ITJOBLOG

Take note of Sencha: an application-centric HTML5 framework and IDE, now with native packaging

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 16:44:36 +0000

I have been spending some time with the recently released Sencha Architect 2. This is a development environment with three core components:

Ext JS 4.0 Framework: an HTML5 application framework for desktop browsers
Sencha Touch 2.0: an HTML5 application framework for mobile browsers
Sencha Architect IDE: a visual development tool for both Ext JS and Sencha Touch
Architech is a commercial product, but there are free and open source versions of Ext JS and Touch with various licensing and support permutations available.

I installed Sencha Architect on Windows, which works though I cannot quite describe it as Windows-friendly; there is a Mac flavour to the documentation and nothing quite works in Internet Explorer, Chrome or Safari is recommended.

What you get though is an elegant IDE which is focused 100% on applications, rather than general HTML design. It is not Eclipse-based, which I found interesting having recently also tried the latest Titanium IDE from Appcelerator, which is built on Eclipse. Although Eclipse is a wonderful thing, it does add complexity and overhead compared to a lightweight, dedicated IDE like Sencha Architect.

The frameworks are also interesting. Both Ext JS and Sencha Touch (which are similar in many respects) are based on a Model-View-Controller design, and this is neatly expressed in the IDE which shows Controllers, Views, Stores, Models and Resources in its Project Inspector. A store is essentially a collection of model instances, and might for example be an Ajax proxy retrieving JSON data from a remote URL. The image below uses this technique to show bars in London. The app is designed for a smartphone, though I am displaying it in Google Chrome to test.

A great feature of the latest Sencha toolkit is that you can package apps as native apps for Android or iOS. Support for RIM Playbook is also planned. You can even package for iOS on a Windows machine, though of course without the benefit of the iOS simulator. Sencha's approach to native packaging is similar to Phonegap/Cordova, in that it uses the embedded browser on the device. However Sencha is not using Phonegap, but as far as I can tell, draws on technology acquired from Nimblekit, a small company specialising in native apps for iOS with HTML and Javascript acquired by Sencha.

These frameworks are not the easiest to pick up quickly, but I was struck by the clean design of both the code and the IDE. Further, Sencha apps generally look good and in many cases the visual components come close to what you can achieve with native code.

From what I can tell, the pressure on developers to create apps that play nicely with a variety of devices, from Windows desktops and laptops through to iPads and Android smartphones, will only increase. Sencha is worth a look.

Let's unfriend corporate Facebook snoops

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 15:00:00 +0000

Does your cat know what you do on Facebook?

Would you let an employer look at your Facebook profile? Apparently, many would like the privilege.Facebook's chief privacy officer Erin Egan has warned employers against demanding access to candidates' Facebook accounts.

It seems to be a prevalent problem in the US, where press reports indicate that some companies are asking people outright for their login credentials. The thinking seems to be that, by looking at the private Facebook accounts of a job candidate, an employer will be able to get a better sense of the kind of person they are.

This is, of course, dangerous territory. It is dangerous not just for job candidates' privacy, but also for employers.

Let's say that an employer decides to log in to an employee's account, and finds out a piece of otherwise private information. Perhaps, for example, a female candidate might be planning a pregnancy. Someone could be gay, but only out to a group of Facebook friends. Perhaps someone is a member of online groups or has made status updates indicating that they are HIV-positive. Or maybe they are a member of some other minority group.

It then becomes very difficult for an employer to prove that they haven't passed up that candidate in favour of someone else, based on discrimination over something they read in their Facebook profile. Decided not to hire me for that Java developer position? Prove, then, that it isn't because you suddenly found out that I'm thinking of trying for a baby with my partner within the next few months, and you're scared of having to grant me paternity leave.

In the US, some companies have tried to skirt around the controversy by simply asking potential candidates to let them shoulder surf as those candidates look through their own Facebook profiles. But this fails to get to the nub of the problem, which is that surfing peoples' private social media accounts is an extremely bad idea, and people who do it should be burned at the stake.

Facebook itself has warned companies not to do it, and the UK Information Commissioner's Office has warned UK employers that it would have "very serious concerns" if companies in the UK nosed around people's Facebook pages. The Officer points to the UK Data Protection Act, arguing that it explicitly says organisations shouldn't hold excessive information about individuals.

In the US, some job applicants have said that they have allowed companies to intrude on their privacy in this way, because they needed the job in question. However, ITJobLog's readers are hopefully not in the same position, living on the breadline and looking for work from week to week. If a potential employer tried to do the same to our readership, we hope that candidates would decide that they didn't want to work for an organisation with such an egregious value system.

Five Signs of Disaster in Your Project

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 09:22:29 +0000

How do you know your project is headed for disaster?

1. You don't have a project charter. I've written about project charters here before. They set the project vision and release criteria. They might say more, but without the vision and release criteria, you don't know what you are supposed to do and you don't know what done means. Uh oh!

2. If you are not agile and you have no project manager, you are headed for a disaster. That's because for a project larger than three people, you have no one to coordinate and gather data to report to management, not command-and-control. If you are agile and you have no one to facilitate, that might not be so bad if the team is experienced and small. If you are agile and large, you might be ok, maybe not. If you are agile and inexperienced with agile, imnho, you are headed for disaster without someone to facilitate the team.

3. For any project, if you have not done deliverable-based planning, you are in a disaster. You just don't know it yet. In agile, this means you do a demo at the end of an iteration. For kanban, you do demos when you have finished a feature. For a more traditional project, you build in demos or other deliverables at regular milestones.

