forum with the help of http://www.forummatrix.org/
Select a Podcast with the help of http://www.podcatchermatrix.org/
Select a CMS system with the help of http://www.cmsmatrix.org/[From a friend comment

Code Reviews Considered Hurtful!

2007-04-28T16:57:00.001+03:00

Code Reviews Considered Hurtful, why?

First, read this link from extreme programming website: http://www.extremeprogramming.org/stories/pair7.html

The same principle applies to any project artifact review, whatever it is requirements document, design document or plans. What is we should stress is collaboration on the artifacts with all involved people and all people who could give feedback per their role or experience in the project or similar projects. I wonder why we should replace collaboration with criticism which will lead to non objectivity in most cases.

Per the Agile Manifisto, where people and interactions are given more value over processes, stick to value people and collaboration over criticism. Detect any problems early while creating the artifact other than delay it to review after its creation. By doing so, you will foster a collaboration environment other than a bureaucratic process followers.

Publish

Reclaim Your Emails and Address Book!

2007-04-28T16:39:00.001+03:00

Reclaim your emails:
I am using gmail for 3 years until now, I am even poping other accounts inside gmail. It gave me consistent view to all my email. I also liked the conversation view very much. But wait, all my data is there, if my account is stolen, all my emails can be misused. I moved back again to read my email using Thunderbird.

1) I am poping all my emails and not leaving it on the server. I am using always my laptop so my data is always with me. Even if you read emails from several machines, you can make the master machine to remove emails from the server while other machines to leave emails on the server. This is not necessarily perfect as accessing it on the gmail, but my priority is to reclaim my data again.

Hundreds of megas and thousands of emails are poped from gmail, a lot of data that should be destructed as it is out of context, gmail wonder why I should every delete emails as I have more than 2 Giga of storage!

Another added benefit from reading my email to my laptop is the contribute ability I have with any open source project like Thunderbird, can you get this benefit from gmail?!

2) I feel a little safe from the risk of my emails gets compromised by security agents or hackers. I have no high security needs but I feel better with it.

Reclaim your Address Book:
I am convinced now to have separate two address books, the one that focused on voice conversations on my mobile and the other that focus on emails and web addresses on My Thunderbird Contacts. Each has its own objectives and limitation.

So now, I am happy I have reclaimed my emails and my address book, but I am making CD backup weekly to protect my data from a corrupted hard disk.

So, you want to learn Bookkeeping!

2007-04-25T11:18:00.000+02:00

Several years ago, when I was studying stating my own business, I researched to learn the basics of bookkeeping, The tutorial of Dave Marshall helped me a lot.

http://www.dwmbeancounter.com/tutorial/Tutorial.html

I advice everyone to have a little understanding of bookkeeping (at least).

CMMI 1.2 Process Areas Table

2007-04-25T10:12:00.000+02:00

I like this table which map CMMI process areas in two dimensions, the first is the level and the second is the process type.

Level/Process Category	Process	Project	Engineering	Support
L5	OID			CAR
L4	OPP	QPM
L3	OPD OPF OT	IPM RSK	RD PI TS VER VAL	DAR
L2		PP PMC SAM	REQM	CM MA PPQA

CMMI, Process Should Be Documented at Level2!

2007-04-22T18:29:00.001+02:00

Many people think that if you are at CMMI L2, you don't have to have process description. They believe process description is required only in L3.

Absolutely, this is not right. If you look at the Reference Book, at GP2.2 text title "Establish and maintain the plan for performing the process", think a little and remember CMMI is a model not a process, it does not describe exact activities to be done, so don't depend on it as a process. The point is how could you plan the project without knowing the activities done in planning. However the model doesn't leave us to conclude, it states in "Generic Goals and Generic Practices" chapter the following:

"The plan for performing the process typically includes the following:
• Process description
• Standards and requirements for the work products and services of the process
• Specific objectives for the performance of the process (e.g., quality, time scale, cycle time, and resource usage)"

It even states to have measures for the process, stated in the plan:
"Measurement requirements to provide insight into the performance of the process, its work products, and its services"

So prepare a process description and include the level of detail that is suitable for the project, and each project could have his own process description that is suitable to the project type and size. At level 2 you don't have to have organization wide process repository and a
tailoring guidelines, this is required in level 3 and above.

