Search Results

Search found 384 results on 16 pages for 'interviews'.

Page 16/16 | < Previous Page | 12 13 14 15 16 

  • In Case You Weren’t There: Blogwell NYC

    - by Mike Stiles
    0 0 1 1009 5755 Vitrue 47 13 6751 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} Your roving reporter roved out to another one of Socialmedia.org’s fantastic Blogwell events, this time in NYC. As Central Park and incredible weather beckoned, some of the biggest brand names in the world gathered to talk about how they’re incorporating social into marketing and CRM, as well as extending social across their entire organizations internally. Below we present a collection of the live tweets from many of the key sessions GE @generalelectricJon Lombardo, Leader of Social Media COE How GE builds and extends emotional connections with consumers around health and reaps the benefits of increased brand equity in the process. GE has a social platform around Healthyimagination to create better health for people. If you and a friend are trying to get healthy together, you’ll do better. Health is inherently. Get health challenges via Facebook and share with friends to achieve goals together. They’re creating an emotional connection around the health context. You don’t influence people at large. Your sphere of real influence is around 5-10 people. They find relevant conversations about health on Twitter and engage sounding like a friend, not a brand. Why would people share on behalf of a brand? Because you tapped into an activity and emotion they’re already having. To create better habits in health, GE gave away inexpensive, relevant gifts related to their goals. Create the context, give the relevant gift, get social acknowledgment for giving it. What you get when you get acknowledgment for your engagement and gift is user generated microcontent. GE got 12,000 unique users engaged and 1400 organic posts with the healthy gift campaign. The Dow Chemical Company @DowChemicalAbby Klanecky, Director of Digital & Social Media Learn how Dow Chemical is finding, training, and empowering their scientists to be their storytellers in social media. There are 1m jobs coming open in science. Only 200k are qualified for them. Dow Chemical wanted to use social to attract and talk to scientists. Dow Chemical decided to use real scientists as their storytellers. Scientists are incredibly passionate, the key ingredient of a great storyteller. Step 1 was getting scientists to focus on a few platforms, blog, Twitter, LinkedIn. Dow Chemical social flow is Core Digital Team - #CMs – ambassadors – advocates. The scientists were trained in social etiquette via practice scenarios. It’s not just about sales. It’s about growing influence and the business. Dow Chemical trained about 100 scientists, 55 are active and there’s a waiting list for the next sessions. In person social training produced faster results and better participation. Sometimes you have to tell pieces of the story instead of selling your execs on the whole vision. Social Media Ethics Briefing: Staying Out of TroubleAndy Sernovitz, CEO @SocialMediaOrg How do we get people to share our message for us? We have to have their trust. The difference between being honest and being sleazy is disclosure. Disclosure does not hurt the effectiveness of your marketing. No one will get mad if you tell them up front you’re a paid spokesperson for a company. It’s a legal requirement by the FTC, it’s the law, to disclose if you’re being paid for an endorsement. Require disclosure and truthfulness in all your social media outreach. Don’t lie to people. Monitor the conversation and correct misstatements. Create social media policies and training programs. If you want to stay safe, never pay cash for social media. Money changes everything. As soon as you pay, it’s not social media, it’s advertising. Disclosure, to the feds, means clear, conspicuous, and understandable to the average reader. This phrase will keep you in the clear, “I work for ___ and this is my personal opinion.” Who are you? Were you paid? Are you giving an honest opinion based on a real experience? You as a brand are responsible for what an agency or employee or contactor does in your behalf. SocialMedia.org makes available a Disclosure Best Practices Toolkit. Socialmedia.org/disclosure. The point is to not ethically mess up and taint social media as happened to e-mail. Not only is the FTC cracking down, so is Google and Facebook. Visa @VisaNewsLucas Mast, Senior Business Leader, Global Corporate Social Media Visa built a mobile studio for the Olympics for execs and athletes. They wanted to do postcard style real time coverage of Visa’s Olympics sponsorships, and on a shoestring. Challenges included Olympic rules, difficulty getting interviews, time zone trouble, and resourcing. Another problem was they got bogged down with their own internal approval processes. Despite all the restrictions, they created and published a variety of and fair amount of content. They amassed 1000+ views of videos posted to the Visa Communication YouTube channel. Less corporate content yields more interest from media outlets and bloggers. They did real world video demos of how their products work in the field vs. an exec doing a demo in a studio. Don’t make exec interview videos dull and corporate. Keep answers short, shoot it in an interesting place, do takes until they’re comfortable and natural. Not everything will work. Not everything will get a retweet. But like the lottery, you can’t win if you don’t play. Promoting content is as important as creating it. McGraw-Hill Companies @McGrawHillCosPatrick Durando, Senior Director of Global New Media McGraw-Hill has 26,000 employees. McGraw-Hill created a social intranet called Buzz. Intranets create operational efficiency, help product dev, facilitate crowdsourcing, and breaks down geo silos. Intranets help with talent development, acquisition, retention. They replaced the corporate directory with their own version of LinkedIn. The company intranet has really cut down on the use of email. Long email threats become organized, permanent social discussions. The intranet is particularly useful in HR for researching and getting answers surrounding benefits and policies. Using a profile on your company intranet can establish and promote your internal professional brand. If you’re going to make an intranet, it has to look great, work great, and employees are going have to want to go there. You can’t order them to like it. 

    Read the article

  • Contracting as a Software Developer in the UK

    - by Frez
    Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} Having had some 15 years’ experience of working as a software contractor, I am often asked by developers who work as permanent employees (permies) about the pros and cons of working as a software consultant through my own limited company and whether the move would be a good one for them. Whilst it is possible to contract using other financial vehicles such as umbrella companies, this article will only consider limited companies as that is what I have experience of using. Contracting or consultancy requires a different mind-set from being a permanent member of staff, and not all developers are capable of this shift in attitude. Whilst you can look forward to an increase in the money you take home, there are real risks and expenses you would not normally be exposed to as a permie. So let us have a look at the pros and cons: Pros: More money There is no doubt that whilst you are working on contracts you will earn significantly more than you would as a permanent employee. Furthermore, working through a limited company is more tax efficient. Less politics You really have no need to involve yourself in office politics. When the end of the day comes you can go home and not think or worry about the power struggles within the company you are contracted to. Your career progression is not tied to the company. Expenses from gross income All your expenses of trading as a business will come out of your company’s gross income, i.e. before tax. This covers travelling expenses provided you have not been at the same client/location for more than two years, internet subscriptions, professional subscriptions, software, hardware, accountancy services and so on. Cons: Work is more transient Contracts typically range from a couple of weeks to a year, although will most likely start at 3 months. However, most contracts are extended either because the project you have been brought in to help with takes longer to deliver than expected, the client decides they can use you on other aspects of the project, or the client decides they would like to use you on other projects. The temporary nature of the work means that you will have down-time between contracts while you secure new opportunities during which time your company will have no income. You may need to attend several interviews before securing a new contract. Accountancy expenses Your company is a separate entity and there are accountancy requirements which, unless you like paperwork, means your company will need to appoint an accountant to prepare your company’s accounts. It may also be worth purchasing some accountancy software, so talk to your accountant about this as they may prefer you to use a particular software package so they can integrate it with their systems. VAT You will need to register your company for VAT. This is tax neutral for you as the VAT you charge your clients you will pass onto the government less any VAT you are reclaiming from expenses, but it is additional paperwork to undertake each quarter. It is worth checking out the Fixed Rate VAT Scheme that is available, particularly after the initial expenses of setting up your company are over. No training Clients take you on based on your skills, not to train you when they will lose that investment at the end of the contract, so understand that it is unlikely you will receive any training funded by a client. However, learning new skills during a contract is possible and you may choose to accept a contract on a lower rate if this is guaranteed as it will help secure future contracts. No financial extras You will have no free pension, life, accident, sickness or medical insurance unless you choose to purchase them yourself. A financial advisor can give you all the necessary advice in this area, and it is worth taking seriously. A year after I started as a consultant I contracted a serious illness, this kept me off work for over two months, my client was very understanding and it could have been much worse, so it is worth considering what your options might be in the case of illness, death and retirement. Agencies Whilst it is possible to work directly for end clients there are pros and cons of working through an agency.  The main advantage is cash flow, you invoice the agency and they typically pay you within a week, whereas working directly for a client could have you waiting up to three months to be paid. The downside of working for agencies, especially in the current difficult times, is that they may go out of business and you then have difficulty getting the money you are owed. Tax investigation It is possible that the Inland Revenue may decide to investigate your company for compliance with tax law. Insurance is available to cover you for this. My personal recommendation would be to join the PCG as this insurance is included as a benefit of membership, Professional Indemnity Some agencies require that you are covered by professional indemnity insurance; this is a cost you would not incur as a permie. Travel Unless you live in an area that has an abundance of opportunities, such as central London, it is likely that you will be travelling further, longer and with more expense than if you were permanently employed at a local company. This not only affects you monetarily, but also your quality of life and the ability to keep fit and healthy. Obtaining finance If you want to secure a mortgage on a property it can be more difficult or expensive, especially if you do not have three years of audited accounts to show a mortgage lender.   Caveat This post is my personal opinion and should not be used as a definitive guide or recommendation to contracting and whether it is suitable for you as an individual, i.e. I accept no responsibility if you decide to take up contracting based on this post and you fare badly for whatever reason.

