Yesterday driving the city I noticed a big board which invited to buy a flat in a house. The interesting fact about this sell was that the is not built yet and the construction has not even started! But they have a fully visualized 3D-model of the house which you can use to imagine how your new dwelling will look like. I doubt that anyone has any apprehensions that real estate company can and will build the house so that it will look exactly like it looks in the model (i.e. in the project). So what they are essentially doing they are selling a design, not a completely usable product. Can you imagine anyone selling a design of a software product to end-users? Or even better, can you imagine anyone buying that?

Unfortunately, in software industry we do not get that level of credibility like they do in civil engineering industry. But I do believe it is possible with of software engineering profession. If you agree with me the Professional Software Development by Steve McConnell will reassure you. If you do not agree this book will, probably, persuade you that it is possible.

Just a few moments ago I've finished reading the "The Deadline: A Novel About Project Management" by Tom DeMarco. It was an interesting read. Although I have to admit that fiction side was somewhat weak, from educational standpoint book is great. The idea about Mr. Tompkins' is just brilliant. You can review his notes in Excerpts from The Deadline. In this book there is a wonderful chapter (Roll of the Catalyst) about importance of informal education. motivation, inspiration (what not) by telling different stories. In about the time I was reading this chapter I saw the post Tell New Stories to Make the Lean Change. And I agree that appropriate story in a right moment is a very powerful tool in getting things done the right way. Stories teach you something without boredom of abstract theoretical knowledge and produce much more sustainable result.

Today I found some new answers to questions I was asking and was asked. Here they are:

Q: How do you define a "small" and "large" project?

A: Small project is project with homogeneous development environments. In large project the environment is heterogeneous. For instance, C# + SQL is homogeneous environment, while Java + Flash, or .NET + Perl are heterogeneous.

This definition correlates to size of the project measured, say, in functional points. When project size grows more supporting utilities, services or components are required which are often implemented with technology very different from core product platform.

Q: How do you define "mature" developer?

A: Mature developer, I would even say, engineer understands that technology is not a goal. The goal is business value, technology is only a means.

Have you ever been told that new version of XYZ came out yesterday and we need to migrate to this new version as soon as possible? Great engineer is the one who finds best technical solutions with the imperfect tools he's got.

Q: Who is a manager?

A: A manager is a person who understands trade-offs.

Manager understands what choices mean, what are the implications and why one of several alternatives is chosen. Good managers see choices where others can only see a straight way.

  Recently one of those inexplicable coincidences happened to me again.

Being extremely busy last month I thought that some ToDo list-like software can help me to keep track of all the things I need to do. I did some search over the Internet and came across MindJet MindManager and decided to give it a try.

The very same day I finally decided that I need to subscribe to Controlling Chaos podcast. And one of the two latest episodes was devoted to ... MindManager! I'm still evaluating the product and so far I like what I see.

This is not the first time when I look at one new thing and magically come across information about it the same or the next day. I wonder what will be the next such coincidental sign of stars.

When I was reading A Conversation with Jeff Bonwick and Bill Moore in the latest issue of the ACM Queue there was a passage that really touched my heart of software engineer:

PAWEL JAKUB DAWIDEK At first I just wanted to see how much work it would take to port ZFS to FreeBSD. I started by making it compile on FreeBSD, and once I did that, I was quite sure it would take at least six months to have the first prototype working. The funny thing was that after another week or so, ZFS was running on my test machine. It was truly surprising that the code was so portable; it was self-contained and I had initial read-write support after 10 days of work.

Isn't it really the essence of internal quality of a software system?

You may disagree but to me software product|design|implementation|etc. is great when you get something that you originally did not plan to get. This happens when you do not compromise a single bit of quality of what you do even it is not stated in the requirements. Quality always pays-off, but you have to invest in developing "101% quality" mindset in you team before you get dividends.

This year I haven't had a chance to visit Software Engineering Conference (Russia)although for some period of time I was thinking about writing a paper for this conference. I've attended the first such conference back in 2005 and each year it is very interesting for me to see what they have on agenda.

Looking at this year's conference agenda I'm a bit surprised to see 9 presentations out of 62 delivered by people from one company. It is nearly 15% of all presentations! Looks like organizers had to fill agenda somehow and called out for help. But if we look at 2006 statistics we see that acceptance rate was about 25% I just do not see why they could not select a few eligible papers from other submitters.

Anyway I haven't been to the conference to make far seeing conclusions but this really makes me think twice next year. We'll see.

By a reference from a friend of mine I came to know Shelfari - a service to share and comment on books that you own and love. With this service you can now review My Shelfari bookshelf. Recently I've bought only books I've learned about through references of other people and I hope my references will also help you.

I also hope that I will find some time in nearest future to provide some sort of reviews for books I've read or I'm reading now.

When I came across the Mathematical Fortune-Telling article (article in Russian) the first thing I remembered was psychohistory. When I studied in university theory of games was one of my favorite parts of mathematics and it is amazing to see it in action on such a scale.

When I first got familiar with the psychohistory through one of the books about the Foundations I was really impressed. It took me somewhat around two weeks to read the whole Foundation Series. I think I will take some time to take a deeper look at Bruce Bueno de Mesquita's research. And then probably reread the Foundation Series.

Several days ago I returned from Microsoft Academic Days which this year were held in Yalta. It was the first time I've attended this event and I've delivered two presentations there. On the first day I presented my view on key principles and ideas behind the 4th version of Microsoft Solutions Framework. The next day I delivered an introduction to Microsoft Robotics Studio. You can download these presentations here:

• Microsoft Solutions Framework Revisited
• Introduction to Microsoft Robotics Studio

BTW You can also download my other presentations.

I've already mentioned several times that I absolutely love Advanced Selling Podcast since the first episode I've listened to. One day I said to myself: "If there is selling podcast, there should be project management podcast". I went to Google and found the Project Management  Podcast. I've downloaded a whole bunch of episodes some dating back to year 2006. And I have to say that I'm happy with what I hear so far. One particular merit of the PM Podcast site is Helpful Resources section which references all the books, articles or whatever that Cornelias interlocutors mention during the show.

These days I'm highly into team dynamics and all other questions related to building effective team. So I particularly enjoyed the "Overcoming Team Dysfunction" episode and the following articles that were mentioned:

• Functional and Dysfunctional Teams
• Dealing with Dysfunctional Teams