New Ubuntu and Thunderbird

2007-04-20T23:26:00.000+02:00

There are two important open source release, here are the links:

1) Ubuntu 7.04
http://www.ubuntu.com/
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/704tour

2) Thunderbird 2.0
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/features.html

We are the Web

2007-04-20T16:04:00.000+02:00

Do you want to understand what is going on on the Web? What is meant by "Network is the computer"? What is blogging and social networking and how these could affect our lives in the next decade?

Watch it:

Watch it several times, you may stop the music to concentrate on the content.
Still did not get the point, read We Are the Web. Although long but deserve reading.

These clip also could help gain better understanding.

I am a Little Angry, Stop Emailing and Pickup Phone or Schedule a Meeting

2007-04-19T21:56:00.000+02:00

Although I love to respect all people I deal with and very rarely hurts anyone in speech over phone or in a face to face meeting, sometimes I miscommunicate using emails.

As example, If I am making 100 voice conversation, I may go wrong just once. If I am making conversations through emails, I guess I may make 20% bad emails. Why?! This is actually annoying me to the extent of thinking to stop emailing unless really necessary and depend instead on phone.

While browsing my favorite blog feeds, I saw a blog that describes what I was thinking of. Enjoy it in the following paragraphs:

Send: Why Good People Send Savage Emails

from Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk by Penelope Trunk

By Will Schwalbe — Even the most placid soul can find her or himself in the midst of a full-fledged, take-no-prisoners flame war. One minute you are scoring a minor point, then a few more emails go back and forth, and soon you are choosing the perfect vicious barb to complete an angry screed.

We all know jerks who live for this kind of angry exchange. This post is not for them. This is for those of us who would rather not spend our lives composing savage emails - and who realize the enormous danger they post to our careers. One livid email, especially if taken out of context, can seriously damage your reputation.

Recently, a distinguished UK television producer wrote an angry email to her staff when they had neglected (or purposefully forgotten?) to ask her to sign a birthday card that was to be presented to one of the employees. That peeved email is now enjoying a very active and healthy life online and in the UK press. Perhaps some major aggravation was the spark for the boss’s intemperate email outburst? No one will ever know or really care. The birthday card email lives on forever.

So why do angry email exchanges happen to even placid souls?

Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, wrote the following New York Times Op-Ed about conflicts around the world. It seems to apply equally well to the subject of flame wars.

“In a study conducted by Sukhwinder Shergill and colleagues at University College London, pairs of volunteers were hooked up to a mechanical device that allowed each of them to exert pressure on the other volunteer’s fingers.

“The researcher began the game by exerting a fixed among of pressure on the first volunteer’s finger. The first volunteer was then asked to exert precisely the same amount of pressure on the second volunteer’s finger. The second volunteer was then asked to exert the same amount of pressure on the first volunteer’s finger. And so on.”

The results were fascinating. The researchers reported that the volunteers typically responded with 40 percent more pressure than they had experienced. Concludes Gilbert:

“Each volunteer was convinced that he was responding with equal force and that for some reason the other volunteer was escalating. Neither realized that the escalation was the natural byproduct of a neurological quirk that causes the pain we receive to seem more painful than the pain we produce, so we usually give more pain than we receive.”

Moral of story? For preservation of your job, your business relationships, and your friendships - next time you find yourself in a situation where the emails are flying fast and furious, do consider that you may be as responsible for the escalation as the other party. When you feel your temperature rising, it’s a good sign that it’s time stop emailing and, perhaps, to pick up the phone or schedule a meeting or just let the issue go. Unless, of course, you want your version of the birthday card email to appear on the nightly news. In that case, in the immortal words of Clint Eastwood: “Make my day.”

Defect tracking tools and waste

2007-04-19T21:07:00.000+02:00

Defect tracking tools and waste

from AGILE IN ACTION by simonbaker@think-box.co.uk

Defects are waste. User stories with known defects aren't done and can't be released, they're partially complete work or inventory, and they are waste too. If you're using a defect tracking tool you're queuing up waste and you're inspecting for quality after the code's been written.

