Team & communications

Sawyer (2004) said that there exist 3 archetypes of software development teams:

Describing organization

People: The most important factor. “take away the people and organizations are nothing” (Weber, 1949)

Use metaphor to make sense of organization

·         Metaphor is one way of interpreting and making the complexity of everyday situations comprehensible

·         A metaphor lends a particular view or insight into a situation, one that ‘frames our understanding’ (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980) of what is going on.

Gareth Morgan (1986) offers eight images of organizations for interpreting and diagnosing conditions and situations: Mechanistic, organisms, brains, cultures, political systems, psychic prisons, as flux and transformation, dominating instruments.

How I applied lessons from class in term paper

MSD class has introduced many concepts and theories, practices and tools. However, it would be of little value if we do not apply, or at least try to apply them. Follows are some practices and knowledge that I did apply in my term paper.

Summarization of useful practices and tools from MSD class - Part II

Part I discussed some tools facilitating interaction and communication between team. To continue the first part, in this part, I will discuss tools and practices regarding project & team management and requirement & innovation.

Summarization of useful practices and tools from MSD class - Part I

At the end of the course, it would be helpful for me to think of all the practices I have done in the classes, all the tools I have applied and among them, what will I use and how will I use in future. Actually, there are quite a lot of activities in MSD class, which makes the subject so special – to the degree that I describe in the previous post: The way MSD class operates did create a culture.

Activities that I mentioned are various, ranging from small to big, simple to complex: group work on NATO paper in the first week, building base race in second week, the application of IDEO cards in the third week. Some other notable activities are standup meeting to introduce term project’s idea, planning poker and user story used in “cool software” scenario. To demonstrate how to evaluate objectively, we did Kongregate game case. One interesting activity is “smelly design” in which we sketched a digital nose on paper and by Balsamiq. It did give us a sense of interface design, an important step to conduct our term paper. We also did Spaghetti cantilever and have funny time together to see the way team operate. In this activity, we also sketched “design activity graph” to capture the design thinking of the team.  Some lessons regarding the scope of a project and the relation between number of iterations and the success of the projects are enlightened in “Battleship” game case.

Voyage in the MSD Memeplex or a perspective of the way MSD class operates

Unlike other posts which discuss various points and perspectives regarding concepts, theories and practices in systems development management, this post is dedicated to express my feeling of the “culture” of our class – Or in simple word, the way our class runs.

Writing blog for all subjects in iBusiness programme to relate them and use one subject to facilitate others

Since the very first days, Professor Allen has encouraged us to write blog. “Write it as a personal study log”, he reasoned. However, I did not see much of the value of writing blog at that time.

 

As Steve Jobs once coined: “You can't connect the dots looking forward you can only connect them looking backwards”, only now I understand the value of all my posts. Writing post, firstly, give me chance to reflex on the material that I read. This is quite straight. But the value of writing blogs lies on the ability to relate different posts, probably in the same subjects, or even in other subjects. 

Compatibility & Revenue - From my expericence, the soul of new machine and Shy (2001)

The regular discussion of various points in technology and management is one of the reason I enjoyed working at Citigo Vietnam. My project leader was so prominent in software industry with deep knowledge in the field. He gave me a lot of lessons in different matters: team management, career orientation, entrepreneurship, successful high tech product. Interestingly, some of our banters could only be enlightened now in the MSD class.

Big ball of mud and "Nine women can't make a baby in one month"

The paper “Big ball of mud” (Brian Foote, 1999) reminds me of the time of working crazily, working late and sometimes overnight to clear a big ball of mud created by other team. It happened when I worked as an software engineer in Vietnam.

Scope of the project - Its importance and relation to lessons from Battleship game

Understanding 4 main control factors in project management are of vital importance. This is the lesson I learned when doing the term paper.

When we decided to focus only on the “Recipe” function of the Tesco Mobile App, sometimes we were confused: Is it too little to show off? However, after considering the scope of this exercise, and mostly, after evaluation of pros and cons of doing other improvements, we were totally confident to conclude that: Implementing other functions such as (in-house map and direction, voice recognition etc.) are over-scoped. We strongly feel that connecting “Recipe” tab to online shopping function is vital, as confirmed by users in our survey and narration session. 

Royce's 5 remedies for the riskiness of software development and its application to my term paper

(Royce, 1987) is one of my favorite papers which describe 5 additional practices to add to traditional SDLC to address its riskiness and increase the chance of success. In this post I will summarize key point of the paper and described how I applied it on defining the development process for implementation of new “Recipe” function of Tesco mobile app on my term paper. 

Systems development life cycle (SDLC)

This technical post is to summarize and reflex on SDLC

Online Payment Marketplace

1. Introduction

Online payment method has profound influence on our daily life. Whether you are a buyer or a seller, and no matter how big or small you business is, you can benefit from it. Online payment method offers many advantages to users; as a result, more and more users are using it. As the market becomes increasingly lucrative, more and more players are joining the game to compete for huge potential revenues, which creates “goat rodeo” situation. Nearly everyday, a new online/mobile payment system is announced. 

Augmented Reality

1.Introduction of AR-Augmented Reality

Augmented reality seems like something straight out of a science fiction futuristic movie. But the truth is: it is here today. It is easily accessible to anyone with a smart phone. Just a few years ago, the phenomenon could seemed impossible to a common man. But with the rapid development of mobile technology, this new power really change our lives. It could just be the next step in a way we collect information, helping the user understand his/her environment better. AR can be described as the computer-generated modification of a real-world environment in real time. This is usually done through a camera and software algorithm.