If you have done deliverable-based planning, and you see no deliverables, you are in trouble. You should always be able to see a deliverable of some sort.

4. Ask the people on the team what their confidence level is in the schedule. Ask them anonymously. If they start to have less than 80% confidence, you are in trouble. You can do this for any project.

5. If you have no release criteria, you are in a disaster. I'm not fond of changing release criteria, because it feels as if you are chasing a butterfly. But, if you can't meet the current release criteria for some reason, change them to something you can meet. Release criteria are not stretch goals; they are criteria you expect to meet.

If you see any of these signs on your project, act. Write a charter with a vision and release criteria. Make sure you have a servant leader for the team. Develop deliverable-based milestones. Ask the people on the project what their confidence level is.

Now, you have a shot of avoiding disaster.

Making sense of Windows 8, the oddest Windows yet

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 10:58:17 +0000

Why would a company take its core product and mess with it so that a significant proportion of its customers will almost inevitably dislike it? Welcome to Windows 8. Microsoft has taken its familiar operating system and bolted on a Tablet OS called variously Metro-style, or the Immersive UI, or from the developer perspective WinRT (Windows Runtime).

I have been working with Windows 8 since the launch of the Consumer Preview at the end of February, both on a slate device and on my usual desktop PC. It has not been a bad experience, but it has been distinctly odd, and at times distinctly annoying.

Putting two disconnected web browsers with different user interfaces in Windows 8 is a usability disaster, for example. I find myself losing tabs, or right-clicking to raise the tab selection UI forgetting that I am in the desktop browser.

Another problem is that the taskbar, reliable task-switcher since Windows 95, is broken in Windows 8, since it does not show which Metro apps are running.

Presuming you are not using a slate, the pragmatic solution is to avoid the Metro side and just use the desktop. This is difficult too though, partly because of the Start menu which is Metro-only, and partly because some utilities are now Metro. Sometimes these also exist in their old versions, at least in the Consumer Preview, leading to a surreptitious Metro-avoidance search.

Take the new Remote Desktop Client, for example. Raise the Start menu, type Remote, click Remote Desktop, and off you go. Then you discover that the settings are minimal and hard to find, and that when you do connect, it only runs full-screen (like all Metro-style apps). What if you do not want it full screen? Maybe the old one is buried here somewhere?

So you press Windows+R for the Run dialog and type mstsc, and up comes the old one. Thank goodness, pin to taskbar.

This is all very well, but if you run a corporate helpdesk the prospect of constantly advising users on how to avoid Metro or work around its limitations is unwelcome. Unless Microsoft can work some magic between now and launch, businesses will be patting each other on the back for sticking with Windows 7 for years to come, at least until Windows 9 arrives.

That will a shame, since there are also plenty of good things in Windows 8, even leaving aside Metro. Hyper-V virtualisation is one, Storage Spaces another (though probably of little relevance to businesses), networks connect faster, and performance feels snappier overall.

So what is Microsoft up to? The problem it faces is encapsulated by a conversation I had with someone who works in the City of London the other day. "I am getting an iPad," he said. "It is changing the way we do meetings."

Apparently it is now common for documents to be sent out as PDFs and viewed on an iPad. Somehow, the difference in usability, portability and battery life between a laptop and an iPad is enough to tip the balance from paper to electronic documents.

Microsoft fears this, because it sees that as iPads and other tablets improve, and the apps become more powerful, the moment will come when there is no need for a laptop at all.
Put another way, it is touch-controlled tablets that will be the growth area in personal computing, not the usual cycle of Windows upgrades.

This is why Microsoft cares more about the tablet experience in Windows 8 than about the desktop experience. In particular, the Windows on ARM devices, which should be equally as lightweight and power-efficient as an iPad, will in theory be a compelling option for City users who want an e-reader for meetings. They get real Excel and Word as well as all the usual Tablet benefits.

That is the theory, though after using Windows 8 on a tablet at a conference last week I have concerns there as well. The snag is that it is even harder to avoid the desktop when in Metro, than it is to avoid Metro when in the desktop. Windows 8 has a much better on-screen keyboard than Windows 7, but all the fundamental usability issues of touch-control in Windows remain in the Windows 8 desktop.

The fix will be more and better Metro apps, but by the time Microsoft has it right, how far behind Apple and Android will it have fallen in this market?

I am reserving judgement, because despite the annoyances, Metro-style Windows does work well on a tablet, and I do value having a combination device that runs everything. Microsoft is apparently re-working Office for Windows 8, even though it remains a desktop application, and this combined with improved Metro apps should considerably improve the tablet experience.

The controversial Start menu becomes one of the best features when you are working with touch, and apps are easier to find and launch than on iPad or Android.

It is not all bad then; but there are plenty of reasons for caution when it comes to Windows 8 in business. Perhaps the real significance of Windows 8 is not so much Metro, Windows on ARM, and the debate about how well they will do, but rather the underlying trend which has caused Windows 8 to be what it is: the unexpectedly rapid ascent of tablet (and by implication, cloud) computing thanks to Apple's iPad.

