Presentation tip: Time limits, not slide limits

In a five-minute presentation some presenters may use 10 slides or even 20. By setting a time limit and not a slide limit we can deliver a better presentation , at least from a visual perspective.

In a presentation we tell a story, so when a slide is packed with 4-5 ideas, all there in one slide, our story is lost. So 1 slide, 1 clear message, timeboxed. 

 

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7 answers about some basic Architectural Concerns

Do I have a performance or a scalability problem?
Is this a scalability or a reliability issue?
Is this something that I shall be concerned in terms of load, stress or volume ?
Is this a security issues or just a normal behavior ?

Still hear these questions too many times so I want to give some very simple 101/newbie definitions and present them in the form of  user stories.
Ladies and Gentlemen, here comes “the backlog”:
  • As a system, I have a performance issue if I am slow even for a single user
  • As a system, I have a scalability issue if even if I am fast enough for a single user I am slow for multiple users and I am almost die under heavy load
    Scalability tells me how long me as a system I can scale up and scale out in terms of user loads and transactions
  • As a system, I am reliable if I can sustain good response levels over a period of time and under some expected load conditions
  • As a system, I am tested for load by looking at how I am responding to different simulated loads, for instance in series of 10 users, 100 users, 1000 users, … having or not having a ramp up time between requests
  • As a system, I am tested for stress by looking at how stable I am beyond the normal & expected load conditions; someone might even push me to the limits or even kill me
  • As a system, I am tested for volume by looking at how I respond under different volumes of data I need to manage
  • As a system, I am tested for security by looking at how an intruder might compromise my functionality or using me to get into the system that is hosting me or getting access through me to data that are not public

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Dezvoltatorii de software – niste privilegiati ;)

Fara indoiala suntem niste privilegiati: zi dupa zi vedem tot mai multe oferte de joburi si tot mai putini software professionals disponibili pentru noi oportunitati de cariera.
O ocazie excelenta de a alege ce este mai bine pentru personalitatea si pentru visele noastre. In fond suntem diferiti si este un privilegiu sa poti alege o companie care vrea sa valorifice acel element unic din fiecare dintre noi.

Cand am venit la LanguageWeaver acum aproape 4 ani voiam sa facem un centru de offshore development cu 10 oameni, contribuind la succesul colegilor nostri din Los Angeles, USA in dezvoltarea aplicatiilor din zona Automatic Machine Translation.
Desi astazi suntem peste 100 de colegi in Centrul de Excelenta din Cluj-Napoca, nu numarul este acela care ne diferentiaza de altii, ci indraznesc sa spun atitudinea si deschiderea totala spre principii Agile si Lean.

Daca in multe companii Managementul este o frana in calea acestor principii, din contra noi ne dorim colegi dezvoltatori si testeri macar la fel de agili pe cat ne dorim sa fim noi in Management. In fond principiile noastre de management sunt simple: optimizam si masuram permanent procesul de dezvoltare software pentru a implementa cat mai bine principiile Lean, favorizam echipe care se auto-organizeaza, sustinem dezvoltarea fiecarui individ in ceea ce se chiama Generalizing Specialist si cautam sa gasim impreuna acele lucruri care ne motiveaza instrinsec spre un succes comun. La urma urmei si noi suntem Developeri.

Avem inca multe de lucru, si cea mai buna dovada este daca ai putea vorbi cu unii dintre colegii nostri. In fond oamenii dinauntru vorbesc cel mai bine despre o companie: nu bannerele, agresivitatea recruterilor, banii irositi pe reclame sau cadourile de la interviuri.
Dar tocmai pentru ca inca avem multe de facut avem nevoie si de tine. Poate ai idei si solutii, suntem gata sa te ascultam si mai mult decat atat sa vedem ca si vrei sa faci daca ti se da ocazia.

Daca ai vrea sa stam de vorba despre un posibil job la noi, sau pur si simplu ai vrea doar sa ne cunoastem si sa tinem legatura, poate sa schimbam impresii care sa ne ajute reciproc, sfaturi si experiente, mi-ar face placere sa te cunosc.
Momentan la noi exista diferite oportunitati in zona C#, Java, Javascript, DevOps/Operations, QA.
In echipele coordonate personal de catre mine (Machine Translation APIs & Science Engineering) sunt oportunitati pe Java, Javascript si QA.