    Read the article

  • Exception Handling And Other Contentious Political Topics

    - by Justin Jones
    So about three years ago, around the time of my last blog post, I promised a friend I would write this post. Keeping promises is a good thing, and this is my first step towards easing back into regular blogging. I fully expect him to return from Pennsylvania to buy me a beer over this. However, it’s been an… ahem… eventful three years or so, and blogging, unfortunately, got pushed to the back burner on my priority list, along with a few other career minded activities. Now that the personal drama of the past three years is more or less resolved, it’s time to put a few things back on the front burner. What I consider to be proper exception handling practices is relatively well known these days. There are plenty of blog posts out there already on this topic which more or less echo my opinions on this topic. I’ll try to include a few links at the bottom of the post. Several years ago I had an argument with a co-worker who posited that exceptions should be caught at every level and logged. This might seem like sanity on the surface, but the resulting error log looked something like this: Error: System.SomeException Followed by small stack trace. Error: System.SomeException Followed by slightly bigger stack trace. Error: System.SomeException Followed by slightly bigger stack trace. Error: System.SomeException Followed by slightly bigger stack trace. Error: System.SomeException Followed by slightly bigger stack trace. Error: System.SomeException Followed by slightly bigger stack trace. Error: System.SomeException Followed by slightly bigger stack trace. Error: System.SomeException Followed by slightly bigger stack trace.   These were all the same exception. The problem with this approach is that the error log, if you run any kind of analytics on in, becomes skewed depending on how far up the stack trace your exception was thrown. To mitigate this problem, we came up with the concept of the “PreLoggedException”. Basically, we would log the exception at the very top level and subsequently throw the exception back up the stack encapsulated in this pre-logged type, which our logging system knew to ignore. Now the error log looked like this: Error: System.SomeException Followed by small stack trace. Much cleaner, right? Well, there’s still a problem. When your exception happens in production and you go about trying to figure out what happened, you’ve lost more or less all context for where and how this exception was thrown, because all you really know is what method it was thrown in, but really nothing about who was calling the method or why. What gives you this clue is the entire stack trace, which we’re losing here. I believe that was further mitigated by having the logging system pull a system stack trace and add it to the log entry, but what you’re actually getting is the stack for how you got to the logging code. You’re still losing context about the actual error. Not to mention you’re executing a whole slew of catch blocks which are sloooooooowwwww……… In other words, we started with a bad idea and kept band-aiding it until it didn’t suck quite so bad. When I argued for not catching exceptions at every level but rather catching them following a certain set of rules, my co-worker warned me “do yourself a favor, never express that view in any future interviews.” I suppose this is my ultimate dismissal of that advice, but I’m not too worried. My approach for exception handling follows three basic rules: Only catch an exception if 1. You can do something about it. 2. You can add useful information to it. 3. You’re at an application boundary. Here’s what that means: 1. Only catch an exception if you can do something about it. We’ll start with a trivial example of a login system that uses a file. Please, never actually do this in production code, it’s just concocted example. So if our code goes to open a file and the file isn’t there, we get a FileNotFound exception. If the calling code doesn’t know what to do with this, it should bubble up. However, if we know how to create the file from scratch we can create the file and continue on our merry way. When you run into situations like this though, What should really run through your head is “How can I avoid handling an exception at all?” In this case, it’s a trivial matter to simply check for the existence of the file before trying to open it. If we detect that the file isn’t there, we can accomplish the same thing without having to handle in in a catch block. 2. Only catch an exception if you can do something about it. Continuing with the poorly thought out file based login system we contrived in part 1, if the code calls a Login(…) method and the FileNotFound exception is thrown higher up the stack, the code that calls Login must account for a FileNotFound exception. This is kind of counterintuitive because the calling code should not need to know the internals of the Login method, and the data file is an implementation detail. What makes more sense, assuming that we didn’t implement any of the good advice from step 1, is for Login to catch the FileNotFound exception and wrap it in a new exception. For argument’s sake we’ll say LoginSystemFailureException. (Sorry, couldn’t think of anything better at the moment.) This gives us two stack traces, preserving the original stack trace in the inner exception, and also is much more informative to the calling code. 3. Only catch an exception if you’re at an application boundary. At some point we have to catch all the exceptions, even the ones we don’t know what to do with. WinForms, ASP.Net, and most other UI technologies have some kind of built in mechanism for catching unhandled exceptions without fatally terminating the application. It’s still a good idea to somehow gracefully exit the application in this case if possible though, because you can no longer be sure what state your application is in, but nothing annoys a user more than an application just exploding. These unhandled exceptions need to be logged, and this is a good place to catch them. Ideally you never want this option to be exercised, but code as though it will be. When you log these exceptions, give them a “Fatal” status (e.g. Log4Net) and make sure these bugs get handled in your next release. That’s it in a nutshell. If you do it right each exception will only get logged once and with the largest stack trace possible which will make those 2am emergency severity 1 debugging sessions much shorter and less frustrating. Here’s a few people who also have interesting things to say on this topic:  http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/archive/2008/09/10/vexing-exceptions.aspx http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/9538/Exception-Handling-Best-Practices-in-NET I know there’s more but I can’t find them at the moment.