Agile failing? It is the people and their communication that will save your project, not the methodology

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 09:30:00 +0000

Gil Zilberfeld, an agile practices expert, has posted on 4 warning signs that Agile is declining. I will not re-iterate his points; you should read the article for yourself. The overall theme though is this. The software establishment - including the managers, the consultants, the trainers, the vendors - has embraced Agile, to the extent that, according to Zilberfeld, more than half of software projects at least nominally use Agile methods. The results are disappointing though, because companies have simply absorbed bits of Agile into their existing top-down management culture. Therefore:

At this point, I feel Agile is declining into what TQM [Total Quality Management] was. A brilliant success in the beginning, and now just a history fact. In a few years, months even, the business side will wake up and say: Agile is snake oil. It doesn't deliver on its promise (and it doesn't matter if it's done wrong). The backlash will be grand.

I am reminded of something I learned from one of the excellent QCon conferences in London, which covers Agile in depth. It was not so much a specific speaker or talk, more a common theme running through many presentations. Software projects generally do not fail for technical reasons. They fail because the team - using the word team in its widest sense, to include all project stakeholders from users to executives - fails to communicate effectively. Many Agile techniques, such as the daily meeting which is part of the Scrum methodology, are designed to facilitate communication. I have also heard recommendations such as moving developers into the same office as managers in order to get them talking to each other. Another example, at a micro level, is Pair Programming, where two developers work side by side on the same code. You cannot do this without communicating your intentions, ideas and solutions to the person alongside you.

Kent Beck, one of the pioneers of Extreme Programming and Test Driven Development, highlights the human factor in software development. Take a look, for example, at his essay on Accountability in Software Development:

... while programming I offer accountability as a way of demonstrating my trustworthiness and encouraging my own best behavior. Pair programming; test-first programming; continuous integration; visible daily, weekly, and quarterly cycles; slack; and estimation are some of the way I make public commitments and render account of my activities. Knowing I will be honest and accountable affects how I do my work, just as knowing that I am hiding and concealing negatively affects how I do my work. Taking responsibility for my choices and actions deflects blame. There is no hidden shame if everything I do is above board.

What is important here is not the techniques in themeselves, but the trustworthiness and accountability they facilitate.

Human problems are harder to solve than technical problems, and seen in this light it is not surprising that companies which adopt bits of Agile methodology without changes in corporate and management culture will miss out on most of the benefits.

Another common experience at software development conferences is to talk to developers who enthuse over the insights they have received, but then lament that they cannot be applied in their workplace. The reasons are old and familiar: inflexible management, longstanding broken processes that nobody seems able to fix, little kingdoms which protect their borders at the expense of the effectiveness of the whole corporation, and so on.

A few thoughts in conclusion. First, if Agile projects are failing, that does not necessarily imply that something is wrong with Agile methodology. It all depends on how it is done and whether the people involved are embracing or resisting the change and communication that goes along with it. Second, irrespective of the methodology, effective communication is key to the success of a project; and if it is not possible to change the methodology or even the tools and technology, working on team communication may still yield amazing results.

Say No to Multitasking

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 10:49:21 +0000

I'm not big on multitasking. In fact, I'm dead set against it. Multitasking wastes time. It makes people create defects. But what happens when your manager asks you to multitask? What do you say?

You say No. But you don't just say, "No, you stupid idiot." Even I know that's the wrong way to say No. Instead, consider these alternatives:

"When do you need this?" The first question you should ask is the When question. Maybe your boss is asking you for something for later. Maybe not. But it's worthwhile to ask.
"What should I stop doing?" Maybe your boss doesn't realize everything you're doing. Explain what you are doing and ask what you can stop.
"Here's when I can start this work." Explain your plan for what you are doing, when you think you'll finish, and when you can start the new work. See what your boss thinks.
You might ask, "What is the strategic reason behind this work?" Ask this question nicely.
You also might ask, "Which one of these projects moves the organization ahead fastest or first?" The answer might surprise you--or your boss.

Maybe when you start that conversation, your boss can't believe that you are pushing back, or what you say or what you ask. Your boss might not remember everything you're doing. I had a manager like that. So I drew him a picture of everything I was doing for the next few weeks. I had the weeks across the top, and a list of projects down the side, and showed him how I was going to allocate the time. And, I had a big black line partway down the page, labelled "Unstaffed work."

"Johanna, you can't have 'unstaffed work', you're only one person."

"Yes, I can. I'm only one person. If I can't do it, no one can."

Now, you are not me. You might not want to have the conversation the way I do. In fact, you might want to be much less in-your-face than I am. That's perfectly fine. But you have to say no to multitasking. You have to manage your own personal project portfolio.

No matter what you do, start the conversation. Because multitasking is the illusion of progress, not real progress. And, if you have tried to have this conversation and are having trouble, join me in Peer Project Portfolio Coaching.

Pimping your personal profile

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 09:39:40 +0000

These days, especially for technology professionals, maintaining an online presence is crucial. But one of the biggest challenges facing anyone trying to bolster their presence online is choosing an appropriate service. Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are all very well, but Facebook is mostly used for personal information, while LinkedIn is a professional site, but doesn't give you much latitude when creating a personal feel to your online profile. Twitter is even less conducive when it comes to personalised style - especially given that most people will be reading your Tweets in a dedicated reader rather than going to the Twitter site anyway.

Ideally, a personal profile site will be able to aggregate information from various social networks, while giving you the chance to create your own special look and feel. There are a variety of options to choose from.

About.me

his AOL owned site lets you create a personal splash page using any photograph that you want. You can add your own links (say, to a variety of personal and business webpages), along with links to services including all of the popular ones, along with others such as Foursquare, Posterous, and Github. One useful feature of this site is the analytics capability, which enables you to monitor how many views your site has garnered, along with who is linking to you. You can also measure your Klout score, which gives you a measure of your online influence.