Nu angajam pentru ca ne pleaca colegii in alte companii 🙂 (desi recunosc ca am avut colegi care au plecat in strainatate dar in 4 ani nu am avut nici un coleg Developer care sa fi plecat la alta companie ;)),
ci pentru ca atunci cand inspiri incredere, furnizezi la timp si ceea ce furnizezi nu este “waste” ci “value” se ivesc mereu oportunitati de crestere.

Deasemenea daca esti un Lead sau Manager si ai vrea sa schimbi cu cineva impresii despre lucruri bune si rele in procesul de dezvoltare software, mi-ar face placere sa te cunosc.

E-mail-ul meu este icondor@sdl.com sau ionel_condor@yahoo.com.
Ma gasesti si pe Twitter la @ionel_condor.

Multumesc pentru rabdarea de a citi acest anunt !

Cu stima,
Ionel.

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Open Agile Cluj

This Saturday Cluj Agile Community organizes a local Open Agile Conference.

The schedule here: http://cluj2012.openagile.ro/schedule/

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Agile as a living body

Here are the slides of a recent talk I gave in my company about The Agile Vision.

Enjoy !

 

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What is your future in IT? – an article from SearchCIO

Cisco announced 1,300 jobs cut in an ongoing effort made in the name of “agility.”
Hewlett-Packard will do the same thing but for 27,000 jobs.
Other big names like Nokia or RIM are each looking to cut thousands of jobs.

So where are all the IT jobs going and what is your future in IT?

Read the whole article here:
http://searchcio.techtarget.com/news/2240160874/IT-jobs-caught-in-the-middle-of-IT-transformation

 

 

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Agile Career Development

I do apologize for not publishing yet the presentation I gave at Jazoon 2012 about Agile Career Development.
Here are the slides.

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Continuous Delivery with Amazon Web Services – great video by Paul Duvall

If you are interested in Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery for sure you know Paul Duvall and have read his excellent book, the best book in this area:
Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk

Paul created an excellent Introduction to Continuous Delivery with Amazon Web Services. Highly recommended !

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Continuous Delivery Assembly Line in 2 minutes

These days everyone is building software :).
For some people software is art, for others is pure science, for some people software means a strong need for engineering while for others is just pure craft and so on.
Development, Architecture, Testing process, Delivery, Release Cycles, Refactoring, Operations, Capacity Planning, Monitoring, Config Management, Requirements Engineering, DevOps, ….do you want more of such names?
So we are in this industry that apparently gets more complicated (or just complex?) day by day and is natural to question the status–quo and wonder if are we going in the right direction?
Is software creation today an efficient/cost controlled activity ?

Lean software development teaches that is important to optimize the whole,
so all those names above plus others needs to be seen in a holistic way,
a way that ties together every part of the software creation and all the people involved in it with the purpose to deliver value as quick as possible to those that sponsor software creation efforts.

I don’t want to talk here about the traditional way of releasing software (even) in Agile (yes, Agile is already a tradition that has its own failures
mostly because we adopted Agile processes but did not change our mindset accordingly ): Alpha-Beta-GA-Gold releases and why a lean approach
of a Minimum Viable Product that is as good as possible from the first release and where every check in leads to a potential release.

There are tons of blog posts and books about this,
in particular
The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses for the business part
and
Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation for the process part
are both mandatory readings for everyone that is involved in a transition toward a lean approach.

I know you are busy, so if you do not have time or simply the motivation to read 400 pages about Continuous Delivery,
I am sure you will find 2 minutes for this short video on YouTube that introduces the concept of Continuous Delivery in a great way. Enjoy !

Credits to http://www.devopscloud.com/, authors of a great video tutorial (is not a free one but is a very good investment) available on SafariBooks or on Stellingen   !

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Great post about Amazon EC2 Micro Instances

” A simple 10-page website with only a few thousand hits a day will do just fine since it will only need CPU in short bursts.   These burst are executed very fast, so it is a good fit for this type of application.  However, if your application needs sustained good CPU performance, you’ll need to upgrade to a Small instance or higher.”

More here: http://gregsramblings.com/2011/02/07/amazon-ec2-micro-instance-cpu-steal/

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