Eliminate waste. Avoid queues because they prevent throughput of released software and block the flow of value to the customer. Build quality into the code from the start by fixing defects as you go. To help improve the quality of code, developers should use test-driven development and testers should perform exploratory testing as developers complete vertical slices of user stories. If a defect is found, stop the line and fix it immediately. Don't queue it up.

ahammad notes:
I like this post very much. I like thinking outside the box. Many times we treat our problems as a fact of life. This must end and we should strive to solve our problems. This is why I like the idea of ISO that stress on each defect to has a corrective action and a preventive action. This idea alone could let organization improve very rapidly.

One of the interesting ideas of Lean Thinking is the focus on the principles, focus should be continue to be on the source code. So you stress to develop automated testing even before the development of the task begin. The automated test say the test is failed. Then you develop the code to pass the automated test cases. This is test driven development.

As a programmer, I like the idea to write even your docs in your code! Why not write the design inside the source code comments and with the help of tools you can generate class diagram and documentation automatically from your code. Want to see, try doxygen. It is full featured, reliable, free, and open source.

Even code comments should not be waste. It should be concise, to the point and is not redundant. If you can rename a method or class to be easy to understand without any comment, do it. Comments are not an objective in its own sake, if it does not add real value, it is a waste.

Put customers first and everything else follows

2007-04-19T21:03:00.000+02:00

Put customers first and everything else follows

from AGILE IN ACTION by simonbaker@think-box.co.uk (sjb140470)

W Edwards Deming said something like:

The real purpose of a company is not to make money, but to create customers who are so pleased that they will continue to buy products.

Don't fixate on sales figures and profits. Get your relationship right with your customers and end-users and everything will follow. Work from the outside, in. Continuously collaborate with your customers and end-users. See everything from their point of view first. Understand value from their perspective. Have your efforts be driven by your customers and end-users. Ask them what they want next and let their requests pull you ahead of the competition.

ahammad:
This is very basic, I see many cases of failures to serve customers well, whatever the customer is a colleage or external to the organization, the same principles should apply.

My Second CMMI L2 Appraisal

2007-04-15T20:33:00.000+02:00

Here are the lessons I have learned from my second CMMI L2 appraisal, not all of them are technical:

1) Let actions speak about you and don't speak about yourself; doings are more respectable than sayings. Most people hate who speak much about themselves.

2) Dictatorship: If you are a team leader and unable to facilitate team discussions or reach consensus, this usually reflect your dictatorship style or the mentality of win-lose. As a team, everyone must focus on win-win relationship. We should believe we are strong because we are different and being different means we have a great chance of building integrated vision.

3) Treating people should be smooth, not just when things are easy but also with hard issues and when we feel angry. IMHO this is the measure of person kindness and professionalism.

4) You can always ask people for annoying things as long as you treat them with great respect and let them understand your intention. As example, if you in a critical meeting, you can ask a person to leave the room, or to turn off mobiles as long as you say it properly. On the other side, some people feel great when they have the chance to hurt other people.

5) CMMI interpretation is quite flexible, you can tailor it greatly. Remember that CMMI is a model not a process. You can use this feature to hurt your business or to help it.

6) Using tools improperly can lead to a very complex baseline taking and reconstruction. So always use tools the right way.

7) Tools come with their own complexity. Use sophisticated tools only to solve complex problems. Generally use the simplest tool that is good enough to manage your current problem. Use the right tool for the right task.

NetBeans Visual Web Pack 5.5

2007-04-14T16:21:00.000+02:00

I was dreaming of an open source Java development tool that let Website programming much easier and mostly visual, this will help juniors and beginners to start developing applications faster. I was dreaming of something like .Net environment, or the Borland DELPHI, but open source of course.

I am very happy to say that tool is already exist, I tried it and it proved very successful. It is the Popular Java tool NetBeans, with the Visual Web Pack.

Download Netbeans, and then the Netbeans Visual Web Pack, many tutorials are exist to help you start very fast, look at http://www.netbeans.org/kb/55/vwp-index.html

All tutorials are full of screenshots and there are many blogs that share Netbeans experience with everyone. The help exist with the default setup is also very helpful.

It works a little slow on my 512M RAM machine (but OK, it worked just good enough), I think it will be very smooth and fast on 1G RAM.

Remember, everyone needs web development, even for inhouse website to improved knowledge sharing and workflow automation. Try it and share your experience with the world.