Flavors.me

Flavors.me is an alternative to About.me that I find slightly more slick. Not only does it provide customisation capabilities and links to your other services, but it also lets you read your social streams from those other services, too, turning it into a kind of FriendFeed, but with a lot more polish. It offers you a variety of design features, including multiple layouts, and even provides search engine optimisation capabilities. This site works on a freemium model, providing a basic (but still highly functional) site for free, with an upgrade offering more layouts, specific mobile display options, and other goodies, for a fee.

AboutOurWork.com

This site is designed more for small businesses that individuals, but then, if you are an IT contractor who has incorporated, you qualify. It lets you customise your profile page, in much the same way as About.me, but takes a slightly different approach to measuring the value of your network. It uses a social graph, replete with bubbles and lines, to show others who you are connected with. You can also add a smattering of social network links, to take visitors to your accounts on services such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

Kimtag

This aggregation site that you choose a tag, which can represent everything from an individual to a company or product. Once you have chosen your tag (which could be your name, for example) you can type a little about yourself, and add information such as your name, location, and a vCard. You can also add connections to the major social networks, along with other data such as your phone numbers and address. One attractive aspect to this site is that it automatically assigns you a QR code for your page (although it is easy to do that for any page on any service, by simply using a QR code generator).

Naymz

Naymz focuses heavily on reputation management. It measures your social influence, through other social networks that you link to the system. It also uses assessments by your peers on the Naymz network. Together, your peer assessment and social influence constitute your RepScore.

There are many more personal online profile sites, some focusing on social networking links, and others focusing on presenting your information as effectively as possible. Why use them instead of simply creating your own web site?

They can take the hassle out of web site development, leaving you time to pursue more relevant pursuits such as finding an amazing job. Their social networking features are also beyond what most of us could build on our own sites, and pulling your accounts into one place is a great way to present your entire online presence in one site to a potential employer (although you may want to leave social networks with a personal focus off the list).

Of course, these personal profile and social service aggregation sites are themselves proliferating, leading to a similar problem: which one do you choose? At some point, surely, someone will come up with an aggregator for the aggregators, and so the whole tangled mess will continue. I chose to redirect to a site from my own domain name, and promote the domain name on my business card, giving me total control over my own home on the web.

Three dying platforms: Flash, Silverlight, Win32

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 09:01:11 +0000

It is a little early for a review of the year, but not too early to state that 2011 has brought profound changes to the software development world. Although I am thinking mainly of the client, I would also argue that client and server are so intertwined that both are affected. As an example, I have heard developers moving away from SOAP web services not because of any conviction that REST is a better approach, but because the move away from Windows and towards HTML clients makes SOAP web services more difficult to consume.

So what's changed? Simply put, three platforms which once seemed strategic are now in obvious decline. Getting the nuance right for these platforms is tricky. Lots of software still runs and is still widely used long after it has ceased to be strategic for the company which supports it. All the platforms mentioned negatively below are still in active development; they are not going away and will still be running ten years and more from today. They come with health warnings though: depending on these platforms means that your software will gradually become more difficult for users to run and will be left behind by new technologies.

The decline of Silverlight

In the run up to the launch of Microsoft's Visual Studio 2010 I spoke to a number of Microsoft platform developers. The consensus then was that Silverlight was very important and possibly the future of Microsoft's client. The view was supported by the company's energetic development efforts for Silverlight. It also made a lot of sense: a lightweight, secure, cloud-centric client that escaped the GUI limitations of Win32, worked in the browser or as a desktop application, and as a bonus run on Mac as well as Windows. Silverlight, as I noted in several articles, is client-side .NET done right.

This is not the place to write a long screed about why Silverlight failed, but rather to note that at the end of 2010 it became obvious that Microsoft was changing direction. At the Professional Developers Conference, October 28-29 2010, it was hardly mentioned, and the company focused instead on HTML and Internet Explorer 9. The full extent of its new strategy was not shown until this year, at the BUILD conference in September.

It is not only external developers that were surprised by what seemed a sudden change of direction. The same seems to be true of many within Microsoft itself. Nor am I sure exactly when someone decided that Silverlight was no longer strategic, though there are clues in the Silverlight release schedule. When Silverlight 4 was unveiled in November 2009 it was still ascendant. Silverlight 5, due out shortly, suggests that it was still considered important in early 2010. Visual Studio LightSwitch released this year was likely planned in part as a way of boosting Silverlight, since it builds Silverlight applications. But nobody is talking about Silverlight 6.

Silverlight is still the development platform for Windows Phone 7, but many observers, myself included, believe this will give way to a variant of the new Windows Runtime (see below) in a future version.

This has been a costly experiment for Microsoft. If the company had done the Windows Runtime, rather than Silverlight, back in 2007, imagine how much stronger would be its position now. That said, it is not all wasted. XAML, the presentation language in Silverlight and in Windows Presentation Foundation, continues in the Windows Runtime, and so does the essence of the cloud-centric, client-secure development model.

Adobe Flash Deprecated

Back in 2007 Silverlight seemed to be in part a competitive response to the increasing popularity of Adobe Flash. This month though, Adobe went though wrenching changes of its own, announcing the end of Flash on mobile browsers and a fundamental shift in business strategy away from enterprise development and towards content creation and distribution.

