What they don't teach you about product life cycle management

I had to backtrack on some code earlier today, owing to two design decisions shrouded in the mists of project history (i.e. pre-dating my watch). (The fact that one of these was both mind-blowingly stooopid and the handiwork of a self-proclaimed database guru didn't sweeten my temper.)

But one thing that I was certainly not including in the project scope was any change to the underlying database structure. And it had to do less with how things were supposed to be done than the realities of client relations. See, when your management has stooped the the level of even trying to dodge paying the base subscription fee, you can't can't consider yourself a "trophy client" anymore. Which means no more meet-n-greet trips out to your facilities on our dime. No more starting projects before the work authorization is even signed. And certainly no more freebie work, whether to humor you or enhance the infrastructure for the long term. To belabor the point, replacing relationships with transactions has consequences--and some of them I have absolutely no say in.

And I hate-Hate-HATE that! It affects the people who have to use this software day in and day out. People who are too contientious (and, frankly, just too darned decent) to deserve anything but top-drawer service. You can't even make the argument that Accounting doesn't have a line-item for such things. Intangibles such as "goodwill" and "brand equity" are certainly a factor whenever businesses are purchased.

But apart from that, I'm annoyed to discover yet another deficiency in my programmer education, which neglected to mention the impact of the client relationship on the software life cycle. And I think it brings home the point that when you pretend that no value exists outside of the bottom line, you lose more than you could ever possibly gain.

Judging a product by its documentation

A possibly disjointed post tonight, because Her Royal Kittehness is coming off anesthesia and I need to keep an eye on her. The documentation from the vet said that she might show less activity and appetite during the next few days. They lie. I've had to chase her away from the trash (which might, you understand, contain tasty butter-stick wrappers to lick) twice so far. Affection from her "hoomin" is a poor substitute. The ten o'clock feeding/medication will be a long time coming...

So I'm hoping for better luck with the documentation for haXe, which was brought to my attention by a pod-mate this morning. For the non-programmers, the premise of learning yet another language (haXe) gives more proverbial bang for the buck by allowing you to compile your source code into multiple languages: Flash/Flex, JavaScript, C++, etc. The documentation's just a small notch below "polished," which nevertheless puts it well into the upper percentiles of quality relative to that of its peers.

What really raised my eyebrows, however, was this little nugget from the project's home page:

1. Discover - Discover what haXe is about, how it works and how it could be useful to you.

"...how it could be useful to you": What a refreshing attitude when programming language comparisons so quickly seem to degenerate into spitting matches. No, I take that back. Spitting would be too adult. Make that "booger-flicking contests." Granted, I'm less than qualified to give an opinion on the completeness of haXe's features, the quality of its performance, or the reliability of its compiler(s). But I do know that it's a relief to be treated as a discriminating programmer, rather than another Kool-Aid-swilling acolyte. And I thought that deserved a shout-out.

Measuring metrics

A cynical thought from last week: In times of economic uncertainty, it should be technically impossible to go broke selling metrics. Namely because metrics bring back the sense (or, perhaps more likely, illusion) of knowledge, and with it the illusion of control. Problem is, to measure the metrics, you need more data, particularly contextual. And data tends to exist in inverse proportion to uncertainty, cancelling out the desperation driving the "need" for metrics.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not necessarily knocking all metrics, although I fervently believe that anyone who manages by them forfeits her/his title to "leadership." But I do view them with the proverbial jaundiced eye, and the foregoing is a good part of the reason.

A thought on cross-pollination

Today was the annual meeting of the Wisconsin Honey Producers Association's Western District. The guest speaker from the WI Ag. Dept. asked for a show of hands to get a sense of how many "new beekeepers" were in attendance. Dennis's hand and mine went up--we're just starting our seventh year, which makes us n00bs by comparison to most folks there. But so did the hand of one of the "old timers." Somewhat in jest, certainly, but a recognition of the fundamental truth that if you aren't learning something every year, it's time to retire.

So it was a little depressing when, in conversation, one of the folks present complimented the vitality of the La Crosse Beekeepers and followed it by noting that the beekeepers in his area operate in a spirit of mutal distrust. I sincerely hope that he's just had the (temporary) misfortune of running into one or two bad specimens.

Better yet, I more fervently hope that he will realize it and launch a beekeeping group with those who aren't paranoid. Because beekeeping operations of any scale have many enemies: Pesticides, foreign honey dumped on the market, adulterated or purely fraudulent products, drought, antibiotic-resistant diseases, devastating parasites like the varroa mite, bears, and the incompletely-understood phenomenon of colony collapse disorder. Unless they're actively destroying your hives, equipment or customer relationships, fellow beekeepers emphatically do not rank within that list.

Fortunately, the awesome peeps in this area aren't shy about sharing what they've learned, what they're currently trying, and what they don't yet understand. As I semi-joked to my district-mate, getting some of us to shut up might just be the tricky part. Here we understand that, economically, "live and learn" takes the proverbial back seat to "learn and live." Reading books and trade journals is good, except that honeybees don't necessarily consider themselves obligated to conform to laboratory or academic expectations. And the bees themselves can only teach so much: It's not like they bring back gossip about how other hives and honey-houses are being managed. The only remaining option is to talk to the bees' humans, and thereby ditch the bogus mindset of playing a zero-sum game.

- - -

Full disclosure: No one saw fit to nominate any replacement officers, which effectively continues my regime as District Secretary. Tremble, all ye keyboards!

Context does matter

It turns out that I was misinformed about the reading assignment due Tuesday. The public library does not have the book. Neither does the dead tree store out at the mall. But by the magic of the internet, I can have it near-instantly in digital format. Imperfect magic, but I won't bore you with my tribulations with Barnes & Noble online.