Task Coach, Gaim (Pidgin), and Subversion Feeds

2007-04-11T10:03:00.000+02:00

Task Coach
Task Coach is a simple todo manager to manage personal tasks and todo lists. It grew out of a frustration that well-known task managers, such as those provided with Outlook or Lotus Notes, do not provide facilities for composite tasks. Often, tasks and other things to do consist of several activities. Task Coach is designed to deal with composite tasks.

It see full features, try it.

GAIM Chat Client
It is a multiplatform tool that can interface with all popular chat systems like hotmail, yahoo, gmail, AOL, ...
Imagine you can access all your chat accounts from ons tool. I use it and it is worth trying.
Recently Gaim changed there name to be Pidgin, but everything else is the same.

SVNFeed

SVNFeed is a Python script that creates RSS feeds of Subversion repository logs. Both remote and local repositories can be monitored. It is helpful to use your favorite Feed Reader product/service to watch source code changes.

Download Wikipedia Encyclopedia

2007-04-10T10:00:00.000+02:00

Download Wikipedia Encyclopedia

Do you know that it is possible to download the entire Wikipedia Encyclopedia to your computer and use it offline. See the click above.

Saving YouTube Videos

2007-04-10T09:56:00.000+02:00

How To Rip Audio from YouTube Videos

Directly from Youtube - The FLV Online Converter at Vixy.net can take Youtube Video URLs and provide you an MP3 audio file of the YouTube video [via].

Extract Audio from FLV files - If the Youtube Video is on your hard-disk as an FLV video file, try the free FLV Extract utility that extracts video and audio from FLV files. The video is saved to .avi and the audio is saved to MP3.

New Releases of Open Source Projects

2007-04-10T09:48:00.000+02:00

Dimdim

Dimdim is the Open Source web conferencing company. With Dimdim you can show Presentations, Applications and Desktops to any other person over the internet without installing anythign on the Attendee side. You can chat, show your webcam and talk with others in the meeting.

TCExam 4.0.011 Released!

TCExam [http://www.tcexam.com] is a Web-based Assessment Software system (e-exam or CBT - Computer Based Testing) that enables educators and trainers to author, schedule, deliver, and report on surveys, quizzes, tests and exams. The software is used all over the world by universities, schools, companies and independent teachers.

Buddi 2.3.2

Buddi is a simple budgeting program targeted for users with little or no financial background. It allows users to set up accounts and categories, record transactions, check spending habits, etc.

YaHP Converter 1.2.3

YaHP is a Java library that allows you to convert an HTML document into a PDF document.

FBReader 0.8.1d (Default branch)

FBReader is an e-book reader. It currently works on the Sharp Zaurus, Siemens Simpad with Opensimpad ROM, Nokia 770/N800 Internet Tablet, Archos PMA430, Motorola E680i/A780 smartphones, PepperPad 3, IRex iLiad, and Linux/Windows XP i386 computers. It supports several e-book formats: plucker, palmdoc, zTXT, HTML, CHM, fb2, TCR (psion text), OEB, OpenReader, RTF, non-DRM'ed Mobipocket, and plain text.

Boot Your Computer Faster

2007-04-04T13:24:00.000+02:00

My machine is very slow especially at startup, many tools uses my tray and they provide no way to delete. Even if I tried to uninstall, some refused!

Here how to get rid of them, at least the annoying. Open Start Menu, in the Run editor, type RegEdit.exe and hit enter. (very long way to say run regedit!)
Browse the keys to reach the following path:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

Review the and make sure to remove only unwanted entries. Be careful, registery changes are not for beginner users.

No More Quality Initiatives

2007-04-01T18:49:00.000+02:00

This post is copied from: http://www.agilemanagement.net/Articles/Weblog/FeaturedBlogEntries/NoMoreQualityInitiatives.html

About 6 month's back we [Microsoft Visual Studio Team System] hosted a meeting of our customer advisory council. This is a hand picked group of people who help to steer our product. They all know who they are, so I don't need to name names. Many of them read this column regularly. Back then I was soliciting input for our "formal" methodology. During this session, one of our advisors urged me to avoid giving "us yet another quality initiative. We've tried them all and people are tired!"

And so, I'm sure he'll be delighted to hear me say, "Quality initiatives! Just say no!"

