There are changes in the qualification percentages for the PMP examination. Read the full text here
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Current Reads - Sydney
Read this on a flight from Sydney to Singapore. Picked it up at Dymocks, Sydney.
A visit to Dymocks is a must if you happen to be in Sydney.
A visit to Dymocks is a must if you happen to be in Sydney.
Saturday, October 29, 2005
Some more on flock
Thought I should add this. I havent been able to get the favourite and the collections onto my del.icio.us account. Every time I click the "STAR" button I still find the "Your favourites" in my del.icio.us account empty.
If you already "STARRED" any URL's then there is no way you can get them into your del.icio.us account.
Flock has landed
Guess what, I blogged this directly from Flock. The new browser based on the Mozilla engine. I waited eagerly for over a month to try out this browser. Here's some of the features I find interesting.
1. Tagging favorites - Unlike in Firefox, you can add tags to your favourites so you can search for that URL you visited 6 months ago by keywords. Works for me because I have a huge collection of URLs and classiying them is a pain in firefox
2. Integration with Delicious - If you are using Firefox you'll need the Foxylicious extension to integrate your bookmarks with your delicious account. Flock has this feature inbuilt
3. History Search - Flock has a built in serach engine (Clucene - Open Source). Type a word or a phrase in the search box a menu drops down lisiting the matching results from the browser history. When you press "Enter" a normal web serach is done.
4. Multiple favourites - You can add a collection of URL's and these appear on a "spinner" control at the right hand corner of the favourites tool bar. Clicking this lists the Collections and allows you to choose tanyone of them. A nice addition for people like me who work on several projects during the week each requiring me to refer to different sources on the web. Obviously the favourites toolbar cannot accomodate all the URL so this is definitely a welcome feature. Wonder why nobody thought of it before.
5. RSS Reader - Doesnt work as intended. I created a collection of several feeds (Gantthead.com, news.google.com, oreilly.com. Every time I clicked the feed button in the collections flock displayed the aggregated page of the first feed only.
Flock didnt recognise the feed on http://www.expressindia.com
6. Integrated bogging - This post is a result of that feature!
7. Blog this - Highlight a piece of text on a webpage, right click and blog this! Yes it works and is that simple
8. The "Shelf" is like the scrap book extension available for firefox. You can drag stuff from web pages and drop them into the shelf (cant do that with scrap book). You can drag these stired items into your bolg post (if your using the blogging feature of flock).
9. Wasnt able to test the flickr integration. Flock asks for the username. I am not sure how its going to login to my flickr account without the password!
Monday, August 22, 2005
Monday, August 15, 2005
Long time
Its been a month since I blogged. Whatever happened to good habits! Anyway I have done quite a few things - Became a member of PMI; At the helm of the project to obtain the BS7799 certification for my unit; a Data warehousing POC project; a software product development. That hardly leaves any time for other trivial pursuits like reading tompeters.com, emptying my mailbox on netscape.net, reading the PMI mailing list on Yahoo groups etc etc. I have hardly been doing any reading. But managed some time to go out to Geoffrey's at the Radha Park Inn!
Thursday, June 16, 2005
Friday, May 20, 2005
Why UML?
I have had some interesting questions from people from all walks of life, no just kidding, mainly from the software engineering community!
Why Should I use UML?
Well try writing a letter to somebody in English without using the English alphabet! Try replacing traffic signs with something else. Will it convey the intended meaning? Will you be able to capture what you intend to say in the first place? Every domain has a notation to capture and communicate people's intentions.
People use the English alphabet to construct words and phrases and convey their thoughts. Traffic signs on the other hand convey the signals (no pun intended) to motorists and pedestrians unambiguously. UML is the language to communicate the thoughts of a designer in OOAD. Such that other designers are able to decipher the design intentions without ambiguity. There is no substitute.
No amount of voluminous documentation can be a substitute for a well articulated UML diagram delivered in the petal file (.PTL / .MDL if you are using Rational Rose, Together J uses a different extension)
The advantages are enormous, for one componentisation and reusability is built in the design model so forward engineering it to any platform takes lesser time. That is you don't have to redo the initial phases of the project. Just continue from the design stage to the platform of your choice.
Two, You'll have a 360 degree view of your model rather than parts of it. However you can expose only certain portions of the design to your feature teams e.g. the data model can be exposed to the DBA.
Three, If you have hived off several portions of your application to different development locations (could also be teams, sub-contractors/vendors, countries) plumbing them together is rather simple.
Four, You can do away with all those voluminous design documents done on word processors. Saves a lot of time and hence money. They are ambiguous anyway because meaning of written words are prone to interpretation especially when things go wrong.