    Read the article

  • top tweets WebLogic Partner Community – November 2011

    - by JuergenKress
    Send us your tweets @wlscommunity #WebLogicCommunity and follow us on twitter http://twitter.com/wlscommunity glassfish GlassFish Marek’s JAX-RS 2.0 content from Devoxx 2011 – bit.ly/sp2NJO chriscmuir chriscmuir New blog post: ADF bug: missing af:column borders in af:table for IE7 – t.co/81np2jug chriscmuir chriscmuir Reading: Oracle’s ADF Rich Client User Interface (RCUI) Guidelines – oracle.com/webfolder/ux/m… netbeans NetBeans Team Bottlenecks be gone! #Java Performance Tuning workshop in Munich w Kirk Pepperdine, Nov 29-Dec 2: ow.ly/7Akh5 OracleBlogs OracleBlogs Creating ADF Faces Comamnd Button at Runtime ow.ly/1fM9dE alexismp Alexis MP blogged "GlassFish Back from Devoxx 2011, Mature Java EE 6 and EE 7 well on its way" – bit.ly/rP8LV0 JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF Usage of jQuery in ADF dlvr.it/x3t84 20 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat Webcast: Introducing Oracle WebLogic Server 12c: Developer Deep Dive – Dec 1 – 11am PT / 2pm ET bit.ly/t61W4G oraclepartners ORCL PartnerNetwork Brand new Oracle WebLogic 12c will launch on December 1, 10AM PT with a global Webcast highlighting salient… t.co/aflQQ3IX OracleBlogs OracleBlogs JDeveloper and ADF at UKOUG t.co/2CQTiB9n fnimphiu Frank Nimphius Attending UKOUG? All ADF sessions at a glance: t.co/TcMNTMXp 21 Nov Favorite Retweet Reply JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF Free Webinar ‘ADF Task Flows for Beginners’, information and registration t.co/66jXnGgo via javafx4you javafx4you Java Developer Workshop #2 – Dec 1, 2011 @ Oracle Aoyama center in Tokyo t.co/8p9q3W2B AMIS_Services AMIS Services #vacature #Oracle #ADF ontwikkelaars. bit.ly/AMISADF Gun jezelf een nieuwe uitdaging? Meer op: dld.bz/azZ5N OracleBlogs OracleBlogs Launch Invitation: Introducing Oracle WebLogic Server 12c t.co/bRxCKwAk fnimphiu Frank Nimphius The brand new WebLogic 12c will be released on December 1st 2011 !!! Register for online launch event t.co/pPScg4Xh glassfish GlassFish Announcing Oracle WebLogic 12c – t.co/qh8TdFEl AdamBien Adam Bien Sun Coding Conventions–The Only Standard (Stop Inventing): Code written according to the Sun Coding Conventions… t.co/qaUWp5Mz wlscommunity WebLogic Community Launch Invitation: Introducing Oracle WebLogic Server 12c wp.me/p1LMIb-4y andrejusb Andrejus Baranovskis Andrejus Baranovskis’s Blog: Custom Exception Registration for ADF BC EO Attribute fb.me/1m6nXQD52 MNEMONIC01 Michel Schildmeijer Blog by Michel Schildmeijer: "Oracle WebLogic 12c has been announced" bit.ly/vk6WQL glassfish GlassFish Tab Sweep – Coherence, SBT for GlassFish, OSGi in question, Java EE plugins, … t.co/tVIL95lj OracleBlogs OracleBlogs JavaFX 2.0 at Devoxx 2011 ow.ly/1fJ5iT JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF Experimenting with ADF BC Application Module Pool Tuning dlvr.it/wjLC1 OracleWebLogic Oracle WebLogic Brand New #WebLogic 12c Launch Event, Dec 1 10am PT. Hasan Rizvi, SVP Fusion Middleware. Developer session. bit.ly/weblogic12clau… JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF PopUp and Esc/Cancel operations. ADF 11g dlvr.it/whrmC JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF BPM Workspace: issue loading ADF task flows t.co/vk1gKPx5 OpenJDK OpenJDK Kelly O’Hair — OpenJDK B24 Available : t.co/1bFws6Nw JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF Oracle ADF setting Task flow to use same page definition file of caller page t.co/9k6UIoYZ JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF Master Detail Data presentation and CRUD Operations. Detail records in an Editable Popup. ADF 11g t.co/H8uudR0Y JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF Entity Attribute Validation Rule (Business Rule) based on Master View Object Attribute Example ADF 11g t.co/1agxEQcZ oracletechnet Justin Kestelyn Webcast: Oracle WebLogic Server 12c Launch/Developer Deep-Dive (Dec. 1) t.co/OVBdGKzC JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF How to render different node icons for different tree levels dlvr.it/wY2jL JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF Query Component with ‘dynamic’ view criteria dlvr.it/wXlF1 JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF How to play Flash .swf file in Oracle ADF application t.co/zaSONWAH Devoxx Devoxx Duke at the #Devoxx 2011 Noxx Party! pic.twitter.com/bVJWyu1Z brhubart Bob Rhubart Adam Leftik: JavaEE adoption continues to increase, reaching 40+ million downloads this year. #qconsf11 JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF Free #ODTUG Seminar – #ADF Task Flows for Beginners – sign up today. www3.gotomeeting.com/register/13372… java Java New Project: OpenJFX j.mp/tI4k3s #javafx #openjdk #devoxx << JavaFX is open source! /via frankmunz Frank Munz WebLogic 12c launch event Dec 1st. t.co/jQKinBqN brhubart Bob Rhubart Spring to Java EE Migration | David Heffelfinger feedly.com/k/td8ccG odtug ODTUG Mark your calendars and register for our upcoming webinars: bit.ly/dWKG1C ADF Task Flows & Measuring Scalability & Performance w/TCP myfear Markus Eisele Anybody willing to take this question? Using #JavaMail with #Weblogic Server bit.ly/stJOET AMIS_Services AMIS Services 20-22 december #training #Oracle JHeadstart #11g, productief ontwikkelen met ADF. Schrijf je in op: amis.nl/trainingen/ora… AdamBien Adam Bien Stress Testing Java EE 6 Applications – Free Article In Free Java Magazine: In the November / December 2011 issu… bit.ly/vmzKkc java Java New Tech Article: Spring to #JavaEE Migration t.co/0EvdHNxb OracleBlogs OracleBlogs WebLogic Java record SPARC T4-4 Servers Set World Record on SPECjEnterprise2010 t.co/Eu1b6ZE0 OracleBlogs OracleBlogs What Is JavaFX? ow.ly/1frb6I OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat The openJDK Windows Binary Download | Adam Bien ow.ly/7fRiG wlscommunity WebLogic Community WebLogic – Java record – SPARC T4-4 Servers Set World Record on SPECjEnterprise2010 glassfish GlassFish "youtube.com/java" blogs.oracle.com/theaquarium/en… OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat Beta Testing Concludes: 1Z1-102 – "Oracle WebLogic Server 11g: System Administration I" (Oracle Certification) ow.ly/7fJCl wlscommunity WebLogic Community A deep dive in Oracle WebLogic! @ Contribute – November 29th, 2011 Kontich Belgium wp.me/p1LMIb-4u glassfish GlassFish Gartner’s Latest Enterprise Application Server Magic Quadrant – Oracle’s leadership t.co/aYDqipD8 OpenJDK OpenJDK Terrence Barr – Open sourcing of JavaFX: OpenJFX Project proposed – bit.ly/uKVnEl OpenJDK OpenJDK Maurizio Cimadamore – Testing overload resolution: bit.ly/vgXAbQ java Java Java User Groups Roundup, November 2011 : t.co/hea6vVnk /via @robilad << in German JavaSpotlight The Java Spotlight Java Spotlight Episode 54: Stuart Marks on the Coinification of JDK7 goo.gl/fb/3UXoM OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat Article Series: Migrating Spring to Java EE 6 | Arun Gupta bit.ly/twUJtz glassfish GlassFish New Java EE 6 