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.
Thursday, April 28, 2005
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.
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