Five, Development is faster because programmers understand pictures better than the written word ( A picture is worth a hundred words! May not, may be its worth more than a thousand words or maybe its worth more than your entire design document!)
Your biggest advantage, your designs are unambiguous. Convey the same meaning to your entire development team no matter where they are located. Provided, they are literate in the unified modeling language!
While I write this, I have a great view of the fortune fountain, A stage is being erected for some sort of show right in the centre. Its dark but I can still people scampering with diagrams and blue prints (likely because something's being spread on the table and people are huddled over it) in their hands waving to each other while they erect the structures. Now just think how much would erecting a stage cost? A few thousand dollars? Does one have to go to such great lengths as to draw blue prints for a two hour show? Maybe, Maybe not. Now think about your next application that will cost you a few million dollars from inception to deployment. Which ideally should last a lifetime. Want to start building without a sound architecture?
Keep checking I'll be talking about how to get started on UML.
Why Should I use UML?
Well try writing a letter to somebody in English without using the English alphabet! Try replacing traffic signs with something else. Will it convey the intended meaning? Will you be able to capture what you intend to say in the first place? Every domain has a notation to capture and communicate people's intentions.
People use the English alphabet to construct words and phrases and convey their thoughts. Traffic signs on the other hand convey the signals (no pun intended) to motorists and pedestrians unambiguously. UML is the language to communicate the thoughts of a designer in OOAD. Such that other designers are able to decipher the design intentions without ambiguity. There is no substitute.
No amount of voluminous documentation can be a substitute for a well articulated UML diagram delivered in the petal file (.PTL / .MDL if you are using Rational Rose, Together J uses a different extension)
The advantages are enormous, for one componentisation and reusability is built in the design model so forward engineering it to any platform takes lesser time. That is you don't have to redo the initial phases of the project. Just continue from the design stage to the platform of your choice.
Two, You'll have a 360 degree view of your model rather than parts of it. However you can expose only certain portions of the design to your feature teams e.g. the data model can be exposed to the DBA.
Three, If you have hived off several portions of your application to different development locations (could also be teams, sub-contractors/vendors, countries) plumbing them together is rather simple.
Four, You can do away with all those voluminous design documents done on word processors. Saves a lot of time and hence money. They are ambiguous anyway because meaning of written words are prone to interpretation especially when things go wrong.
Five, Development is faster because programmers understand pictures better than the written word ( A picture is worth a hundred words! May not, may be its worth more than a thousand words or maybe its worth more than your entire design document!)
Your biggest advantage, your designs are unambiguous. Convey the same meaning to your entire development team no matter where they are located. Provided, they are literate in the unified modeling language!
While I write this, I have a great view of the fortune fountain, A stage is being erected for some sort of show right in the centre. Its dark but I can still people scampering with diagrams and blue prints (likely because something's being spread on the table and people are huddled over it) in their hands waving to each other while they erect the structures. Now just think how much would erecting a stage cost? A few thousand dollars? Does one have to go to such great lengths as to draw blue prints for a two hour show? Maybe, Maybe not. Now think about your next application that will cost you a few million dollars from inception to deployment. Which ideally should last a lifetime. Want to start building without a sound architecture?
Keep checking I'll be talking about how to get started on UML.
Monday, May 16, 2005
GTD Stuff I Picked Up
I picked up these cute stuff to help me GTD
1. Mitsuibishi Clipturn
2. Japanese colour paper
3. bookmark
4. Small Pad
5. Bodum press
6. Index Cards
1. Mitsuibishi Clipturn
2. Japanese colour paper
3. bookmark
4. Small Pad
5. Bodum press
6. Index Cards
Some Fiction!
Been reading some fiction. What else do you expect me to do while on the MRT.
With this I have read all the four novels of Dan Brown. Of them The Da Vinci Code is my favourite.
With this I have read all the four novels of Dan Brown. Of them The Da Vinci Code is my favourite.
Friday, May 06, 2005
My artefacts
I am planning to put all my presentations on my site www.sridhar.in. (just in case you landed on this page directly!). A lot of assorted stuff on XP, Rose and UML, presentations from speaking assignments a lot of other project artefacts. It would probably be in PDF mainly because the web hosting service provider charges me a bomb for a little bit of space.
Design Document
I am sure as project managers we have had to review the design documentation of the architecture team. I have had several such design documents handed over to me for perusal each with a different layout, content , format etc Making me wonder arent all these stuff supposed to contain the system architecture in detail then why this difference?