Hands-On lab, Devoxx-approved! bit.ly/vup5uE java Java Brian Goetz’s enthusiasm for Java is palpable! #devoxx interview adf_emg ADF EMG "ADF testing with a mock framework" – what is a mock framework? Visit the forum and see: groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/… java Java Taping a bunch of interviews today with Java experts at #devoxx. View on Parleys.com tomorrow. glassfish GlassFish New screencast to configure and run a cross-machine cluster using GlassFish 3.1.1 in < 7 mins faissalb.blogspot.com/2011/11/glassf… (via @bfaissal) glassfish GlassFish Oracle Contributor Agreements – New Home! bit.ly/tD2eLo OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat Java Magazine – by and for the Java Community- inaugural issue bit.ly/tTv8UD OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat The Heroes of Java: Michael Hüttermann | @MyFear bit.ly/rYYOFe javafx4you javafx4you Development with #JavaFX on #Linux j.mp/uOpe69 #not_for_the_faint_of_heart java Java Contribute Technical Questions for Java Experts at #devoxx bit.ly/up2cN0 netbeans NetBeans Team A simple REST service using #NetBeans 7, #Java Servlet, and #JAXB: t.co/pKkufsD8 AdamBien Adam Bien The most beautiful, and portable slide of the whole #jaxcon for "Die Hard Java EE 6"session checked-in: kenai.com/projects/javae… jaxlondon JAX London Mark Little’s (@nmcl) excellent keynote from #jaxlondon ‘Middleware Everywhere…’ is available in full – t.co/8vBmtDJ1 AdamBien Adam Bien Calculator sample from "Die Hard Java EE 6" #jaxcon session checked-in: t.co/0UqaULfg OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat ADF Faces – a logic bomb in the order of bean instantiations | @ChrisCMuir bit.ly/vjqRaZ OracleBlogs OracleBlogs ODI 11g y JMS Queue de Weblogic ow.ly/1fzfQJ frankmunz Frank Munz Which WebLogic book do you recommend? Review of S. Alapati’s WebLogic 11g Administration Handbook. bit.ly/rP0RtW JDeveloper JDeveloper & ADF PageFlowScope with Unbounded Task Flows: the magic sauce for multi-browser-tab support in JDeveloper ADF applications dlvr.it/vNFgn OracleBlogs OracleBlogs 3 New ADF Insider Essential training videos published. ow.ly/1fz94q OracleBlogs OracleBlogs Weblogic Server 11gR1 PS2: Administration Essentials book and eBook t.co/ykzwIaqs OracleBlogs OracleBlogs Specialized Partners Only! New Service to Promote Your Events t.co/qTgyEpY4 wlscommunity WebLogic Community Oracle Weblogic Server 11gR1 PS2: Administration Essentials book and eBook andrejusb Andrejus Baranovskis Andrejus Baranovskis’s Blog: Stress Testing Oracle ADF BC Applications – Intern… andrejusb.blogspot.com/2011/11/stress… OracleBlogs OracleBlogs Frank Nimphius presenting a full day of Oracle ADF in Switzerland ow.ly/1fxU78 java Java #JavaEE and #GlassFish: #JavaOne11 Slides, Demos, Replays, Hands-on Labs t.co/tLM0ehrD OracleBlogs OracleBlogs weblogic.security.SecurityInitializationException: Authentication for user weblogic denied ow.ly/1fxmiu glassfish GlassFish The Last Migration – GlassFish Wiki : t.co/Dc5FT1SJ OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat A Successful Year of @MiddlewareMagic t.co/amcGGTTk OracleWebLogic Oracle WebLogic Unbeatable Performance for your Cloud Applications with Exalogic, #OracleCoherence and #WebLogic. ow.ly/7lYKm OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat Stress Testing Oracle ADF BC Applications – Passivation and Activation | @AndrejusB bit.ly/sASssL OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat Review: "Oracle Weblogic Server 11gR1 PS2: Administration Essentials" by Michel Schildmeijer | @MyFear t.co/ll6ra0J9 OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat GlassFish 3.1.2 themes and features | The Aquarium bit.ly/vVqr9r Andre_van_Dalen Andre van Dalen Masterclass: Advanced Oracle ADF 11g lnkd.in/M_45Pi AdamBien Adam Bien The "lunch" edition of RentACar is pushed into: kenai.com/projects/javae… #wjax AdamBien Adam Bien In munich, room munich at #wjax. Welcome to #javaee workshop. Gather your questions. 15 minutes to go lucasjellema Lucas Jellema Review by Markus of Michel’s book: t.co/41U9wvOb In short: valuable for novice WLS users, maybe not so much for die-hard WLS admin. biemond Edwin Biemond “@myfear: [blog] #Review: "#Weblogic Server 11gR1 PS2: Administration Essentials" t.co/LsODcb3e” got the same conclusion on amazon glassfish GlassFish Practical advice for deploying Lift apps to GlassFish: bit.ly/t3KUml glassfish GlassFish The unbearable lightness of GlassFish t.co/v9307SEJ javafx4you javafx4you Building Java EE applications in JavaFX: JavaFX 2.0, FXML and Spring j.mp/tiMDUh andrejusb Andrejus Baranovskis Andrejus Baranovskis’s Blog: Stress Testing Oracle ADF BC Applications – Passiv… andrejusb.blogspot.com/2011/11/stress… wlscommunity WebLogic Community “@AMIS_Services: Follow @amis_services To Win a copy of SOA Suite 11g Handbook by @lucasjellema dld.bz/axD22 pls RT” excellent book! glassfish GlassFish GlassFish 3.1.2 themes and features bit.ly/uEc6uZ biemond Edwin Biemond Weblogic pre-sales exam was hard, you really need to know the versions , upgrade path and have a score above 80% monkchips James Governor The Rise and Fall and Rise of Java. JAX 2011 london keynote. how big data and the web are floating the boat. slidesha.re/u3Kzlo glassfish GlassFish Tab Sweep – Jersey, Hudson, GlassFish Hosting, GC’s compared, Spring to JavaEE, Modularity, … bit.ly/u9Cc30 oracletechnet Justin Kestelyn Oracle Tuxedo: A renewed acquaintance t.co/gp0mmf20 OTNArchBeat OTNArchBeat Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse, OEPE 11.1.1.8 bit.ly/tC3eKp OracleBlogs OracleBlogs NetBeans HTML Editor and Groovy Editor in a Multiview Component (Part 2) ow.ly/1ftCeI myfear Markus Eisele [blog] #Oracle 2008 – 2011 in Gartners Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Application Servers t.co/2Bs1vgMZ myfear Markus Eisele [blog] #EclipseCon Europe – Java 7 in the Enterprise goo.gl/fb/r80df #ece2011 #java7 javafx4you javafx4you JavaFX 2.0 for Mac build b07 (developer preview) is available for download j.mp/vSwmBP Enjoy! #JavaFX #Mac OracleBlogs OracleBlogs A deep dive in Oracle WebLogic! @ Contribute November 29th, 2011 Kontich Belgium ow.ly/1fsEZs arungupta Arun Gupta #JavaEE7 slides from #jaxlondon and #jfall11 now available: slidesha.re/sh4iFq AdamBien Adam Bien Just checked-in the results of the #jaxlondon community night (somehow beer related): kenai.com/projects/javae… glassfish GlassFish GlassFish Podcast Episode #080 – User Stories, Part 3: Adam Bien and Sean Comerford (ESPN) blogs.oracle.com/glassfishpodca… glassfish GlassFish Story: t.co/jQPqihJb using GlassFish blogs.oracle.com/stories/entry/… "3000+ requests/sec" and more enterprisejava Java EE Mentions New blog post WebLogic deployment status checks for CI wp.me/pOOSs-F #weblogic #continuousintegration /vi… bit.ly/uZz0fk The become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please first login at http://partner.oracle.com and then visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: twitter,WebLogic,WebLogic Community,OPN,Oracle,Jürgen Kress