Term paper - Tesco Mobile App - MSD Class

The semester is almost over. It's time to reflex on what I have learnt throughout the course...But now let's see my research result.

Is U.S. Economic Growth Over?

(Gordon 2012) made a study analyzing US's economy since 1300s in the light of industrial revolutions. He made some insights, but the fact that he over-focused on the implications of industrial revolution and took other critical factors such as political adjustment and foreign investment for granted, poses some concern about the biased-ness of his view. Following is some points from the paper.

More perspectives & research approaches is always better?

(Orlikowski and Baroudi 1991) is an article that attempts a different approach at looking at the way technology, people & organizations. This article makes the argument that in terms of MIS system research there is an epidemic of conformity among the journals. There is a lack of a multiple paradigm outlook that should be taken. Authors provide no detail about the range and topics of the 155 research articles studied and this makes it difficult for us to resolve and understand the use of different philosophies. Although this paper refers to IS research articles in the late 1980s and the desire is to have successful implementation of IS, after thirty years later the rate of Information system failure is still higher.

The importance of case study research?

There are a numbers of definitions of case study; however, some of them are wrong or misleading. I myself find that this definition of case study is neutral: The case study is a research strategy that focuses on understanding the dynamics present within single settings. Although case studies are widely used, case study is hardly held as a methodology. Indeed, the research method is poorly understood (Flyvbjerg 2011). The author lists 5 misunderstandings about case study.

Do you pursuit happiness?

(Stearns 2012) takes us to a journey to see the view towards happiness from 18 century? Is happiness a thing desired and pursued by everyone? Not always. View towards happiness are different from person to person. For example, from US and Russian. A modern Russian adage holds that "a person who smiles a lot is either a fool or an American", which illustrates the discrepancy. More interesting, attitude towards happiness don’t just vary (US vs Rusia); they change.

The expert in anything was once a beginner or A thought on Levy2006

(Levy and Ellis 2006) is one of the most useful paper I've read. It is more easily to read if compared with Skill for business inquiry's readings of previous weeks. There are not many complex sentences and jargons in this paper. However, it's hard to give critical thinking for this paper due to the fact that it is not to argue about a specific case but like a synthesis of researches on literature. 

Extreme programming compared with Microsoft-style iterative development - How to describe a vague term (2)

The second paper of week 9’s reading is a comparison of extreme programming with Microsoft-style Iterative Development. Similar to the first paper about “agililty” (Kruchten 2007), the second paper tries to brings some insight of a somewhat vague term “extreme programming”. Rather than giving a definition, (Cusumano 2007) uses another approach: To compare it with a more concrete technique called Microsoft-style Iterative Development.

Voyage in the Agile Memeplex - How to describe a vague term

Week 9’s topic is about agile programming and extreme programming. Normally, when reading about something, the first question to considered is “what” question. What is “agile” or “agility”? What is “extreme programming”? These questions are fair, and hopefully, if there is an obvious answer, reading the paper will become easier. However, it does not happen in every case.

What happen when a software product released successfully? (IONA case 2)

Well, people often think of software development life cycle i.e the process from gathering requirement to test and release and maintenance. Very rare that people think of what will happen when a software product release successfully. Of course, there will continue bigger sale of the software, and a lot of work relating to customer support and services will be born. But will these things last forever? No way! But then, there comes bigger question - when will the successful period end? How can a manager foresee the change? What should he do to overcome and achieve continuing success?

The Art of Asking WHY in Marketing Research: Three Principles Underlying the Formulation of Questionnaires

(Lazarsfeld, 1935) discusses an interesting topic: How to ask why in marketing research. It is surprising that marketing research was point of interest and was deeply researched into back in 1935.  The author terms three important factor in marketing research: The principle of specification, the principle of division and the principle of tacit assumption.

The soul of a new machine

When I posted a status saying that I am gonna read the book, my boss – the CEO of Kloon, my company I worked before going to Ireland, commented – “Now that I  feel old because you’re reading a book I read 25 years ago”. His comments triggers great deal of curiosity – The book that my former boss read must be something special. The guy was very nice and brilliant, and now he is a CEO of a software company, so reading a book he read 25 years ago is somewhat interesting.

Avalanche case

This is a story of an avalanche (Buxton, 2007) that demonstrates the inextricable relationship between design methodology and social context.

The Activity Checklist: A Tool for Representing the “Space” of Context

In HCI, people are more and more aware of the importance of understanding the context in which computer-supported activities take place. There are several approaches to achieve this goal: task analysis (Dix et al., 1997), participatory design (Bødker et al., 1988), contextual design (Holtzblatt and Beyer, 1993). They are for the most part “bottom-up” one.

The author suggested that “bottom-up” – or empirically driven strategy – can be complimented with a “top-down” one. They presented a broad theoretical framework: Activity Theory (Leont'ev, 1978) and a tool called Activity Checklist which reifies the theory. The tool is not the only attempt to deal with context in the field of HCI, but can be applied to broader field. 

My experience with SCRUM and 9 engineering practices

This week, I read 3 papers:

1) No Silver Bullet Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering (Brooks Jr., 1987)

2) The chaos model and the chaos cycle (Raccoon, 1995)

3) Scrum + Engineering Practices: Experiences of Three Microsoft Teams (Williams et al., 2011)

I personally like the third one a lot, since it’s related to my experience of working as a software engineer. In the past, I did apply Scrum methodology and engineering practices in my projects, so I would like to share my experience about it.