Did you review any design documents? What do you look for? What do you expect it to contain? Do you expect any other artefacts other than just a document. Let me know.
Did you review any design documents? What do you look for? What do you expect it to contain? Do you expect any other artefacts other than just a document. Let me know.
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
GTD Tools
Went to the kinokuniya book store on Orchard Road saw some interesting stuff that would help all GTD'ers! One was a 3-in-one pen/pencil by Mitsubishi - a black pen, a red pen and a 0.5 mechanical pencil. Something I always wanted for a very long time. Its not like the earlier ones where a single barrel contained several coloured refills. This also has a mechanial pencil - some innovation I guess. Costed me S$ 14.20. Also picked up some notes pages (green, yellow, pink) for my planner costed about S$ 3.5 for a packet of 111 pages.
There were some cute "clip on" reading lights. You can fix them on the book while reading. Great for travellers especially when you are asked to switch off overhead lights in aircraft and trains.
While on the subject I should mention the great collection of Cross, Pelican and Waterman fountain pens in Mustafa on Serangoon road.
There were some cute "clip on" reading lights. You can fix them on the book while reading. Great for travellers especially when you are asked to switch off overhead lights in aircraft and trains.
While on the subject I should mention the great collection of Cross, Pelican and Waterman fountain pens in Mustafa on Serangoon road.
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Project management Software : Open Workbench
Techrepublic's Newsletter had a link to Open Workbench, Don't have the time nor space (my laptop is running out of disk space!) to do an evaluation. Would be interested to hear from anybody interested to evaluate this and post their comments on this blog.
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Greetings from Singapore
I am in Singapore for a Project. Looking forward to meeting some interesting people.
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
Travelling
I am off to Wayanad in Kerala for a team building exercise with my collegues. Back the following Monday.
Monday, April 04, 2005
Work
Monday Morning, Forecast Fox on my browser indicates Rain for Chennai. Managed to meet the deadlines for my project artifacts. Been working through the last two weekends. But work as usual is interesting. Its been quite a while (years!) since I stuck to the 9-6 rigour. I work. I work on stuff that interests me. However found sometime to do a bit of shopping with my wife. Picked up a few music CD's (Carnatic Classical) and had dinner at Noodle House.
Saturday, April 02, 2005
April Fool
GMail is offering its users 2GB of space (up from 1GB). Thats a lot of room! Thought it was a poor joke on "All fools day". It wasnt.
Friday, March 18, 2005
Working with Requisite Pro
How do you mark requirements in Requisite Pro?
In the original use case template you will find the Section "1. Use case name". Replace this with the actual use case name that you propose to use e.g. Fetch user credentials. In the dialog that appears click "OK" don't give anything for the "name". The section would now look something like this [UCpending1Fetch user credentials]. Now save the document. The section would look like this [UC2Fetch user credentials]. Which means that your requirement is saved to the database. When you mark subsequent requirements in the same document specify the parent in the "Hierarchy" tab by choosing the use case name from the drop down. i.e. say you have a requirement "Fetch Financial authorisation limits" which is sub set of "Fetch user credentials" when you mark "Fetch Financial authorisation limits" as a requirement and specify that its a child of "Fetch user credentials" it would look like this [UC2.1Fetch Financial authorisation limits] this mechanism allows you to track requirements that have found their way to your code at a finer level of detail. i.e. Project progress tracking is finer because in MS Project (assuming you use it monitor your progress and you have trasfered the use cases to your schedule) if you have estimated a effort of 15 person days for [UC2Fetch user credentials] and assuming that you haven't specified hierarchy (no child requirements) then there would be a blip in your tracking GANTT chart (after 15 days) because until this requirement is finished fully (including unit testing) you would have to keep it pending, any attempt to indicate % completion would make your tracking GANTT highly subjective and suspect. So having child requirements allow you flag off ones that are complete (usually on a daily basis), the parent requirement would automatically show a progressive completion percentage.