There are plenty of parallels with the Microsoft case. One is that the changes also came as a surprise to many within the company, who just a few weeks before, at the MAX conference in Los Angeles, were talking confidently about the future of Flash and of Flex, the application-centric SDK for Flash. Here is Doug Winnie, a casualty of the inevitable layoffs:

The product managers, evangelists, community managers, and developer relations team members found out the news and the way it was communicated at almost the same exact time you did. They are wrestling with the news and your reaction in real time--so please be supportive of them as they dig through everything.

and here is Duane Nickull:

While on the 3rd day of my vacation in Mexico, I got the call with the explanation that Adobe is doing a major refocus and as part of that, many of us "enterprise" types are no longer required. "Überflussig" I guess is the correct German word for the situation. Keep in mind that I now speak as an individual, not as an Adobe employee. I missed most of the official story due to the timing of my vacation but caught up with a few news outlets to get the rationale.

But isn't Flash still going strong on desktop browsers, and the Flex SDK heading for great new things as an open source project at the Apache Foundation? Well, maybe. Adobe is not betting on that though; it is betting on design tools for content, HTML5, and packaging and distributing publications and apps. Its Flash technology is still critical to how that is done under the covers, but Flash itself will be invisible.

Adobe also says that its LiveCycle middleware will continue to evolve in two specific niches:

We will continue to sell and support our LiveCycle products in the government and financial services markets, two areas where the LiveCycle value proposition remains especially strong.

Again, maybe. This sounds more like Adobe keeping faith with some important customers, than a strong future for LiveCycle.

Win32 Deprecated, .NET changes

Microsoft announced another profound change in direction at its BUILD conference in September. Although related to the decline of Silverlight, this one deserves its own heading. What we saw was that the Win32 platform on which Microsoft has built its prosperity for the last twenty-one years or so (Windows 3.0 came out in 1990) is now being shunted aside. "Shunted aside" is the right term because it is still there in the forthcoming Windows 8, but it is side by side with the new Windows Runtime (WinRT) and a touch-friendly user interface called Metro. The company's goal is to create a platform that will succeed against Apple's iOS. It runs on ARM as well as Intel x86 and has its own Windows Marketplace, similar in concept to Apple's App Store.

Leaving aside the merits of WinRT, the big news here is that Microsoft is finally moving away from the Windows desktop on which most of us have done our work day to day for the last two decades. The reasons are obvious: mainly the rise of iOS and the iPad, but also the success of the Mac among developers and at the premium end of the laptop market. Windows was already in decline.

Your Win32 applications will work forever, but Microsoft's energy is now going elsewhere.

What about the .NET Framework on the client? It is still there, and thanks to the excellence of the C# language I expect it will be the most popular approach for coding for Metro. Parts of the Framework will no longer work in Metro though, and it may even be that HTML5 and JavaScript, which is equally well supported, will gradually supplant it. Nor do I take the success of Windows 8 for granted; Microsoft may find the tablet market already largely absorbed by iOS and Android.

That is speculation; but the long-term decline of Win32 is not.

Platforms ascendant

If these platforms are in decline, what the ones that are rising fast? That is simple to answer. Apple iOS, Google Android, and HTML5 in general. Are these good for the next two decades as in Win32, or will be on the deprecated list in a few years? That is hard to say; if I had to rate them in order of likely longevity I would guess this:

1. HTML, JavaScript and CSS

2. Apple iOS

3. Google Android

Predictions though are a dangerous game, and I would be interested in other opinions.

Cisco: Stop suing your employees, HP

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 08:20:02 +0000

Image by intheozone via Flickr

How do you deal with overbearing employers who don't want you to work elsewhere?

That's the question being asked by Mark Chandler, general counsel at Cisco, in a blog post this month. Chandler is irked at HP for suing one of its employees, after they left to join the network giant. It is the third such lawsuit in two years, he says, accusing HP of trying to retain employees through litigation.

"Somehow, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard didn't see a need to build a company based on suing people who might want to leave," he writes.

The industry is rife with examples of employers getting hot under the collar. Steve Ballmer famously hurled a chair across the room when he learned that key employee Mark Lucovsky was leaving to join Google. And Microsoft also sued another employee, Kai-Fu Lee, when he joined the search giant in the same year. Google has since lost both of those hires, proving that what goes around, comes around.

In this latest case, Chandler accuses HP of trying to get its case against its former employee heard in a Texas court, hours before a similar hearing was to take place in California. California doesn't enforce non-compete clauses, which is the legal instrument that HP has used against former employees.

Chandler argues that trade secrets are protected under intellectual property law, rather than non-compete contracts, and that people should be allowed to go and work for whoever they please, especially when "there is argument whatsoever that relevant intellectual property [is] at stake".

The non-compete issue diverts attention away from the real issue with intellectual property, which is that it is ridiculously easy to steal, especially as many companies have weak internal controls.

Perhaps the best way to retain employees isn't to sue them into the ground in the hope that they will avoid working for your competitor. Perhaps, instead, minding your own house would be a more productive way to go.

HP has suffered from a lack of direction lately. It has burned through several CEOs, most recently firing Léo Apotheker in favour of former eBay CEO and failed political candidate Meg Whitman. Before that, CEO Mark Hurd stepped down - and ironically, went to work for Oracle, which is increasingly competing with HP as they each pursue megavendor status and their businesses overlap.

The company has shown a pronounced lack of direction in the last year, buying WebOS, only to announce that it would be getting rid of it after all, launching and then pulling a tablet device, and mulling the sale of its PC division.

None of this rudderless management does anything to keep employees at the company. So what does keep employees happy, and enagaged?

