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Managed Chaos
Naresh Jain's Random Thoughts on Software Development and Adventure Sports
     
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Archive for the ‘Crib’ Category

Goodbye SourceForge

Thursday, December 18th, 2008

Today I’ve decied to leave an old friend behind. I really cannot keep up with SF’s speed any more. Its time to move on. I’m slowly going to move all my open source projects to Google Code or GITHub.

Stop using us as Guinea-Pigs

Friday, December 12th, 2008

I’m trying to transfer some money from my account to another account, I enter all the details with passwords and what not and finally I get this…

Error Message

Wonderful, Self-explanatory Error Message!

Come on guys, test your bloody software. Don’t use us as guinea-pigs.

Monkey See Monkey Do

Saturday, November 8th, 2008

Most people know that if something has happened in the past, repeating the same steps again in a different environment, will not produce the same results.

Then why do most companies try to imitate other successfully company? They expect that doing what other successful companies did, will also make them successful.

If my company builds a search engine like Google, we’ll also be successful is bullshit. For 2 reasons. Google was not successful just because of its search engine, it was their business model around traffic monotization that made them a lot of money. Secondly there are enormous other factors that play in this context. Things like timing, market condition, skilled resources, vision, etc also play an important role.

For a sec if we assume that we can reproduce all these things, can we then be as successful as Google? My take is No. The rationale behind my answer comes from understanding that we live in a complex adaptive system. Which means the system adapts over time. So if we give the same input the system will not necessarily produce the same results. By now the system has adapted itself.

Sure there are important lessons and ideas to be learnt from others. IMHO, just following what they did will not take a company anywhere. In some cases it will do more harm than good.

A good example of this phenomena is, software companies trying to imitate Toyota production system and its lean manufacturing process. Toyota production system is out in the public domain for at least over a decade now. Forget software companies, why don’t we have another car company as successful as Toyota?

Simply because imitating some other company does not make you them.

Another exmaple comes from the Agile community. A lot of companies are trying to imitate the standard Scrum process or are trying to do XP by book. Unfortunately in-spite of doing everything as defined by the book, they are not seeing the desirable results. The problem is companies fail to understand that its the company, its people, its policies, its attitude, its culture, its market, etc that has a huge influence on the desired results not the process alone.

I’m just tried of companies who want to do a 1 or 2 day course on XP or Scrum and become successful.

Want to use it? First help us test it!

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008

Why do Web 2.0 companies over look the importance of a solid suite of automated tests?

From an end user’s perspective it looks like they use their first thousand users as their manual testers.

I’ll give you an example, today LinkedIn launched a new set of Applications like SlideShare, Amazon, WordPress, TripIt, etc. When I try to use any application by installing it, I keep getting random errors.

There was a problem installing My Travel.
Fix this by reinstalling the application.

Sorry, unable to fetch your blog. Please try again later!

The server did not respond. Please try again.

Its the Web 2.0 companies or the Microsoft’s of the world who can get away with this attitude. If this was a high-end competitive market, such broken applications would result in significant loss of reputation and business.  The Web is certainly changing this. Not sure for the good or bad. On one hand, I like the fact that I can quickly release features and improve it over time. But on the other hand, I don’t like the fact that in the urgency to release new features, we compromise on quality and release dysfunctional stuff.

All I can think is, companies still struggle trying to strike the right balance. They are caugh up in tyring to have the cake and eating it too.

Say goodbye to International Travel

Sunday, September 21st, 2008

This is the end
International Travel, the end
This is the end
Flying International Airlines, the end

Policies and Invitation letters, the end
Long Visa application queues, the end
Customs and immigrations, the end
I’ll never live out of a suitcase…again

Forex and conversion fees, the end
Jet-lags and sleep-walking, the end
Bland food with Tabasco, the end
I’ll never lose days traveling…again

Lousy long flights, the end
Living at your mercy, the end
Delays and surprises, the end
I’ll never live through this…again

Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Never in need of some stranger’s hand
In a…strange land

It hurts to set you free
But you’ll never follow me
The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of nights we tried to fly

After a very rough year with international travel, I’m glad to say, no more international travel for me. (not at least for work or conferences).

* Altered lyrics from “The End” by The Doors. Long live Jim Morrison.

International Travel Sucks!

Sunday, September 7th, 2008

Yesterday I got a call from the airline saying my flight to US on Tue morning is cancelled. (While I’m pissed with the airline, I’m glad that I booked my flights with an Indian airline. At least they had the courtesy to call me up 2 days in advance. American Airlines don’t have this concept.)

Yet another cancelled flight and change in my travel schedule. What crap? Is it a problem with the airlines or with me. Somehow this year has been really really bad. Pretty much every international travel this year has had some change in schedule. Either the flights are delayed by few hours/days or are completely cancelled.

I’m so glad, I don’t have any more international travel planned. 

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