In the original use case template you will find the Section "1. Use case name". Replace this with the actual use case name that you propose to use e.g. Fetch user credentials. In the dialog that appears click "OK" don't give anything for the "name". The section would now look something like this [UCpending1Fetch user credentials]. Now save the document. The section would look like this [UC2Fetch user credentials]. Which means that your requirement is saved to the database. When you mark subsequent requirements in the same document specify the parent in the "Hierarchy" tab by choosing the use case name from the drop down. i.e. say you have a requirement "Fetch Financial authorisation limits" which is sub set of "Fetch user credentials" when you mark "Fetch Financial authorisation limits" as a requirement and specify that its a child of "Fetch user credentials" it would look like this [UC2.1Fetch Financial authorisation limits] this mechanism allows you to track requirements that have found their way to your code at a finer level of detail. i.e. Project progress tracking is finer because in MS Project (assuming you use it monitor your progress and you have trasfered the use cases to your schedule) if you have estimated a effort of 15 person days for [UC2Fetch user credentials] and assuming that you haven't specified hierarchy (no child requirements) then there would be a blip in your tracking GANTT chart (after 15 days) because until this requirement is finished fully (including unit testing) you would have to keep it pending, any attempt to indicate % completion would make your tracking GANTT highly subjective and suspect. So having child requirements allow you flag off ones that are complete (usually on a daily basis), the parent requirement would automatically show a progressive completion percentage.
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Busy, Busy, Busy
I am busy with my projects. So posts will be sparse. However found sometime to buy two books
1. Bookless in Baghdad - Shashi Taroor
2. Temples of India - A Travel Journal
Slogging to complete the use cases for my project. Have a ton of business requirements to map. While I also get dragged to resolve some stuff of past assignments.
I have a new presence on the web. Currently the site gets redirected to this blog. But very soon I would have my own blogging software hosted. Suggesstions on what to use is most welcome.
1. Bookless in Baghdad - Shashi Taroor
2. Temples of India - A Travel Journal
Slogging to complete the use cases for my project. Have a ton of business requirements to map. While I also get dragged to resolve some stuff of past assignments.
Saturday, February 26, 2005
Thursday, February 17, 2005
Oracle Technology Day
Was at the Oracle Technology Day at the Park Sheraton. Lot of informative sessions on two tracks . After the keynote on Grid computing I decided to attend the first track that included sessions on Business Integration, Business intelligence and then switch to track 2 to attend the sessions on RFID. The speakers did a thorough job to demystify the jargon surrounding 10g. Dont miss it when it comes to your city.
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Friday, February 04, 2005
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Requirements Management
Worked on RequisitePro to do some requirement modelling. Its been quite sometime since I worked on it. I found that the user interface has changed for the better. The explorer like bar on the left displays all that you have created, in a tree structure, at a glance you can find the meaning of a specific term, view the use case or for that matter any requirement type, locate the occurrences of this in the document, view traceability, integrate with Rose to continue with your modelling and a lot more. This indirectly also promotes re-usability
Reading Lists
At my early morning ritual of reading my mails and TP's posts. TP's recommended two books that he's read on a flight from Houston to Bangkok. Noted it down in my planner only to figure out that I have plenty of reading lists that seem to grow with each passing day. Here they are
1. Books to read in my library (Non Fiction) - 38 entries
2. Books to read in my library (Fiction) - 11 entries
3. Management - 35 entries
4. Unanamed list! - 35 entries
5. Another Unanamed list!! - 9 entries
6. TP's recommendations - 38 entries
7. TP's collection - 11 entries
8. Peter drucker collection - 1 entry
9. Personal Finance - 9 entries
10. Edward De Bono Collection - no entries !!
11. India Collection - 21 entries
12. The Hindu (newspaper) list - 51 entries
13. Forbes List - 4 entries
14. Boigraphies - 6 entries
15. Sigmund Freud collection - no entries
16. Yet another unnamed list!!! - 52 entries
17. Technical Books - 39 entries
18. Dan Brown's To Ten - 12 entries
19. William Dalrymple list - 2 entries
20 Books to Buy - 16 entries
21. Antiques and Heritage - 15 entries
Phew!
1. Books to read in my library (Non Fiction) - 38 entries
2. Books to read in my library (Fiction) - 11 entries
3. Management - 35 entries
4. Unanamed list! - 35 entries
5. Another Unanamed list!! - 9 entries
6. TP's recommendations - 38 entries
7. TP's collection - 11 entries
8. Peter drucker collection - 1 entry
9. Personal Finance - 9 entries
10. Edward De Bono Collection - no entries !!
11. India Collection - 21 entries
12. The Hindu (newspaper) list - 51 entries
13. Forbes List - 4 entries
14. Boigraphies - 6 entries
15. Sigmund Freud collection - no entries
16. Yet another unnamed list!!! - 52 entries
17. Technical Books - 39 entries
18. Dan Brown's To Ten - 12 entries
19. William Dalrymple list - 2 entries
20 Books to Buy - 16 entries
21. Antiques and Heritage - 15 entries
Phew!