Obviously, decent salaries and working conditions are important. Proper career path planning and succession management for employees is vital if they are to feel that they have a future with a company. And most critical of all, a strong leadership with a clear vision that employees can get behind. Unfortunately, those are things that can only be achieved in the boardroom, not in the courts.

Treating People Fairly Does Not Mean Treating Them Equally

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 07:21:58 +0000

One of the biggest problems in organizations is the notion of what constitutes fair treatment of people. Too many managers--and HR departments--think that treating people fairly requires that we treat people precisely the same way, equally.

Well, we aren't all the same people. We don't want the same things. What you want and what I want from a job are different. You might want time off to go to your children's plays. Maybe I want to take three weeks of vacation a year. You want a book allowance. I want to go to a conference. You want to be part of a team on a well-defined project. I want to be like Captain Kirk, going where no one has gone before.

We both want to work on projects, but the kind of project is different. We both want to work on teams, and the teams are different. Why would the company want to treat us the same way?

And yet, this equal treatment is something many companies strive for.

It's craziness. That's because no one has considered what we really need: fair treatment, not equal treatment.

When you start treating people fairly, instead of equally, you

Help people discover which work challenges them.
Help them learn about and achieve their career goals.
Help people provide you feedback about what they want, not what you want

And, you start creating win-win situations at work.

So stop with the equal, and go with the fair treatment, ok?

Co-working communities: Strength in numbers

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 17:00:00 +0000

Where do you work? I've been a freelance writer since 1994, and I have almost always worked from home. It offers its benefits - the coffee is free, there's a well-stocked fridge, and there is always an office cat or dog available to lower your blood pressure. You get to arrive at work whenever you please, and you get to work in your jim-jams, all day, should you wish.

But there are downsides, too. Isolation. A lack of people to bounce ideas around with. A distinct dearth of office camaradarie. Let's face it: for a freelance worker, working at home can be dull, and lonely. And that temptation to work in your pyjamas all day can be a curse in disguise.

Coffee shops and libraries are alternatives, but they're largely transient. You may get to enjoy the ambient background buzz, but you are unlikely to really connect with someone who has the same mindset as you. What's the answer?

Co-working spaces aren't a new thing, but they create new possibilities. Known in the past as as 'telecottages', they have been gaining traction. For a freelance worker, or for someone starting out building their own small company, a co-working space can be a godsend.

Co-working spaces are best when they play host to a co-working community. The community is really the meat in the sandwich. Without a community, a co-working space is little more than a collection of desks and a whiteboard. But bringing a collection of like-minded people together can produce a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

What does a co-working community look like? It shares an element of commonality. It may simply be that all of the members work in the same field. Maybe a cadre of coders can come together to lend each other support and advice, for example. Or the sense of community could be little more than an ideology, such as subscribing to the notion of quality in work. For some, simply sharing a fabulous working space can be enough.

There are various approaches to co-working. Some of them emphasise the community, and the space is secondary. One example is Jelly, an occasional get-together where people in an area arrange to work together in a temporary space, such as a coffee shop or a person's home. For writers in particular, National Novel Writing Month hosts a series of 'write-ins' where people gather together to work on their novels. These are valuable initiatives. Working together encourages and inspires people.

I like the idea of co-working communities because they help you to manifest your own ideas. As a freelance writer I have had lots of business ideas over the years, but I have never got any of them off the ground, because I didn't have a community of people around me that could help me to make it happen. It is very difficult for one person to make a large project work without the help, support, and skills of others.

Other co-working initiatives focus on the space and the community together, as a single entity. I recently set up The Office, a co-working space and community based in Vancouver, it brings together a selection of people with different skills. I have graphic designers, coders, copywriters and videographers. There's an ounce or two of social media in our skill set, and one or two startups too. I created a set of principles for The Office, that everyone is asked to abide by when they come to work in the space. The principles are pretty basic. Integrity, honesty and transparency figure highly, as do the willingness to commit to something larger than yourself, and be fulfilled in your work.

The idea behind The Office is to make individuals more powerful when they come into the space. We host speaking events and workshops on a regular basis, and also encourage people to share what they're working on via 'show and tells' with a networked projector.

The ultimate goal behind this not-for-profit co-working space is to create a fund using any surplus revenue. Rather than the founders taking a profit, we pump the money back into the fund. Any member with a socially progressive business idea that needs help to get started can apply for funding, and can also use the skills of the community to make their businesses happen.

The Office is based in Vancouver, and most of our readers are in the UK. Otherwise, I'd invite you to stop in for coffee. But for freelancers in our fair city, it is turning into a sanctuary for people to come and work at, and feel at home.

What's your ideal working environment?

Delphi XE2: is this the Delphi we have been waiting for?

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 09:00:17 +0000

I have posted before about Delphi, a rapid development tool forgotten by some, but still the best option for Windows native code development combined with a productive visual component library. That was over two years ago though, shortly after I met with Embarcadero CEO Wayne Williams who promised a version of Delphi that would compile for the Mac as well as Windows.

I had nearly given up waiting; but a couple of months back Embarcadero released a new Delphi with features which, on the surface at least, exceeded my expectations. Here are the highlights:

64-bit Windows development.
A new cross-platform framework called FireMonkey.
A cross-compiler for Max OS X - develop on Windows, compile for the Mac.
Support for iOS development - Apple iPad and iPhone - again using FireMonkey.
A new data-binding feature called LiveBindings, that lets you bind any visual object to any source object using expressions.

It is an amazing list of features, particularly considering the rather disappointing first version of Delphi XE. Embarcadero seemed to have done everything promised and more, in one release.