    Read the article

  • SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #039

    - by Pinal Dave
    Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 FQL – Facebook Query Language Facebook list following advantages of FQL: Condensed XML reduces bandwidth and parsing costs. More complex requests can reduce the number of requests necessary. Provides a single consistent, unified interface for all of your data. It’s fun! UDF – Get the Day of the Week Function The day of the week can be retrieved in SQL Server by using the DatePart function. The value returned by the function is between 1 (Sunday) and 7 (Saturday). To convert this to a string representing the day of the week, use a CASE statement. UDF – Function to Get Previous And Next Work Day – Exclude Saturday and Sunday While reading ColdFusion blog of Ben Nadel Getting the Previous Day In ColdFusion, Excluding Saturday And Sunday, I realize that I use similar function on my SQL Server Database. This function excludes the Weekends (Saturday and Sunday), and it gets previous as well as next work day. Complete Series of SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Introduction Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Part 1 Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Part 2 Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Part 3 Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers Complete List Download 2008 Introduction to Log Viewer In SQL Server all the windows event logs can be seen along with SQL Server logs. Interface for all the logs is same and can be launched from the same place. This log can be exported and filtered as well. DBCC SHRINKFILE Takes Long Time to Run If you are DBA who are involved with Database Maintenance and file group maintenance, you must have experience that many times DBCC SHRINKFILE operations takes a long time but any other operations with Database are relatively quicker. mssqlsystemresource – Resource Database The purpose of resource database is to facilitates upgrading to the new version of SQL Server without any hassle. In previous versions whenever version of SQL Server was upgraded all the previous version system objects needs to be dropped and new version system objects to be created. 2009 Puzzle – Write Script to Generate Primary Key and Foreign Key In SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), there is no option to script all the keys. If one is required to script keys they will have to manually script each key one at a time. If database has many tables, generating one key at a time can be a very intricate task. I want to throw a question to all of you if any of you have scripts for the same purpose. Maximizing View of SQL Server Management Studio – Full Screen – New Screen I had explained the following two different methods: 1) Open Results in Separate Tab - This is a very interesting method as result pan shows up in a different tab instead of the splitting screen horizontally. 2) Open SSMS in Full Screen - This works always and to its best. Not many people are aware of this method; hence, very few people use it to enhance performance. 2010 Find Queries using Parallelism from Cached Plan T-SQL script gets all the queries and their execution plan where parallelism operations are kicked up. Pay attention there is TOP 10 is used, if you have lots of transactional operations, I suggest that you change TOP 10 to TOP 50 This is the list of the all the articles in the series of computed columns. SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Storage This article talks about how computed columns are created and why they take more storage space than before. SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Performance This article talks about how PERSISTED columns give better performance than non-persisted columns. SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Performance – Part 2 This article talks about how non-persisted columns give better performance than PERSISTED columns. SQL SERVER – Computed Column and Performance – Part 3 This article talks about how Index improves the performance of Computed Columns. SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Storage – Part 2 This article talks about how creating index on computed column does not grow the row length of table. SQL SERVER – Computed Columns – Index and Performance This article summarized all the articles related to computed columns. 2011 SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 21 of 31 What is Data Warehousing? What is Business Intelligence (BI)? What is a Dimension Table? What is Dimensional Modeling? What is a Fact Table? What are the Fundamental Stages of Data Warehousing? What are the Different Methods of Loading Dimension tables? Describes the Foreign Key Columns in Fact Table and Dimension Table? What is Data Mining? What is the Difference between a View and a Materialized View? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 22 of 31 What is OLTP? What is OLAP? What is the Difference between OLTP and OLAP? What is ODS? What is ER Diagram? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 23 of 31 What is ETL? What is VLDB? Is OLTP Database is Design Optimal for Data Warehouse? If denormalizing improves Data Warehouse Processes, then why is the Fact Table is in the Normal Form? What are Lookup Tables? What are Aggregate Tables? What is Real-Time Data-Warehousing? What are Conformed Dimensions? What is a Conformed Fact? How do you Load the Time Dimension? What is a Level of Granularity of a Fact Table? What are Non-Additive Facts? What is a Factless Facts Table? What are Slowly Changing Dimensions (SCD)? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 24 of 31 What is Hybrid Slowly Changing Dimension? What is BUS Schema? What is a Star Schema? What Snow Flake Schema? Differences between the Star and Snowflake Schema? What is Difference between ER Modeling and Dimensional Modeling? What is Degenerate Dimension Table? Why is Data Modeling Important? What is a Surrogate Key? What is Junk Dimension? What is a Data Mart? What is the Difference between OLAP and Data Warehouse? What is a Cube and Linked Cube with Reference to Data Warehouse? What is Snapshot with Reference to Data Warehouse? What is Active Data Warehousing? What is the Difference between Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence? What is MDS? Explain the Paradigm of Bill Inmon and Ralph Kimball. SQL SERVER – Azure Interview Questions and Answers – Guest Post by Paras Doshi – Day 25 of 31 Paras Doshi has submitted 21 interesting question and answers for SQL Azure. 1.What is SQL Azure? 2.What is cloud computing? 3.How is SQL Azure different than SQL server? 4.How many replicas are maintained for each SQL Azure database? 5.How can we migrate from SQL server to SQL Azure? 6.Which tools are available to manage SQL Azure databases and servers? 7.Tell me something about security and SQL Azure. 8.What is SQL Azure Firewall? 9.What is the difference between web edition and business edition? 10.How do we synchronize On Premise SQL server with SQL Azure? 11.How do we Backup SQL Azure Data? 12.What is the current pricing model of SQL Azure? 13.What is the current limitation of the size of SQL Azure DB? 14.How do you handle datasets larger than 50 GB? 15.What happens when the SQL Azure database reaches Max Size? 16.How many databases can we create in a single server? 17.How many servers can we create in a single subscription? 18.How do you improve the performance of a SQL Azure Database? 19.What is code near application topology? 20.What were the latest updates to SQL Azure service? 21.When does a workload on SQL Azure get throttled? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Guest Post by Malathi Mahadevan – Day 26 of 31 Malachi had asked a simple question which has several answers. Each answer makes you think and ponder about the reality of the IT world. Look at the simple question – ‘What is the toughest challenge you have faced in your present job and how did you handle it’? and its various answers. Each answer has its own story. SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Guest Post by Rick Morelan – Day 27 of 31 Rick Morelan of Joes2Pros has written an excellent blog post on the subject how to find top N values. Most people are fully aware of how the TOP keyword works with a SELECT statement. After years preparing so many students to pass the SQL Certification I noticed they were pretty well prepared for job interviews too. Yes, they would do well in the interview but not great. There seemed to be a few questions that would come up repeatedly for almost everyone. Rick addresses similar questions in his lucid writing skills. 2012 Observation of Top with Index and Order of Resultset SQL Server has lots of things to learn and share. It is amazing to see how people evaluate and understand different techniques and styles differently when implementing. The real reason may be absolutely different but we may blame something totally different for the incorrect results. Read the blog post to learn more. How do I Record Video and Webcast How to Convert Hex to Decimal or INT Earlier I asked regarding a question about how to convert Hex to Decimal. I promised that I will post an answer with Due Credit to the author but never got around to post a blog post around it. Read the original post over here SQL SERVER – Question – How to Convert Hex to Decimal. Query to Get Unique Distinct Data Based on Condition – Eliminate Duplicate Data from Resultset The natural reaction will be to suggest DISTINCT or GROUP BY. However, not all the questions can be solved by DISTINCT or GROUP BY. Let us see the following example, where a user wanted only latest records to be displayed. Let us see the example to understand further. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

    Read the article

  • Who writes the words? A rant with graphs.

