John Quillen's Blog

Where have all the iterations gone? Waterfall v. Agile

2010-08-21T01:54:00.002-04:00

I have friends who don't think that this post is needed. They believe that everyone has moved to Agile and that Waterfall is dead. Within the last month, I have had other friends tell me about multi-million dollar projects that have just been killed without delivering and others who have only recently become aware of Agile and are still skeptical. I've read recent comments on blogs like "a project manager is the owner of a plan that is milestone driven." (hint: what's the business value of a milestone?)

Many battles have been waged at conferences, in meeting rooms and on web forums over which is better: Agile (iterative and incremental delivery in its various forms) or Waterfall (a sequential process with requirements at the front and a single delivery near the end). The data and the experts have spoken - and continue to speak - and the answer is not waterfall. For an excellent, detailed survey, please read Iterative and Incremental Development: A Brief History by Craig Larman and Vic Basili. IEEE Software, 2003. Despite its age, it's an enlightening read and an eye-opener for waterfall advocates. The X-15 hypersonic jet was developed in the '50s using agile practices!?

For over 15 years, the Standish Group's CHAOS Reports have consistently shown that more projects fail than don't (register at The Standish Group to access to some of these reports under Sample Research). Ah, but what is failure? They define success as on time, on budget and to original specifications (presuming that quality is non-negotiable). This is the Project Management Triangle - time/cost/scope. Failure is defined as not accurately executing to the original plan.

Is this project failure or failure to accurately estimate duration? The fundamental question is how important is on time? I am not asserting that delivering on time is unimportant, but asking what is the relative importance of on time versus the importance of business value - of Return On Investment? A project that finishes on time and to specifications, but is unusable or no longer needed is surely worth less than a project that is highly valued but finishes 10 percent late. Is the former a success? Is the latter a failure? How much different would the value of the late project be had the timeline been padded by an additional 10 percent up front?

Or, is this project failure or excess scope? Are all of the requirements equally important? What if the least important feature weren't included and the project were allowed to finish on time? How much less value would the final solution have - especially if the cost is fixed and the deadline is critical.

The above are instances of take the Project Management Triangle and pick two. Common sense. Agile methods are built for this.

A seasoned project manager, who knows their team well, has their risk mitigation plan in place and has all of the requirements written down can create a detailed Gantt chart and execute. On time delivery is practically assured.

But what are the implicit risks in this plan? What if the users weren't clear in their own understanding of their needs or didn't communicate them effectively? What if the analysts didn't capture them adequately? What if the implementers misunderstood the requirements? What if the business shifted during the life of the project? These issues are not risks - they are certainties!

The longer the project duration without iterations - without customer feedback, the more issues will arise. These implicit risks are why The Standish Group's reports look so similar from year to year. Additionally, how many projects were delivered on time, on budget and to original specifications, deemed a success by IT, but were a disappointment to their customers?

Knowing this does not make project management easier, but it does make it clear that something needs to be done differently. Ok, but how can projects be budgeted? What about systems delivered into a regulated environment (pharma, finance)? How does one do a fixed-price contract? What about late penalties? What of resource planning and opportunity costs? There are no magic potions or silver bullets, but there's been plenty written on this already. I will attempt to address these types of issues in my next post.

Thank you for your time and attention.

Career resources

2009-04-22T00:04:00.002-04:00

This post is a reference page for various career links I've accumulated. Rather than continue to email them piecemeal to folks I thought I'd put them all in one public place. I hope you find them useful. If you comment with additional links or corrections, I'll update the post. Thanks!

Linked In – social networking for business & careers

If you’re not using Linked-in, yet, go to my Join Now, revisit my profile, (if you know me) click “I know John” and enter my email address and we’ll connect.

Networking groups

Greater Philadelphia Senior Executive Group (GPSEG) - CxO-level execs with 20+ yrs. 50% job seekers 50% employed. Excellent, high quality group with 1000+ members in PA/NJ/DE region.

Philly Chapter of TPNG - Technology Professionals Networking Group. Mailing list has decent volume of opportunities.

Technology Executive Networking Group TENG
(Philly TENG is associated with TPNG)
Business Network International (Delaware Valley)

Job search books

Get The Job You Want, Event When No One's Hiring - by Ford Myers. Career coach in a book; effective strategies for finding your job and managing your career. Ford is local to Philly area.

Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty by Harvey Mackay is a must read on the importance of networking. These days it's difficult to imagine finding a job without an active network. Mackay's title makes it clear why not to wait to build one.

Don’t Send a Resume: And Other Contrarian Rules to Help Land a Great Job – Jeffery Fox. A different perspective on getting a job. Research a company and present them with a proposal for what you’d do for them.

The Unwritten Rules of the Highly Effective Job Search: The Proven Program Used by the Worlds Leading Career Services Company – Orville Pierson. Very good advice from someone in the placement business for 30+ years.

General jobsites

http://indeed.com is probably the best jobsite aggregator. Create an account and configure it to send daily updates for what you're looking for.
http://dice.com
http://monster.com
http://theladders.com ($100k+ jobs, quality postings. Free trial, then $30 / month)

Pharma/biotech jobsites

http://www.biospacejobs.com/
http://www.bio.com/jobs/index.jhtml (Ha! This is no longer BIOlogy-related - it's (celebrity) BIOgraphy-related (somebody got some $ for the bio.com domain:-)
http://www.bizjournals.com/jobs/pharmaceutical.html

Not-for profit job listings

If you are interested in positions in non-profit/charitable organizations, you might try this site:
http://www.execsearches.com/exec/default.asp

Philadelphia company index

http://www.techcouncil.org/member_directory.cfm (Eastern Tech Council - maybe this link still works for members?)

Salary info

http://www.salarynegotiations.com/content.php?id=20
http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tr/downloads/home/10_things_job_change.pdf

Very detailed, interesting salary calculator
http://biospace.salary.com/

Contract market/auction sites

http://www.eworkmarkets.com
www.getacoder.com/

My favorite iPhone Apps

2008-11-17T10:52:00.011-05:00

I love so much about the iPhone. The only thing I don't love about the interface is the keyboard. I would rather have my old Palm's graffiti or even my Treo's chicklet keyboard.

I am positively addicted to Right of Way, which is an implementation of the Parker Brothers/Hasbro game Mille Bornes. What makes it even cooler is that a friend and former co-worker wrote it! He and his partner also wrote Deep Space Newt (rendition of old Star Trek character graphics game that I played on a timeshare in the mid 70s).

Motion X poker is fun, but is mostly useful to show off the iPhone's capabilities.

GoSkyWatch is simply amazing and is the ultimate use of iPhone technology. You hold it upside down at the night sky and it tells you what stars and constellations are above you. (I paid $29 for it - now it's down to $10)

BibleScope is a very good Bible app that I'm using to track reading the Bible in a year. Olive Tree has the NIV and ESV Study Bible notes available in split screen much like Laridian had for the Treo (and is working on for iPhone).

I need to go back and add links for many of these...

Dynolicious ($13) is spectacular! It's amazing what including an accelerometer and a GPS in a device allows! Although... I'm probably destined for a moving violation. It can calculate 0-60, 1/4 mile and horsepower (based on specifying vehicle weight). It also has a skidpad mode that shows left and right lateral gs through time, which means that it could also be used for autocrossing. $13 + iPhone = $300+ g-analyst!! Way cool.

I really heavily on OmniFocus on my Mac and the iPhone app is great - especially for errands/shopping lists. Jason, who originally recommended OmniFocus to me now uses Things.

Evernote is great for taking, maintaining and syncing notes, pictures, etc. And also can OCR notes to make them searchable. Also voice notes...

iWant brings the "What's near me" feature of Nav systems to the iPhone. It's come in handy a number of times in various places across the country. (it's free!)

Say Who Dialer works as advertised to voice dial your contacts - if you don't have a 3G S.

iBeam would be great for beaming contact info if everybody used it.

Pocket god is fun, but I'm ashamed to admit that I have it.

A Free Level came in handy to prove that the pool table we were playing on was to blame for our bad play:-) But Jason pointed out that Clinometer ($1) is better.

I haven't needed Howcast yet, but I expect it to come in handy.

Phone Aid (was free, now $2) may prove to be useful in an emergency. It's good to have, but I hope I never need it.

Enigmo (was $10, now $2) is engaging and a good use of iPhone touch.

The Facebook app is pretty decent.

Air Hockey ($1) is a cheap fun two player game.

Crash Kart is impressive for an iPhone and reasonably entertaining.

Monkey Ball is very impressive but exasperating 2/3rds of the way into the first level (for me).

MarbleMash (free or $4) and Labyrinth LE (free or $7) are cute fun.