I was keen to try cross-compiling for the Mac, and set it up in what seems to be the most popular way, using a virtual machine on a Mac to run Windows, and running Delphi in the VM. When you install Delphi, or the full RAD Studio which includes C++ Builder and other features, it installs several components that you then run on the Mac side, including the FireMonkey libraries and a server calls the Platform Assistant. You then create a remote profile in Delphi that connects to the Platform Assistant, password protected for security.

Everything worked first try. I added an OS X target to my Windows FireMonkey app, clicked to run, and my simple app opened like magic as an OS X application on the Mac desktop.

Coding for iOS was more work, since you end up exporting the project to Xcode and compiling with the Free Pascal compiler rather than simply using Delphi on Windows, but it did run successfully, and I was able to use my simple test application on an iPhone.

Embarcadero is promising to add Android support at some future date, making this an interesting tool for those who need to support multiple platforms.

Is this the Delphi we have been waiting for? There are a few things that spoil the product. It does seem to have been rushed, which is hardly suprising when you realise that Embarcardero acquired VGScene and DXScene, products for Delphi that form the basis of FireMonkey, from a company called KSDev only around 6 months before RAD Studio XE2 was released. I am not sure what plans Embarcadero had for a cross-platform framework when I spoke to Williams in 2009, but does look like the KSDev deal solved a number of problems.

This rush shows itself in the immaturity of the FireMonkey framework. There are some performance issues as well as limited features compared to what was available with the VCL (Visual Component Library) for Windows. The VCL may be wedded to Windows, but it is hard to leave behind sixteen years of VCL evolution in favour of the first release of a new framework. Existing applications will not necessarily port easily. It is not only a matter of porting from the VCL to FireMonkey. Delphi developers are used to calling the Windows API when necessary, creating code that will not run cross-platform.

It is also worth noting that all FireMonkey controls are custom drawn. There are always compromises in cross-platform development, and in the case of FireMonkey you are giving up the advantages of using native controls on Windows or Mac.

As a cross-platform development tool, Delphi is now up against Adobe Flash Builder, Appcelerator Titanium, PhoneGap, and others. I have been impressed with Adobe AIR in this context, and PhoneGap also has lots of momentum and is ideal for web developers who now need to create mobile apps.

There is every sign though that Embarcadero is serious about FireMonkey and investing in its future. Existing Delphi developers now have a way to move beyond Windows while still using their preferred tool; and the product looks likely to attract new users thanks to its cross-platform capabilities.

Finally I should add that while it is the cross-platform aspect that is most eye-catching, the VCL is not dead and with 64-bit support Delphi is better than ever as a Windows development tool.

Rank Technical Debt in a Backlog

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 01:21:19 +0000

Some product owners don't want to address technical debt. They only want to add features to a product or system. And that's a huge problem.

The product owner has the responsibility for value of the entire system. That means that the product owner has to address features, technical debt, defects, whatever needs to be ranked so that the team knows what to do when. If the product owner does not rank the technical debt and the existing defects in addition to the features, the team will have trouble sooner or later delivering features.

So what's a team to do?

It's time for a heart-to-heart talk with the product owner. The product owner first needs to know that it is his/her job to rank everything for the iteration. It's possible he or she does not know.
If you are not tracking velocity, start. Remember, velocity is a trend, and will help your product owner see what is going on. Because your velocity will go down as your technical debt goes up, and your product owner needs to know that now.
If you are not tracking the number of defects found and fixed in an iteration, start now. Make this a trend, not a number. Trends are what's important.
Consider tracking Fault Feedback Ratio, the number of bad fixes to total fixes as a trend on an iteration basis. This tells you if the developers and testers are making progress or spinning their wheels.
Make fixing technical debt a part of each feature. I don't understand how anyone can prevent you from doing this. I do understand how insufficient estimation can prevent initial test automation. But a team has the ability to say, "Wait a minute, we are not really done."

Remember, the team has a the "done" card. If a team wants to play the done card and define what done means, and swarm around a story, making sure that they have prevented technical debt from accumulating, they can. I'm not talking about gold-plating, adding more features. I am talking about code review, architectural review, test development at all levels, whatever you need to know that the code works.

Not fixing technical debt is behavior you want to prevent, or stop early. But, if you can't stop it early, make sure the product owner sees the reality of his or her decisions. This is why short iterations are such a good idea. Your product owner might even have a good reason for his or her feature-itis. But if they acknowledge the reason for the feature-itis and explain when it will end, the team has a shot of retaining its sanity.

The more features a team adds without address technical debt or defects, the more technical debt a team adds. And, that's not acceptable, regardless of your lifecycle.

How to succeed in iOS games development

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 17:21:16 +0000

How can you make money developing IOS games? An informal survey conducted by one developer suggests 'be in the top 10%'

Owen Goss, an independent video games developer based in Guelph Canada, surveyed 252 developers who created games for Apple's mobile operating system, to find out how much they earned. The survey took place online over seven days. It turned up some interesting results, one of which was that the Pareto principle seems to apply to IOS app revenues; a small number of developers earn a large part of the cash.

One of the great things about being an app developer for Apple's mobile operating system is that the App Store can be used to market your app for you. Millions of App Store users can see it. However, that is also part of the problem: there are many apps to choose from, and it is easy to get lost in the crowd.

On average, games developers make about $165,000 from a title, but here is where statistics can be misleading. That is the mean average. The median splits the developers in half. 50% of developers have made less than $3000 lifetime revenue from the App Store.