    - by Roger Hart
    If you read my rant, you'll know that I'm getting a bit of a bee in my bonnet about user interface text. But rather than just yelling about the way the world should be (short version: no UI text would suck), it seemed prudent to actually gather some data. Rachel Potts has made an excellent first foray, by conducting a series of interviews across organizations about how they write user interface text. You can read Rachel's write up here. She presents the facts as she found them, and doesn't editorialise. The result is insightful, but impartial isn't really my style. So here's a rant with graphs. My method, and how it sucked I sent out a short survey. Survey design is one of my hobby-horses, and since some smartarse in the comments will mention it if I don't, I'll step up and confess: I did not design this one well. It was potentially ambiguous, implicitly excluded people, and since I only really advertised it on Twitter and a couple of mailing lists the sample will be chock full of biases. Regardless, these were the questions: What do you do? Select the option that best describes your role What kind of software does your organization make? (optional) In your organization, who writes the text on your software user interfaces? (for example: button names, static text, tooltips, and so on) Tick all that apply. In your organization who is responsible for user interface text? Who "owns" it? The most glaring issue (apart from question 3 being a bit broken) was that I didn't make it clear that I was asking about applications. Desktop, mobile, or web, I wouldn't have minded. In fact, it might have been interesting to categorize and compare. But a few respondents commented on the seeming lack of relevance, since they didn't really make software. There were some other issues too. It wasn't the best survey. So, you know, pinch of salt time with what follows. Despite this, there were 100 or so respondents. This post covers the overview, and you can look at the raw data in this spreadsheet What did people do? Boring graph number one: I wasn't expecting that. Given I pimped the survey on twitter and a couple of Tech Comms discussion lists, I was more banking on and even Content Strategy/Tech Comms split. What the "Others" specified: Three people chipped in with Technical Writer. Author, apparently, doesn't cut it. There's a "nobody reads the instructions" joke in there somewhere, I'm sure. There were a couple of hybrid roles, including Tech Comms and Testing, which sounds gruelling and thankless. There was also, an Intranet Manager, a Creative Director, a Consultant, a CTO, an Information Architect, and a Translator. That's a pretty healthy slice through the industry. Who wrote UI text? Boring graph number two: Annoyingly, I made this a "tick all that apply" question, so I can't make crude and inflammatory generalizations about percentages. This is more about who gets involved in user interface wording. So don't panic about the number of developers writing UI text. First off, it just means they're involved. Second, they might be good at it. What? It could happen. Ours are involved - they write a placeholder and flag it to me for changes. Sometimes I don't make any. It's also not surprising that there's so much UX in the mix. Some of that will be people taking care, and crafting an understandable interface. Some of it will be whatever text goes on the wireframe making it into production. I'm going to assume that's what happened at eBay, when their iPhone app purportedly shipped with the placeholder text "Some crappy content goes here". Ahem. Listing all 17 "other" responses would make this post lengthy indeed, but you can read them in the raw data spreadsheet. The award for the approach that sounds the most like a good idea yet carries the highest risk of ending badly goes to whoever offered up "External agencies using focus groups". If you're reading this, and that actually works, leave a comment. I'm fascinated. Who owned UI text Stop. Bar chart time: Wow. Let's cut to the chase, and by "chase", I mean those inflammatory generalizations I was talking about: In around 60% of cases the person responsible for user interface text probably lacks the relevant expertise. Even in the categories I count as being likely to have relevant skills (Marketing Copywriters, Content Strategists, Technical Authors, and User Experience Designers) there's a case for each role being unsuited, as you'll see in Rachel's blog post So it's not as simple as my headline. Does that mean that you personally, Mr Developer reading this, write bad button names? Of course not. I know nothing about you. It rather implies that as a category, the majority of people looking after UI text have neither communication nor user experience as their primary skill set, and as such will probably only be good at this by happy accident. I don't have a way of measuring those frequency of those accidents. What the Others specified: I don't know who owns it. I assume the project manager is responsible. "copywriters" when they wish to annoy me. the client's web maintenance person, often PR or MarComm That last one chills me to the bone. Still, at least nobody said "the work experience kid". You can see the rest in the spreadsheet. My overwhelming impression here is of user interface text as an unloved afterthought. There were fewer "nobody" responses than I expected, and a much broader split. But the relative predominance of developers owning and writing UI text suggests to me that organizations don't see it as something worth dedicating attention to. If true, that's bothersome. Because the words on the screen, particularly the names of things, are fundamental to the ability to understand an use software. It's also fascinating that Technical Authors and Content Strategists are neck and neck. For such a nascent discipline, Content Strategy appears to have made a mark on software development. Or my sample is skewed. But it feels like a bit of validation for my rant: Content Strategy is eating Tech Comms' lunch. That's not a bad thing. Well, not if the UI text is getting done well. And that's the caveat to this whole post. I couldn't care less who writes UI text, provided they consider the user and don't suck at it. I care that it may be falling by default to people poorly disposed to doing it right. And I care about that because so much user interface text sucks. The most interesting question Was one I forgot to ask. It's this: Does your organization have technical authors/writers? Like a lot of survey data, that doesn't tell you much on its own. But once we get a bit dimensional, it become more interesting. So taken with the other questions, this would have let me find out what I really want to know: What proportion of organizations have Tech Comms professionals but don't use them for UI text? Who writes UI text in their place? Why this happens? It's possible (feasible is another matter) that hundreds of companies have tech authors who don't work on user interfaces because they've empirically discovered that someone else, say the Marketing Copywriter, is better at it. And once we've all finished laughing, I'll point out that I've met plenty of tech authors who just aren't used to thinking about users at the point of need in the way UI text and embedded user assistance require. If you've got what I regard, perhaps unfairly, as the bad kind of tech author - the old-school kind with the thousand-page pdf and the grammar obsession - if you've got one of those then you probably are better off getting the UX folk or the copywriters to do your UI text. At the very least, they'll derive terminology from user research.

    Read the article

  • Is this question too hard for a seasoned C++ architect?

    - by Monomer
    Background Information We're looking to hire a seasoned C++ architect (10+years dev, of which at least 6years must be C++ ) for a high frequency trading platform. Job advert says STL, Boost proficiency is a must with preferences to modern uses of C++. The company I work for is a Fortune 500 IB (aka finance industry), it requires passes in all the standard SHL tests (numeric, vocab, spatial etc) before interviews can commence. Everyone on the team was given the task of coming up with one question to ask the candidates during a written/typed test, please note this is the second test provided to the candidates, the first being Advanced IKM C++ test, done in the offices supervised and without internet access. People passing that do the second test. After roughly 70 candidates, my question has been determined to be statistically the worst performing - aka least number of people attempted it, furthermore even less people were able to give meaningful answers. Please note, the second test is not timed, the candidate can literally take as long as they like (we've had one person take roughly 10.5hrs) My question to SO is this, after SHL and IKM adv c++ tests, backed up with at least 6+ years C++ development experience, is it still ok not to be able to even comment about let alone come up with some loose strategy for solving the following question. The Question There is a class C with methods foo, boo, boo_and_foo and foo_and_boo. Each method takes i,j,k and l clock cycles respectively, where i < j, k < i+j and l < i+j. class C { public: int foo() {...} int boo() {...} int boo_and_foo() {...} int foo_and_boo() {...} }; In code one might write: C c; . . int i = c.foo() + c.boo(); But it would be better to have: int i = c.foo_and_boo(); What changes or techniques could one make to the definition of C, that would allow similar syntax of the original usage, but instead have the compiler generate the latter. Note that foo and boo are not commutative. Possible Solution We were basically looking for an expression templates based approach, and were willing to give marks to anyone who had even hinted or used the phrase or related terminology. We got only two people that used the wording, but weren't able to properly describe how they accomplish the task in detail. We use such techniques all over the place, due to the use of various mathematical operators for matrix and vector based calculations, for example to decide when to use IPP or hand woven implementations at compile time for a particular architecture and many other things. The particular area of software development requires microsecond response times. I believe could/should be able to teach a junior such techniques, but given the assumed caliber of candidates I expected a little more. Is this really a difficult question? Should it be removed? Or are we just not seeing the right candidates?