I'm too much a tightwad to spring for a Kindle or Nook just yet, so the only option is to download a reader application for the PC (there being no Linux distribution, thank you very little!). The software leaves any number of things to be desired: For instance, its window cannot be maximized (thereby allowing more text per horizontal line). In fact, if I try that on my dual-monitor work setup, the text disappears entirely.

But nowhere is the dead-tree mindset more glaringly obvious than in the way it clings to the paper page paradigm. Correct me if I'm wrong, but when you read multi-page text on a computer screen, your instinct is probably to scroll with the mouse-wheel to keep the text at or near a certain eye-level, no? In the reader, the scroll-wheel advances the pages, not the text. Thus I've repeatedly found myself having to backtrack (thereby losing my place and the flow of the content), simply because I've been hard-wired by MS Word, various web browsers, etc., to increment rather than iterate. That, in my line of work, is a glaring usability problem--one that I'm willing to bet is a direct heir to the hide-bound mind-set driving content packagers out of business.

I'll probably manage to train myself to wait until I'm done with the entire page before rolling the wheel. Until I've finished the content, anyway. But it strikes me as arrogant of Barnes & Noble to expect such auto-re-training. Not simply the arrogance of forcing a paper-and-ink paradigm on a digital context, but also that they are clearly not eating their own dog-food at the appropriate decision-making levels. If, for instance, TPS reports were only available to B&N upper management in their reader format, I strongly suspect that a scrolling feature would become de rigeur faster than you can say "wrong cover sheet."

Now, in its defense, the reader's ability to remember my place is appreciated. And--darn their eyes!--once you have a credit card on file w/the B&N website, it's waaaay too easy to click-and-add new titles. If the company manages to scrape together enough of a clue to offer a Linux reader, I could be in serious trouble. But given the experience so far, I'm not particularly worried.

Frivolous Friday, 03.26.2010: Elizabeth and Henry grow up

When we learned the "There's a Hole in my Bucket" song in 6th grade, the boy's name was Georgie, not Henry. (Chalk one up for unorthodox education.) Even at the time, I thought the song ridiculous and reverse-sexist (because Henry's a right dolt), and I haven't changed my mind in the intervening thirty years. But the meme and tune have been stuck in my head since noon today and show no sign of leaving. So, to ape Marshall Crenshaw, I've suffered for my art: Now it's your turn.

There's a flaw in our process, dear Liza, dear Liza,
There's a flaw in our process, dear Liza, a flaw!

So fix it, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
So fix it, dear Henry, dear Henry, fix it,

But how shall I fix it, dear Liza, dear Liza,
But how shall I fix it, dear Liza, fix it?

Walk the floor, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
Walk the floor, dear Henry, dear Henry, walk it.

But what should I look for, dear Liza, dear Liza,
But what should I look for, dear Liza, look for?

Small details, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
Small details, dear Henry, dear Henry, details.

But how shall I note them, dear Liza, dear Liza,
But how shall I note them, dear Liza, note them?

With your smartphone, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
With your smartphone, dear Henry, dear Henry, smartphone.

But how do I upload, dear Liza, dear Liza,
But how do I upload, dear Liza, upload?

By email, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
By email, dear Henry, dear Henry, email.

My inbox will fill up, dear Liza, dear Liza,
My inbox will fill up, dear Liza, fill up!

Then filter, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
Then filter, dear Henry, dear Henry, filter.

By what rules should I filter, dear Liza, dear Liza,
By what rules should I filter, dear Liza, filter?

Your objectives, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
Your objectives, dear Henry, dear Henry, objectives.

But how do I set them, dear Liza, dear Liza,
But how do I set them, dear Liza, set them?

A task force, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
A task force, dear Henry, dear Henry, task force!

But how can I guide them, dear Liza, dear Liza,
But how can I guide them, dear Liza, guide them?

A process, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
A process, dear Henry, process.

But there's a flaw in our process, dear Liza, dear Liza,
There's a flaw in our process, dear Liza, a flaw!

. . .

Living fossils

As further proof that having ideas carries their own punishment, it's put-up-or-shut-up time for me at work. Which means extracurricular meetings and being expected to come up with more ideas. And, oddly enough, reading assignments. Among them is the classic Dale Carnegie "How to Win Friends and Influence People." Somewhere I had the notion that the book was a product of the Fifties--a notion quickly dispelled by the introduction. (Interviews with the Thomas Edison? That didn't involve a Ouija board? Wait--what?") Actually, it was first published in 1936 when America was in the throes of The Great Depression, but bore the central message that ultimately made him wealthy, even by the standards of that bleak time.

After skimming the introduction and contributed piece by Lowell Thomas, I settled in for a slice of time capsule. But the version of the book I had had been updated so many times that it was something more like a living fossil. For a History nerd like myself, the anachronistic hodge-podge is somewhat jarring (reading it in PDF format didn't help, mind you!). And I was not amused to discover that business self-help books have apparently been following the same formula for much longer than I'd imagined--the "formula" being:

1. Break the message down into simple, but interrelated semantic chunks.
2. "Prove" your arguments with cherry-picked anecdotes.
3. Give your anecdotes credibility by quoting famous people. Preferably dead ones.

All that being said, I'm still reading it. More, in fact, than the "assignment" requires. One, that's just how I roll. Two, I'm a sucker for stories. Three, the central tenet of "Get over yourself and pay attention to what's important to others" is a healthy counterbalance to me spouting my semi-informed opinions to the inter-tubes every day. And--though I shouldn't admit this--one of the anecdotes mentioned the town where I grew up (Eau Claire, WI), thus illustrating the book's sub-premise that you'll never lose by mining a prospect's background. Sigh: Sometimes self-awareness sucks. Like now.