The revenue curve is exponential, because the few developers who are most successful make most of the money. Those in the 75th percentile have made roughly $30,000 lifetime revenue from the App Store. The bottom 25% of developers have made less than $200. Those lucky 4% of respondents who are most successful made over $1 million.

Getting into that successful 10% at the top of the pile isn't rocket science, but it isn't easy either. There are some pointers.

Polish your app

the best IOS apps look good. They are shiny, just like the phones they run on. Games are properly play tested, and gameplay is well thought out, so that there is a solid progression throughout the game.

Do your own marketing

Doing your own marketing is also important. Simply relying on being featured in the App Store isn't a realistic business model. Good marketing includes understanding social media and soliciting user feedback.

Don't race to the bottom

There are thousands of apps for the IOS platform, many of them doing almost exactly the same thing. Your app will succeed on its quality. Don't be tempted to rush it out. Concentrate instead on making it better than the others available.

Look for new opportunities

New social media networks and other developments such as Apple's iCloud promise to disrupt games development. These opportunities along with in-app purchases, can be used to maximise your revenue.

Be original

It's hard to find originality in the oversaturated app landscape, but not impossible. Spend more time in conceptualisation, and ensure that your idea stands out from the crowd.

With Apple's iPhone 5 rumoured to be launching next week, this will be a big quarter for games developers. Will you be ready to capitalise on the ongoing success of the platform?

How the IT landscape changes after Microsoft BUILD 2011

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 07:59:45 +0000

Microsoft's BUILD conference last week was a fascinating event. Of course the headline news was about Windows 8, for which we got the full technical details, or at least most of them, for the first time. There is also a public preview, and I tried out Windows 8 on a high-end Samsung tablet loaned for a few days, then again on a VirtualBox virtual machine after my return to the UK.

Windows 8 will no doubt arrive in a year or so, and we can debate whether it will be a storming success, a dismal failure, or something in between. I think it makes a great tablet operating system, but purely considered as a tablet, it will not be easy for Microsoft to break into the market dominated by Apple's iPad and with Android mopping up most of what remains. The purpose of BUILD was to encourage developers to build apps for the new Metro-style user interface, and if Microsoft can build up a decent range of apps with which to populate its new store, the early Windows 8 tablets will have more chance of success.

It is tempting though to think that this is mainly aimed at consumers, and the fact that the sample Metro apps are mostly games or other trivialities reinforces that impression. Does that mean Windows 8 is insignificant for businesses, or for business software developers?

I do not think so. In fact, the more I reflect on BUILD the more it seems to me a pivotal event not just for Microsoft, but for the IT industry. Here is my reasoning.

First, at BUILD Microsoft made it clear that Windows now has two personalities, built on different programming models and in fact different APIs. The old Windows, now referred to as "desktop", trundles on as before. There are few changes from Windows 7 in the preview build, other than that the Start menu switches you to the new Metro-style user interface, a controversial decision that may become user-configurable in the final release. Yes, Explorer now has a ribbon, the file copy dialog is improved, and I am sure that there will be more small and cosmetic changes to desktop Windows before final release, but they will be minor.

It seems to me that Microsoft itself has now re-positioned desktop Windows as a kind of legacy environment, even though it is the one that most of us are likely to use most of the time. Irrespective of whether Metro-style Windows is a success, the implications of this are huge. After all, Windows still dominates business computing. Yes, Microsoft will still invest in desktop Windows; but the strategy is focused on Metro-style and it is plausible that Microsoft will never now make radical changes or advances on the desktop side.

Second, Metro-style Windows 8 is not just a touch-friendly user interface. It is designed as a client for cloud services. This is most obvious when you realise that Microsoft has not included data providers for local network database servers like SQL Server; you are meant to interact with data via web services. Metro-style apps are isolated from one another, and can only communicate with the file system, outside their own isolated storage, via specified, user-controlled mechanisms called Contracts. Windows 8 shows that Microsoft really is embracing cloud computing, and that may be more significant than the fact that it runs nicely on tablets.

Third, and related, is that Microsoft is locking down Windows, especially in the version for ARM which we did not hear much about at BUILD. If Microsoft gets it right, Windows on an ARM tablet will be equally as secure as an Apple iPad. It is hard to be definitive about this, because the role of desktop Windows in the ARM build has yet to be clarified, but from what I can tell Microsoft plans Windows 8 on ARM as essentially a Metro-style platform, with apps available only through the new Windows Store. If users can only install Metro apps, the entry points for malware are greatly reduced. I suspect that Microsoft also has its eye on Apple-like control and profits from being the only source for Windows 8 apps, with interesting implications for software freedom, at least in the consumer market.

If there is a moment in history when desktop computing became legacy, I suspect BUILD 2011 will be a good candidate.

Finally, note that Microsoft's new Windows Runtime, within its locked-down constraints, looks to me exceptionally well done. Microsoft has achieved security, performance, and support for multiple programming languages including .NET, JavaScript and C/C++. One of its best decisions was to make every API call that might take more then 50ms into an asychronous call, and then to modify the programming languages to make asynchronous programming easier than it has ever been before, via new statements including the "await" keyword in C#.

The Windows desktop will be around forever, and in fact the stability of the platform in terms of forward compatibility has if anything improved, now that we know major changes are unlikely at least until Windows 9 in say 2015, and probably never.

More significant though is that the cloud computing model now has the backing of all the major industry players, even the one with what looks like the most to lose.

CEO Steve Ballmer called Windows 8 Microsoft's "riskiest product bet" and I am inclined to agree.