TED talks

2008-11-11T22:21:00.004-05:00

If you're not familiar with TED - Ideas Worth Spreading - you should check it out.

Here are some of my favorites.

Firsthand view of a stroke from a brain scientist

Roots of liberals and conservatives

A year of living biblically

8d particle physics

The power of social media

When your hut is on fire

2008-07-11T06:26:00.004-04:00

This was circulating in email and I thought posting it might be a better way to share...

The only survivor of a shipwreck was washed up on a small, uninhabited island. He prayed feverishly for God to rescue him. Everyday he scanned the horizon for help, but none seemed forthcoming.

Exhausted, he eventually managed to build a little hut out of driftwood to protect him from the elements, and to store his few possessions.

One day, after scavenging for food, he arrived home to find his little hut in flames, with smoke rolling up to the sky. He felt the worst had happened, and everything was lost. He was stunned with disbelief, grief, and anger. He cried out, 'God! How could you do this to me?'

Early the next day, he was awakened by t he sound of a ship approaching the island! It had come to rescue him! 'How did you know I was here?,' asked the weary man of his rescuers.

'We saw your smoke signal,' they replied.

The Moral of This Story:
It's easy to get discouraged when things are going bad, but we shouldn't lose heart, because God is at work in our lives....even in the midst of our pain and suffering. Remember that the next time your little hut seems to be burning to the ground. It just may be a smoke signal that summons the Grace of God.

The news we've been waiting for - shortterm pain for longterm gain?

2008-06-02T16:18:00.003-04:00

Gas prices prompt SEPTA ridership surge.

I do worry about folks who are eeking out of living that depend on their cars for transportation. Even if they don't drive to low-wage jobs, the knock-on of rising food and other costs hurts.

The silver lining, though, is that this has to start making people think differently about transportation. Yea!

YouChoose.net and Distributed Forums at DEMO 08

2008-04-11T14:44:00.006-04:00

I'm finally getting around to writing about DEMO 08. It was quite a ride... As my boss says, we fit about 4 months of work into a 2 month window. After working as many as 20 hours in one day(!) it was a challenge to stand up in front of several hundred people and perform, but I think it went pretty well.

Distributed Social Networking

2007-12-31T00:42:00.000-05:00

There's little doubt in my mind that 3-5 years from now Distributed Social Networking will be commonplace. Right now Facebook and MySpace dominate the scene. They are the destination social networks. But, they're the end-game for single destinations. The next-gen will be about pulling in content from various sites and integrating them into other sites - beyond Pageflakes and NetVibes which aggregate content onto a page - we're talking about interaction between many people on various sites about the same thing. Not a mashup, but a distributed integration of functionality.

2007-11-20T16:32:00.000-05:00

Josh Kopelman is spot on talking about the Implicit Web.

2007-11-09T16:27:00.000-05:00

Lot's going on at YouChoose.net. YouChoose is a social networking site for people who want to turn their passions into actions. It's about uniting many individual voices into one harmonious, loud voice.

We launched in Feb with what I called a highly functional prototype. We learned a lot about what did and didn't work and what people liked and didn't like. We released version 1.1, a ground-up rewrite, in August. Since then, membership and activity have been growing rapidly.

We're a small group, but we're growing. We have more ideas and plans than we have people, so we're focusing on getting the most valuable features out there the quickest. The next few months are going to be very exciting as we're going to be introducing, what we believe, is some revolutionary new technology.

2007-07-30T12:40:00.000-04:00

I kinda came up with the idea of NetVibes sometime around when they launched (so I guess they thought of it first:-)

They've made alot of headway in a short time with some very nice widgets.

I happened back upon them because there was a link on Social Innovation Conversations to netvibes where they have their own netvibes page. It's populated with SI's widget(s) and a number of other widgets - most populated with terms that are germane to SI's causes.

Very cool.

2007-02-10T22:47:00.000-05:00

launched today, 12 Feb 2007.

I started as CTO of youchoose.net on 10 Jan. The original idea for the site - driving the HiDef DVD industry to pick a single standard; BluRay or HD - dates back to April of '06. The team has been working for the last six months to expand that concept and develop a meaningful social network dedicated to helping individuals take action.

I'm proud to be part of this exciting new site.

2006-11-23T09:24:00.000-05:00

...skipping trite "Ok, my first blog banter" and requisite "under construction" animated gif

but, no real content, yet.