The Eric Wroolie Blog

Overpass Experiences

Complexity of software projects

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A good article was posted yesterday by the ComputerWorld Website saying that the leading cause of software project failures is the complexity of the applications.  The article quotes software architect Roger Sessions:

“Our goal should be to design the least complex architecture possible that solves the business problem”

I’ve been part of many projects that were mired in complexity.  They usually over-run or we end up with a sub-par system that awaits a never-to-happen refactoring and revision.

MiG-21MF Cockpit
Creative Commons License photo credit: Kecko

It’s easy to brainstorm a project and add feature-after-feature until you produced a project plan which stretches over months or years.  It’s easy to design an interface that looks like a cockpit dashboard with lots of functionality that you will probably never use, but looks impressive in the way it fills the screen.  “Wouldn’t it be great if this interfaces with every other system we have?  Wouldn’t it be great if we could use that new transactional system that’s really hot right now?  Wouldn’t it be great if . . .”

I’ve been guilty of this in the past—but I’ve been burned so many times that I tend to err on the side of simplicity (but I don’t always get final say in architectural decisions).

Over the past few years there has been a move to simpler architectures, simpler interfaces, and quicker release cycles.

Scrum is an agile methodology that stresses frequent releases over many iterations.  So, at the end of each 2-3 week iteration, you have working software—regardless of whether you release it to the public or hold until the next iteration.  It’s a methodology that resonates with a lot of people who have worked on failed projects in the past.  I became Scrum Master certified a few years ago, and it changed my whole view of how projects should run—but it is not easy to convince business owners to go this way.

37 Signals released a fantastic e-book called “Getting Real” which they stress that building software is more important that talking about building software.  They have released one of my favourite on-line apps ever with Basecamp.  It is quick, easy, and has a simple interface.  They refuse to clutter it every bit of functionality anyone asks for.

Interfaces in general are getting more simple to use—and not just for products like Basecamp.  10 years ago, you had apps that tried to fill your entire browser with things to do, but now you see more and more that are intuitive and easy to use.  Compare Yahoo! (with a browser window you couldn’t find any blank space on) with Google (a textbox and a button—no manual needed).

The software that has a better chance of reaching “finished” is the software that keeps the architecture simple, keeps the interface simple, and releases frequently.

Here’s the link to the ComputerWorld article:  http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/345994/The_No._1_Cause_of_IT_Failure_Complexity

The Future of Work

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There is a very big company in the outsourcing industry called oDesk.  I learned about them a few years ago when I was looking at outsource projects back then.  I’ve used them a bit and they have a fantastic product. 

They put a video out on Youtube recently called the Future of Work. It’s very good.  Here it is if you haven’t seen it:

The link is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8Yt4wxSblc

For the past few years, you could definitely see the tide turning.  Maybe there will soon be a world where the majority of people don’t have work which makes them put on a suit and commute for hours every day.  I’m glad that other companies believe that and are working towards it.

My Windows 7 problems and the solutions

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I upgraded to Windows 7 a few months ago and have had a handful of issues on my desktop PC because of it.  I love the new OS, and would not want to go back to XP (I left Vista ages ago), so I had to try to figure out why these problems were occurring.  It was a lot of frustration going through forums and trying to find out what was going on. 

So, I’m going to post a few links here about the problems I had and where I found the resolutions.  I’ve installed Windows 7 64bit on a Dell Dimension 9150 with 4gb ram.

Wired Ethernet connection kept dropping and showing up as “Unidentified Network”

This was strange.  I would be sitting and working and then the connection would go down and it would take about an hour of faffing about to get it to come back up.  I found a lot of different possible fixes for this, but none of them worked.  I was having simultaneous trouble with my Orange Livebox at the same time (I was never sure which was the culprit). 

This problem was eventually solved by disabling the Bonjour service used by Apple.  I’m a bit annoyed by this, as I have some applications that use it—but it’s not nearly as annoying as having to chase down a problem with my network adaptor ever couple of days.

PC would not hibernate without rebooting. 

I would try to hibernate and the machine would reboot and switch back on.  I depend on hibernate because I need my machine to turn on at different times of the night to perform backup tasks on my web servers.

The problem had to do with my mouse having the ability to wake up my pc.  The problem is outlined here.

Skype Freetalk Everyman Headset would not always work.

I bought the Skype Freetalk Everyman USB headset to use with Skype.  It works great—when it does work.  I had a problem where the PC would only identify the headset about 40% of the time.  The Freetalk website is absolutely rubbish and there are a lot of people out there (as I’ve seen in forum after forum) who can’t get this to work either.

I fixed this by installed an application called “Universal Link” which I downloaded from the InstoreShop Support pages.  This was incredibly difficult to find.  I don’t know why there is no way to find this from their home page.  I noticed that my product was called TALK-5115 on my invoice and searched on that.  I found a driver on this page.  It seems to work fine now.

 

I hope this helps someone.  I spent hours looking for solutions to these problems.  My laptops haven’t suffered any of them.  Now, my only concern is the fan kicks into high speed far too often for my liking . . .