    Read the article

  • The Product Owner

    - by Robert May
    In a previous post, I outlined the rules of Scrum.  This post details one of those rules. Picking a most important part of Scrum is difficult.  All of the rules are required, but if there were one rule that is “more” required that every other rule, its having a good Product Owner.  Simply put, the Product Owner can make or break the project. Duties of the Product Owner A Product Owner has many duties and responsibilities.  I’ll talk about each of these duties in detail below. A Product Owner: Discovers and records stories for the backlog. Prioritizes stories in the Product Backlog, Release Backlog and Iteration Backlog. Determines Release dates and Iteration Dates. Develops story details and helps the team understand those details. Helps QA to develop acceptance tests. Interact with the Customer to make sure that the product is meeting the customer’s needs. Discovers and Records Stories for the Backlog When I do Scrum, I always use User Stories as the means for capturing functionality that’s required in the system.  Some people will use Use Cases, but the same rule applies.  The Product Owner has the ultimate responsibility for figuring out what functionality will be in the system.  Many different mechanisms for capturing this input can be used.  User interviews are great, but all sources should be considered, including talking with Customer Support types.  Often, they hear what users are struggling with the most and are a great source for stories that can make the application easier to use. Care should be taken when soliciting user stories from technical types such as programmers and the people that manage them.  They will almost always give stories that are very technical in nature and may not have a direct benefit for the end user.  Stories are about adding value to the company.  If the stories don’t have direct benefit to the end user, the Product Owner should question whether or not the story should be implemented.  In general, technical stories should be included as tasks in User Stories.  Technical stories are often needed, but the ultimate value to the user is in user based functionality, so technical stories should be considered nothing more than overhead in providing that user functionality. Until the iteration prior to development, stories should be nothing more than short, one line placeholders. An exercise called Story Planning can be used to brainstorm and come up with stories.  I’ll save the description of this activity for another blog post. For more information on User Stories, please read the book User Stories Applied by Mike Cohn. Prioritizes Stories in the Product Backlog, Release Backlog and Iteration Backlog Prioritization of stories is one of the most difficult tasks that a Product Owner must do.  A key concept of Scrum done right is the need to have the team working from a single set of prioritized stories.  If the team does not have a single set of prioritized stories, Scrum will likely fail at your organization.  The Product Owner is the ONLY person who has the responsibility to prioritize that list.  The Product Owner must be very diplomatic and sincerely listen to the people around him so that he can get the priorities correct. Just listening will still not yield the proper priorities.  Care must also be taken to ensure that Return on Investment is also considered.  Ultimately, determining which stories give the most value to the company for the least cost is the most important factor in determining priorities.  Product Owners should be willing to look at cold, hard numbers to determine the order for stories.  Even when many people want a feature, if that features is costly to develop, it may not have as high of a return on investment as features that are cheaper, but not as popular. The act of prioritization often causes conflict in an environment.  Customer Service thinks that feature X is the most important, because it will stop people from calling.  Operations thinks that feature Y is the most important, because it will stop servers from crashing.  Developers think that feature Z is most important because it will make writing software much easier for them.  All of these are useful goals, but the team can have only one list of items, and each item must have a priority that is different from all other stories.  The Product Owner will determine which feature gives the best return on investment and the other features will have to wait their turn, which means that someone will not have their top priority feature implemented first. A weak Product Owner will refuse to do prioritization.  I’ve heard from multiple Product Owners the following phrase, “Well, it’s all got to be done, so what does it matter what order we do it in?”  If your product owner is using this phrase, you need a new Product Owner.  Order is VERY important.  In Scrum, every release is potentially shippable.  If the wrong priority items are developed, then the value added in each release isn’t what it should be.  Additionally, the Product Owner with this mindset doesn’t understand Agile.  A product is NEVER finished, until the company has decided that it is no longer a going concern and they are no longer going to sell the product.  Therefore, prioritization isn’t an event, its something that continues every day.  The logical extension of the phrase “It’s all got to be done” is that you will never ship your product, since a product is never “done.”  Once stories have been prioritized, assigning them to the Release Backlog and the Iteration Backlog becomes relatively simple.  The top priority items are copied into the respective backlogs in order and the task is complete.  The team does have the right to shuffle things around a little in the iteration backlog.  For example, they may determine that working on story C with story A is appropriate because they’re related, even though story B is technically a higher priority than story C.  Or they may decide that story B is too big to complete in the time available after Story A has tasks created, so they’ll work on Story C since it’s smaller.  They can’t, however, go deep into the backlog to pick stories to implement.  The team and the Product Owner should work together to determine what’s best for the company. Prioritization is time consuming, but its one of the most important things a Product Owner does. Determines Release Dates and Iteration Dates Product owners are responsible for determining release dates for a product.  A common misconception that Product Owners have is that every “release” needs to correspond with an actual release to customers.  This is not the case.  In general, releases should be no more than 3 months long.  You  may decide to release the product to the customers, and many companies do release the product to customers, but it may also be an internal release. If a release date is too far away, developers will fall into the trap of not feeling a sense of urgency.  The date is far enough away that they don’t need to give the release their full attention.  Additionally, important tasks, such as performance tuning, regression testing, user documentation, and release preparation, will not happen regularly, making them much more difficult and time consuming to do.  The more frequently you do these tasks, the easier they are to accomplish. The Product Owner will be a key participant in determining whether or not a release should be sent out to the customers.  The determination should be made on whether or not the features contained in the release are valuable enough  and complete enough that the customers will see real value in the release.  Often, some features will take more than three months to get them to a state where they qualify for a release or need additional supporting features to be released.  The product owner has the right to make this determination. In addition to release dates, the Product Owner also will help determine iteration dates.  In general, an iteration length should be chosen and the team should follow that iteration length for an extended period of time.  If the iteration length is changed every iteration, you’re not doing Scrum.  Iteration lengths help the team and company get into a rhythm of developing quality software.  Iterations should be somewhere between 2 and 4 weeks in length.  Any shorter, and significant software will likely not be developed.  Any longer, and the team won’t feel urgency and planning will become very difficult. Iterations may not be extended during the iteration.  Companies where Scrum isn’t really followed will often use this as a strategy to complete all stories.  They don’t want to face the harsh reality of what their true performance is, and looking good is more important than seeking visibility and improving the process and team.  Companies like this typically don’t allow failure.  This is unhealthy.  Failure is part of life and unless we learn from it, we can’t improve.  I would much rather see a team push out stories to the next iteration and then have healthy discussions about why they failed rather than extend the iteration and not deal with the core problems. If iteration length varies, retrospectives become more difficult.  For example, evaluating the performance of the team’s estimation efforts becomes much more difficult if the iteration length varies.  Also, the team must have a velocity measurement.  If the iteration length varies, measuring velocity becomes impossible and upper management no longer will have the ability to evaluate the teams performance.  People external to the team will no longer have the ability to determine when key features are likely to be developed.  Variable iterations cause the entire company to fail and likely cause Scrum to fail at an organization. Develops Story Details and Helps the Team Understand Those Details A key concept in Scrum is that the stories are nothing more than a placeholder for a conversation.  Stories should be nothing more than short, one line statements about the functionality.  The team will then converse with the Product Owner about the details about that story.  The product owner needs to have a very good idea about what the details of the story are and needs to be able to help the team understand those details. Too often, we see this requirement as being translated into the need for comprehensive documentation about the story, including old fashioned requirements documentation.  The team should only develop the documentation that is required and should not develop documentation that is only created because their is a process to do so. In general, what we see that works best is the iteration before a team starts development work on a story, the Product Owner, with other appropriate business analysts, will develop the details of that story.  They’ll figure out what business rules are required, potentially make paper prototypes or other light weight mock-ups, and they seek to understand the story and what is implied.  Note that the time allowed for this task is deliberately short.  The Product Owner only has a single iteration to develop all of the stories for the next iteration. If more than one iteration is used, I’ve found that teams will end up with Big Design Up Front and traditional requirements documents.  This is a waste of time, since the team will need to then have discussions with the Product Owner to figure out what the requirements document says.  Instead of this, skip making the pretty pictures and detailing the nuances of the requirements and build only what is minimally needed by the team to do development.  If something comes up during development, you can address it at that time and figure out what you want to do.  The goal is to keep things as light weight as possible so that everyone can move as quickly as possible. Helps QA to Develop Acceptance Tests In Scrum, no story can be counted until it is accepted by QA.  Because of this, acceptance tests are very important to the team.  In general, acceptance tests need to be developed prior to the iteration or at the very beginning of the iteration so that the team can make sure that the tasks that they develop will fulfill the acceptance criteria. The Product Owner will help the team, including QA, understand what will make the story acceptable.  Note that the Product Owner needs to be careful about specifying that the feature will work “Perfectly” at the end of the iteration.  In general, features are developed a little bit at a time, so only the bit that is being developed should be considered as necessary for acceptance. A weak Product Owner will make statements like “Do it right the first time.”  Not only are these statements damaging to the team (like they would try to do it WRONG the first time . . .), they’re also ignoring the iterative nature of Scrum.  Additionally, a weak product owner will seek to add scope in the acceptance testing.  For example, they will refuse to determine acceptance at the beginning of the iteration, and then, after the team has planned and committed to the iteration, they will expand scope by defining acceptance.  This often causes the team to miss the iteration because scope that wasn’t planned on is included.  There are ways that the team can mitigate this problem.  For example, include extra “Product Owner” time to deal with the uncertainty that you know will be introduced by the Product Owner.  This will slow the perceived velocity of the team and is not ideal, since they’ll be doing more work than they get credit for. Interact with the Customer to Make Sure that the Product is Meeting the Customer’s Needs Once development is complete, what the team has worked on should be put in front of real live people to see if it meets the needs of the customer.  One of the great things about Agile is that if something doesn’t work, we can revisit it in a future iteration!  This frees up the team to make the best decision now and know that if that decision proves to be incorrect, the team can revisit it and change that decision. Features are about adding value to the customer, so if the customer doesn’t find them useful, then having the team make tweaks is valuable.  In general, most software will be 80 to 90 percent “right” after the initial round and only minor tweaks are required.  If proper coding standards are followed, these tweaks are usually minor and easy to accomplish.  Product Owners that are doing a good job will encourage real users to see and use the software, since they know that they are trying to add value to the customer. Poor product owners will think that they know the answers already, that their customers are silly and do stupid things and that they don’t need customer input.  If you have a product owner that is afraid to show the team’s work to real customers, you probably need a different product owner. Up Next, “Who Makes a Good Product Owner.” Followed by, “Messing with the Team.” Technorati Tags: Scrum,Product Owner

