Comments on: Instant Gratification = Instant Failure

By: jaiz

jaiz — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 03:12:43 +0000

Yes I have.I also know how it could be channeled towards a successful business solution.Name a few: Compiere , OpenCms , Liferay and Alfresco.

By: Max Kanat-Alexander

Max Kanat-Alexander — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 20:03:36 +0000

Hm. You’ve never worked on an open-source application, have you, Jaiz?

-Max

By: jaiz

jaiz — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 08:35:12 +0000

James …

May be true with your boss. but in reality this is the same reason why open source project are unable to fully leverage the market than the commercial vendors.

It is great to see open source experts forking and perfecting their solutions , but the hardline is that they are trying to match an already existing commercial solution or doing some generic application…..

“Water is useful only if it is accumulated , directed, purified and distributed across dedicated pipelines..”.

However, i agree that todays IT managers cant be just “film directors” they need to be more a “servant leader”.

By: jaiz

jaiz — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 08:25:07 +0000

I agree buzzwords are pain in the ears (although I hate the cliche)
But there should be someway of defining your idea..or else..it will be just your idea….world will never know…

Anyways… by agile .. what i mean is simple “do something.show..improve on. show…iteratively..quick”.. note i am using “improve”.. not “show”…also..”perfection is sometimes pronounced as a disease”.

Good..Max… take care

By: Max Kanat-Alexander

Max Kanat-Alexander — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 07:38:19 +0000

Hahahahaha, yes.

-Max

By: Boemer

Boemer — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 06:24:54 +0000

Sounds like the design of windows, make a lot of features put it together just before release and you got windows 3.1 to XP…

By: Shawn Wilsher

Shawn Wilsher — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 04:28:36 +0000

It almost sounds like you are referencing generative thinking as described by Peter Senge in his book The Fifth Discipline. You might want to check it out.

By: Max Kanat-Alexander

Max Kanat-Alexander — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 04:03:08 +0000

Hahahaha, wow! That man sounds like a fool. But I’ve heard stories exactly like that way too many times! It’s just sadly true.

Yeah, that absolutely is one of the great things about open source projects. The people in charge always understand development, because they’re the developers.

-Max

By: James Napolitano

James Napolitano — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 01:03:10 +0000

I had this exact problem at my last job. The boss just wanted us to implement his check list of features ASAP. When it came to taking any time plan out what kind of architecture or data structures to use, research what existing projects were available that we could build off of, or even to learn about the field we were in, he kept telling us to “just do all that stuff later, for the next version.” This was the coding equivalent of trying to decorate a new apartment before the building frames are up; it can’t be done, because features depend on and build off the core of your program. There even were expertly made, open source toolkits that we could have used to handle all the basic functionality of our program, but he didn’t want to take the time to research them and instead had us re-implement everything ourselves. As you can imagine, his project schedule kept getting bumped later and later, getting him madder and madder at us, and programmer after programmer mysteriously decided to leave. Of course, it didn’t help that his check-list included items like “extract 3D models from (2D) photographs”, which he expected me to do myself in maybe a few weeks, with no prior experience in image analysis or pattern recognition… I could go on for hours…

I think one of the advantages open source projects have is that they are run by the programmers themselves, not management, so they naturally avoid all this inane, uninformed mismanagement.

By: Max Kanat-Alexander

Max Kanat-Alexander — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 23:50:33 +0000

Yeah. Now, I don’t object to what people call “agile methods” (although I really dislike buzzwords). They can be used inside of some long-term plan, if that’s what you decide is the best method. But yes, people often use various methods in a way that gives them only short-term results without taking a long-term look.

In software, if even simple developments take months, long-term is pretty long term–at least years.

-Max

By: jaiz

jaiz — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 22:40:13 +0000

Max.

Straight from your heart….

. Long-term strategy is understood..But the problem is ” How much long…is long-term”..
because this word “long-term strategy” has become a cliche…so.. people prefer “agile” systems rather than “seasoned systems” unless it is very critical for survival.