December 29, 2009

Why waste time on Project management ?

Recently I came across some of the blog posts regards to Software Project management. It seems like Project Management is another project to Project Managers but so often they claim that they never able to do a accurate schedule or a budget, so the question arise − “Why do Project Management?”.

I’ve been working in Software Industry for the past 9 years and I have never seen a successful Project Manager although I’ve seen plenty of good technical people. I must admit that I have observed some of the successful projects are handled without a proper project plan, or should I say without a “Project Manager”. For a successful software project, the key factor is its technical people and I really don’t believe that’s anything to do with the Project plan or the Project Manager. How did Google products succeed ? Why did Windows Vista failed ? Was it because of the Project Managers or Project Plans? I doubt. In software, it’s a well known factor that the requirements change. Neither the Stake Holders nor the Project Managers are fully aware of the business requirement at the initial stage. So the next question − “What’s Agile ?”

Agile – one of the frequently used terms in the Project management these days. Agile is defined as to keep things simple and to move quicker. Two-thirds of the development time is wasted by the Project Managers for various meetings and requirement explanations. I strongly disagree the fact that every project needs a “Project Plan”, a simple plan would do for most of the projects. We need to understand the scale of the project while keeping the things simple. I don’t intend to talk about massive projects like in NASA or the other major companies, no doubt that they need Project Managers. But for 30-40 developer projects who would need to waste time & money just to create a larger scale project plan ?, A good technical leader is capable of doing the job. At last what matters is the outcome of the project, not how we manage the project. All my thoughts are based on the Software Development and this might not be true for other industries like Construction & Manufacture which are far more matured. Software development still on its way for a strong blue-print unlike Building construction, .

No offense meant to Project Managers, but comments are welcome − After all, Project Management is their Job.

www.twitter.com/ludmal - I've been using twitter for quick updates, Technology & cool stuff, please follow me if you're interested.

December 28, 2009

Know the font by uploading the image

I found this site very useful while searching for some fonts. You can upload an image and know the font.

http://new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/

December 16, 2009

Google Wave future

I was anxiously waited for Google wave invitation from its initial preview release. When I finally got one, I wasn't really impressed with it. The only thing interested to me was the UI. Though they mentioned that the email system is outdated they must have been realized by now how hard is to kill the old email system.-- "Email" is the mostly used feature in Internet followed by "Search". I'm not criticizing it, but I feel Wave is too early. However, it's future is still a mystery.

December 9, 2009

Microsoft vs Google

This is interesting.. I just did a search in google trends. www.google.com/trends

Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of microsoft company/google company in all years. Learn more

microsoft company, google company

Google Chrome extensions

Recently I've installed some of the Google Chrome extensions and I love It! specially the extensions like Google Tasks, Reader, Gmail & Chrome Touch. I personally like Google chrome because of its simplicity and performance.

In order to install chrome extensions, you must install chrome developer version. This isn't a very stable version but I haven't seen any bugs yet.

1. Installing Chrome Developer Version

a. Download and install the Chrome developer channel from the following location.

http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html?extra=betachannel

b. Then click on the "About Google Chrome" window, once it's fully updated, restart the browser. You're now running Chrome Developer version.

2. Installing Chrome Extensions.

At this point, all set to install the Chrome extensions. You can download the extensions from the following site. Just follow the installation instructions and are you're done.

http://www.chromeextensions.org

You can even check out the installed extensions by selecting Tools > Extensions as shown in the following screen capture.

Few cool Chrome Extensions:

http://www.chromeextensions.org/alerts-updates/gmail-checker/
http://www.chromeextensions.org/alerts-updates/google-reader-checker/
http://www.chromeextensions.org/appearance-functioning/chrometouch/
http://www.chromeextensions.org/appearance-functioning/smoothscroll/
http://www.chromeextensions.org/utilities/google-notepad/

Hope this helps!

www.twitter.com/ludmal - I've been using twitter for quick updates on Technology stuff, please follow me if you're interested.

November 24, 2009

Text engraved effect using css

I always wanted to have the text engraved effect on button control, finally able to do it using css properties. Have a look at the following screenshot.