    Read the article

  • The Changing Face of PASS

    - by Bill Graziano
    I’m starting my sixth year on the PASS Board.  I served two years as the Program Director, two years as the Vice-President of Marketing and I’m starting my second year as the Executive Vice-President of Finance.  There’s a pretty good chance that if PASS has done something you don’t like or is doing something you don’t like, that I’m involved in one way or another. Andy Leonard asked in a comment on his blog if the Board had ever reversed itself based on community input.  He asserted that it hadn’t.  I disagree.  I’m not going to try and list all the changes we make inside portfolios based on feedback from and meetings with the community.  I’m going to focus on major governance issues since I was elected to the Board. Management Company The first big change was our management company.  Our old management company had a standard approach to running a non-profit.  It worked well when PASS was launched.  Having a ready-made structure and process to run the organization enabled the organization to grow quickly.  As time went on we were limited in some of the things we wanted to do.  The more involved you were with PASS, the more you saw these limitations.  Key volunteers were regularly providing feedback that they wanted certain changes that were difficult for us to accomplish.  The Board at that time wanted changes that were difficult or impossible to accomplish under that structure. This was not a simple change.  Imagine a $2.5 million dollar company letting all its employees go on a Friday and starting with a new staff on Monday.  We also had a very narrow window to accomplish that so that we wouldn’t affect the Summit – our only source of revenue.  We spent the year after the change rebuilding processes and putting on the Summit in Denver.  That’s a concrete example of a huge change that PASS made to better serve its members.  And it was a change that many in the community were telling us we needed to make. Financials We heard regularly from our members that they wanted our financials posted.  Today on our web site you can find audited financials going back to 2004.  We publish our budget at the start of each year.  If you ask a question about the financials on the PASS site I do my best to answer it.  I’m also trying to do a better job answering financial questions posted in other locations.  (And yes, I know I owe a few of you some blog posts.) That’s another concrete example of a change that our members asked for that the Board agreed was a good decision. Minutes When I started on the Board the meeting minutes were very limited.  The minutes from a two day Board meeting might fit on one page.  I think we did the bare minimum we were legally required to do.  Today Board meeting minutes run from 5 to 12 pages and go into incredible detail on what we talk about.  There are certain topics that are NDA but where possible we try to list the topic we discussed but that the actual discussion was under NDA.  We also publish the agenda of Board meetings ahead of time. This is another specific example where input from the community influenced the decision.  It was certainly easier to have limited minutes but I think the extra effort helps our members understand what’s going on. Board Q&A At the 2009 Summit the Board held its first public Q&A with our members.  We’d always been available individually to answer questions.  There’s a benefit to getting us all in one room and asking the really hard questions to watch us squirm.  We learn what questions we don’t have good answers for.  We get to see how many people in the crowd look interested in the various questions and answers. I don’t recall the genesis of how this came about.  I’m fairly certain there was some community pressure though. Board Votes Until last November, the Board only reported the vote totals and not how individual Board members voted.  That was one of the topics at a great lunch I had with Tim Mitchell and Kendal van Dyke at the Summit.  That was also the topic of the first question asked at the Board Q&A by Kendal.  Kendal expressed his opposition to to anonymous votes clearly and passionately and without trying to paint anyone into a corner.  Less than 24 hours later the PASS Board voted to make individual votes public unless the topic was under NDA.  That’s another area where the Board decided to change based on feedback from our members. Summit Location While this isn’t actually a governance issue it is one of the more public decisions we make that has taken some public criticism.  There is a significant portion of our members that want the Summit near them.  There is a significant portion of our members that like the Summit in Seattle.  There is a significant portion of our members that think it should move around the country.  I was one that felt strongly that there were significant, tangible benefits to our attendees to being in Seattle every year.  I’m also one that has been swayed by some very compelling arguments that we need to have at least one outside Seattle and then revisit the decision.  I can’t tell you how the Board will vote but I know the opinion of our members weighs heavily on the decision. Elections And that brings us to the grand-daddy of all governance issues.  My thesis for this blog post is that the PASS Board has implemented policy changes in response to member feedback.  It isn’t to defend or criticize our election process.  It’s just to say that is has been under going continuous change since I’ve been on the Board.  I ran for the Board in the fall of 2005.  I don’t know much about what happened before then.  I was actively volunteering for PASS for four years prior to that as a chapter leader and on the program committee.  I don’t recall any complaints about elections but that doesn’t mean they didn’t occur.  The questions from the Nominating Committee (NomCom) were trivial and the selection process rudimentary (For example, “Tell us about your accomplishments”).  I don’t even remember who I ran against or how many other people ran.  I ran for the VP of Marketing in the fall of 2007.  I don’t recall any significant changes the Board made in the election process for that election.  I think a lot of the changes in 2007 came from us asking the management company to work on the election process.  I was expecting a similar set of puff ball questions from my previous election.  Boy, was I in for a shock.  The NomCom had found a much better set of questions and really made the interview portion difficult.  The questions were much more behavioral in nature.  I’d already written about my vision for PASS and my goals.  They wanted to know how I handled adversity, how I handled criticism, how I handled conflict, how I handled troublesome volunteers, how I motivated people and how I responded to motivation. And many, many other things. They grilled me for over an hour.  I’ve done a fair bit of technical sales in my time.  I feel I speak well under pressure addressing pointed questions.  This interview intentionally put me under pressure.  In addition to wanting to know about my interpersonal skills, my work experience, my volunteer experience and my supervisory experience they wanted to see how I’d do under pressure.  They wanted to see who would respond under pressure and who wouldn’t.  It was a bit of a shock. That was the first big change I remember in the election process.  I know there were other improvements around the process but none of them stick in my mind quite like the unexpected hour-long grilling. The next big change I remember was after the 2009 elections.  Andy Warren was unhappy with the election process and wanted to make some changes.  He worked with Hannes at HQ and they came up with a better set of processes.  I think Andy moved PASS in the right direction.  Nonetheless, after the 2010 election even more people were very publicly clamoring for changes to our election process.  In August of 2010 we had a choice to make.  There were numerous bloggers criticizing the Board and our upcoming election.  The easy change would be to announce that we were changing the process in a way that would satisfy our critics.  I believe that a knee-jerk response to criticism is seldom correct. Instead the Board spent August and September and October and November listening to the community.  I visited two SQLSaturdays and asked questions of everyone I could.  I attended chapter meetings and asked questions of as many people as they’d let me.  At Summit I made it a point to introduce myself to strangers and ask them about the election.  At every breakfast I’d sit down at a table full of strangers and ask about the election.  I’m happy to say that I left most tables arguing about the election.  Most days I managed to get 2 or 3 breakfasts in. I spent less time talking to people that had already written about the election.  They were already expressing their opinion.  I wanted to talk to people that hadn’t spoken up.  I wanted to know what the silent majority thought.  The Board all attended the Q&A session where our members expressed their concerns about a variety of issues including the election. The PASS Board also chose to create the Election Review Committee.  We wanted people from the community that had been involved with PASS to look at our election process with fresh eyes while listening to what the community had to say and give us some advice on how we could improve the process.  I’m a part of this as is Andy Warren.  None of the other members are on the Board.  I’ve sat in numerous calls and interviews with this group and attended an open meeting at the Summit.  We asked anyone that wanted to discuss the election to come speak with us.  The ERC held an open meeting at the Summit and invited anyone to attend.  There are forums on the ERC web site where we’ve invited people to participate.  The ERC has reached to key people involved in recent elections.  The years that I haven’t mentioned also saw minor improvements in the election process.  Off the top of my head I don’t recall what exact changes were made each year.  Specifically since the 2010 election we’ve gone out of our way to seek input from the community about the process.  I’m not sure what more we could have done to invite feedback from the community. I think to say that we haven’t “fixed” the election process isn’t a fair criticism at this time.  We haven’t rushed any changes through the process.  If you don’t see any changes in our election process in July or August then I think it’s fair to criticize us for ignoring the community or ask for an explanation for what we’ve done. In Summary Andy’s main point was that the PASS Board hasn’t changed in response to our members wishes.  I think I’ve shown that time and time again the PASS Board has changed in response to what our members want.  There are only two outstanding issues: Summit location and elections.  The 2013 Summit location hasn’t been decided yet.  Our work on the elections is also in progress.  And at every step in the election review we’ve gone out of our way to listen to the community and incorporate their feedback on the process. I also hope I’m not encouraging everyone that wants some change in the organization to organize a “blog rush” against the Board.  We take public suggestions very seriously but we also take the time to evaluate those suggestions and learn what the rest of our members think and make a measured decision.

    Read the article

< Previous Page | 12 13 14 15 16