Friday, January 28, 2005
Contact management
Hey all you project managers out there. How do you manage your contact information? I am in a kind of a mess. Have about half a dozen places where I store contact info of the people I meet - client, acquaintances in seminars, on a flight...I have a rolodex, a visiting card box, the addressbook in Thunderbird (my mail client), Yahoo mail address book, Netscape Web mail address book, 2 addressbooks - the one you write on with a pen, a Casio digital diary, my cell phone. tried sync'n them today into LinkedIn got into a big mess. Any ideas? leave a note.
Current Projects
Currently involved in 3 professional and 1 acdemic project. Of the 3 prof. projects one of them is humungous. Has about 8 different roll-outs in as many countries. Multi lingual. Started tracking these using GTD. Looking forward to a lot of travel and some interesting project management lessons.
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
FireFox 1.0
Been using FireFox for sometime now. Stopped using Netscape 7.2, though I felt bitter doing this I guess that its going to reach "End of Life" sometime soon and so I switched loyalities.
I liked the bookmark manager in FireFox. Its a breeze importing your collection from other browsers. I sync'd three different bookmark files, each having about a 100 or so bookmarks, in a matter of a few seconds.
The search engine box is another cool feature. You can add more than 100 or so search engines. I managed to add about a dozen of the most popular ones - Google, Yahoo, Amazon, CDDB, Creative Commons, Dictionary, Ebay, Google Suggest, Ask Jeeves, Webster, Wikipedia.
You can add a google bar and a host of other extensions like "Blog This", "Wikipedia", "Flash Got", "Quick Note" etc. etc..limited only by your imagination
The search engine box is another cool feature. You can add more than 100 or so search engines. I managed to add about a dozen of the most popular ones - Google, Yahoo, Amazon, CDDB, Creative Commons, Dictionary, Ebay, Google Suggest, Ask Jeeves, Webster, Wikipedia.
You can add a google bar and a host of other extensions like "Blog This", "Wikipedia", "Flash Got", "Quick Note" etc. etc..limited only by your imagination
Monday, January 17, 2005
More UML
When I blogged the other day about the reason for confusion the two students had with UML was because of not having followed a formal process of collecting and analysing requirements. I was right.
It was on Friday evening when I met them at my office. They showed me their use cases, sequence diagrams drawn using MS Word! and a lot of other documents. The use cases were lengthy and often didn't make sense and included system design and ran into several pages. Some of the actors in the document had a limb missing (handicapped!) . Growing tired of it I finally gave these two a crasch course in OOAD and UML in 60 minutes and asked them to come back with the use cases.
Its a pity why people have a notion that UML is complex. Infact its probably one notation that provides syntax to capture most modelling decisions. Its also a wrong notion to expect UML or any of the tools that support UML like IBM Rational Rose or Together J to solve your modelling problems. Just like brush and paint do not create a picture; Rose and UML can't create a model. The artist or modeller should supply the thought. Hope you get the picture! Maybe someday I'll post a few steps on how to model software systems.
It was on Friday evening when I met them at my office. They showed me their use cases, sequence diagrams drawn using MS Word! and a lot of other documents. The use cases were lengthy and often didn't make sense and included system design and ran into several pages. Some of the actors in the document had a limb missing (handicapped!) . Growing tired of it I finally gave these two a crasch course in OOAD and UML in 60 minutes and asked them to come back with the use cases.
Its a pity why people have a notion that UML is complex. Infact its probably one notation that provides syntax to capture most modelling decisions. Its also a wrong notion to expect UML or any of the tools that support UML like IBM Rational Rose or Together J to solve your modelling problems. Just like brush and paint do not create a picture; Rose and UML can't create a model. The artist or modeller should supply the thought. Hope you get the picture! Maybe someday I'll post a few steps on how to model software systems.
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Unified Modelling Language
Yesterday I was surprised to receive a mail from a student of engineering asking if I could help clarify some doubts, that she had, about the UML. Well Yes I obliged. She had about 6 questions of which two of them caught my attention.
* From the sequence diagram(drawn to a underlying software but not the GUI) how to synthesis .h &.c files for a frame work?
* Can i have a sequence diagram without a actor?if i can how to represent a external event generating the request?
I couldnt understand the 1st question, but was pretty sure that this dame was using OOAD and UML to design something that was to be implemented in the "C" language. The mention of .h and .c files indicated this. She also went on to explain that she had trouble in maintaing state chart diagrams. What else can you expect when you use OOAD for a non object oriented language like "C"?
Now on to the second question. Well its not possible to have a sequence diagram without an actor but by asking this question she just showed that the procedure of gathering requirements, analysing and decomposing was not followed. Pity that this project is part of her curriculum.
Saturday, January 01, 2005
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