The problem with quality initiatives, and their champions, and their change agents, and their sponsors, and their improvement projects and their quality teams and process experts and black belts and green belts and funny handshakes and secret rituals and coded handbooks and group hugs and therapy sessions is quite simply that the improvements don't last. When the black belt goes home, and everyone breathes out, the regular work force go back to their same old behavior.

QUALITY IS EVERYONE'S BUSINESS!
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT IS EVERYONE'S BUSINESS!

Plain and simple - quality and continuous improvement are everyone's business. It's an everyday thing for every employee. Everyone should understand variation and specifically understand how to measure and interpret the variation in their inputs, their rate of input, their working method, their lead time and their rate of output. Eliminating special cause variation should be everyone's business, every day. Reducing common cause variation should be everyone's business every day. Suggestions for improvement could come from anyone, any time and be implemented by a local consensus on the shop floor. No need for a central process improvement group or sanction from an ivory tower full of process priestesses.

That's why in MSF for CMMI(R) Process Improvement, I've included daily standup meetings to surface issues and monitor and manage risks, eliminate special cause variation and make it everyone's business to do so. That's why we're dropping conformance to plan and conformance to specification in favor of conformance to process and focus on variation reduction. That's why we're encouraging a bottom up, empowered team, consensus model. That allows decentralized decisions to be made quickly. The way to institutionalize continuous improvement across an organization is to make it everyone's business, every day! The way to deliver an agile process which meets both the original spirit of the software CMM and the letter of the CMMI(R) appraisal model, is to distribute the quality responsibility at grass roots level across the whole organization. Everybody, every day allows quality and agility to walk hand in hand.

This post is copied from: http://www.agilemanagement.net/Articles/Weblog/FeaturedBlogEntries/NoMoreQualityInitiatives.html

JSPWiki 2.4, a Much Improved Wiki

2007-04-01T09:57:00.000+02:00

Today I tried JSPWiki 2.4, it is much improved version, here is a brief of some of the new security features:

Wiki-level and page-level privilege control.
Security can be applied to individual users as well as to entire groups.
Authentication: simple XML file-based, database-based, container-managed and custom authentication modules can be used.
Authorization: security policies and ACLs can be applied to authentication status (anonymous, cookie-based, authenticated), container roles or ad hoc wiki groups you set up yourself

Also, the editor is improved and have the option to use a GUI editor that is based on Java, my FireFox 2.0 worked with it without problems.

It is extremely easy to install, you just drop the war file in the JSP server webapps directory. JSPWiki by default uses no database, it stores all pages and attachments in the file system, you can install a pluging to use MySQL dbase.

I used it for more than 2 year and it was very reliable and helpful, so I encourage everyone to use it. You can use it as a personal knowledge base or as a department knowledge base.

Google Desktop Software Pack

2007-03-30T21:31:00.000+02:00

Google Pack (http://pack.google.com/) is a free software you can add to your Desktop PC, it includes the following:

Google Photos Screensaver: A screen saver that can show images from your local desktop images, Picasa Web Albumes, or any photo feed from the Internet. This is really amazing, while your screen saver is working, you can watch the latest images of your relatives and friends.
Norton Security Scan - Security utility
SymantecDetects and eliminates viruses and internet worms
Spyware Doctor Starter Edition
Picasa
Google Earth
Google Toolbar
Google Talk
RealPlayer: a simple and fast edition without annoying ads
Skype - Voice, video and chat
Google Desktop Search

Goolge have at tool to enable you installing, updating, or removing any software is fun. what is amazing for me a previous Web developer is the integration between that desktop installer and the web site. When you click on Google web site application, the local desktop application will automatically start to download and install it.

Have a look at http://pack.google.com/

Ahmed M. Hammad

Test Driven Development and User Stories

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Software Quality Engineer Certification - CSQE - ASQ

A credible Quality certification, Software Quality Engineer Certification (CSQE)See this link:Software Quality Engineer Certification - CSQE - ASQ

A credible Quality certification, Software Quality Engineer Certification (CSQE)

See this link:Software Quality Engineer Certification - CSQE - ASQ

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A credible Quality certification, Software Quality Engineer Certification (CSQE)
See this link:

Software Quality Engineer Certification - CSQE - ASQ

See this link:

Software Quality Engineer Certification - CSQE - ASQ