Add the text-shadow attribute to your css classname.
text-shadow: white 1px 1px 0px;

Unfortunately, only Google Chrome browser supports it. But I found this link to implement it using jquery.

Hope this helps!

twitter: @ludmal

November 16, 2009

October 7, 2009

Choosing a Smart Password

There has been a wave of phishing attacks on Hotmail and Gmail recently. Following tips are useful when choosing a strong password. (from Gmail blog)

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/choosing-smart-password.html

September 29, 2009

Fix bugs before writing any new code

Most of the developers like to develop new features rather than fixing bugs. We tend to postpone bug fixing and eager to start developing new features. In general, it’s easy to fix a bug right away than fixing it later. The reasons are -- code is fresh in our minds than to fix it later, we might have forgotten the code if we keep it for later. Hence going through the code again is time consuming. Moreover, having lots of bugs is definitely not a healthier approach. Another reason is, it’s hard to predict the time to fix a bug, but easy for a new feature. To keep your project schedule always inline and accurate fix bugs right away before start developing another new feature.

July 31, 2009

Be Consistent

Life is a process. So be consistent in what ever you do. We tend to forget how to live and hence we are missing best things in our lives. The most difficult thing in life is to be consistent. Its easy to start but difficult to follow up. Eventually, we'll still be on the first page.

June 1, 2009

I love google Chrome, but where is google Toolbar ?

I love google chrome for its simplicity and fast browsing. But still couldn't figure out how to use google toolbar. All of my bookmarks are in google, any idea on how to use google bookmarks in Chrome ?

May 24, 2009

May 23, 2009

Dropthings -- 2GB Free space

Keep your frequently used files in one place and access it from anywhere -- 2GB free space on http://www.getdropbox.com/

April 6, 2009

www.aspnetr.com - .net related Articles

If you are looking for a simple and quick solution for your programming problems please visit, www.aspnetr.com , Its still in beta and will take another week for a fully functional site. The main idea behind this site is to give a spot on solution for all your .net related matters and most preferably ASP.NET.

March 26, 2009

How to get the IP Address and redirect users by country

Download the following dll to get the country by passing IP address. This is a .NET 3.5 library that retrieves the country information for an Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) Address, by extending the System.Net.IPAddress class.

http://www.codeplex.com/IPAddressExtensions

 

Then simply add the code in page load method.

if (!IsPostBack) {
            IPAddress ip = IPAddress.Parse(HttpContext.Current.Request.UserHostAddress);
            string country = ip.Country();
            if (country.ToLower() == "india") {
                Response.Redirect("~/indiahomepage.htm");
            }
        }

February 14, 2009

Fusion Charts

Recently I worked on a Dashboard Project which shows Sales, Invoices, ATB and DSO info. Initially I started with Dundas Charts but later we changed to a nice 3D looking charts called "Fusion Charts". Of course Dundas Charts was good enough but I was looking for a better 3D look, therefore I had to switch to Fusion charts. It was very simple but powerful and we use XML as Data Source. If you are looking for a nice 3D graphs for your project you better have look at this.

MVC

ASP.NET MVC Framework, all I can say is are we going back to where we started ? "Spaghetti code". The main idea was to separate server code from HTML in ASP.NET back in 2001. But all I can see in MVC now is code and HTML both mixed each other which reminds me of a classic asp page. Well, I still haven't got time to get into MVC but this is what I can say from the initial look. Of course there could be some reasons ... I guess I will write this in more details once I really get into MVC....

January 3, 2009

Life is so easy with Google and Apple products

Life is so easy with Google and Apple products. Almost all of my official and personal activities in daily life supports by a google or an apple product. I use gmail as my primary emailing software from last 4 years, the experience was amazing. I use Google Gmail, Tasks, Calendar, Reader, Notebook, Doc, Google sites, Chrome and Google News, almost everyday. And Apple on the other hand with IPod and ITunes. I recently bought a IPod nano and the experience was so amazing compare to the earlier IPod version.