The Retrospector

In the corporate world, there is a very heavy weight put on successful delivery. Companies usually understand that some things have learning curves, but where do you draw the line on testing out new technologies before you actually stop and deliver something?

Are you known as the guy that knows about a lot of things but never delivers on time? Can you relate to someone that always delivers on time but ends up using the same outdated approach over and over again? Maybe you’re somewhere in the middle, but how do you know when to balance learning with delivery?

I’ll define some considerations you need to take, factors that should effect your decision, and give some tips on how to apply what’s known to deciding which approach you should take to still be successful.

Things to consider

• Time – How much time do you have? Are your customers patient? Is there a high visibility on whether or not you can deliver quickly?
• Risk – Do you already have success with similar projects? How much experience does your team have in completing like tasks? Do already know how to implement all requirements requested?
• Resources – Do you have enough help to get everything done? Are you in a volatile environment where people aren’t able to dedicate themselves long enough to be effective? Is everyone involved able to focus on just your project without worrying about other commitments?

All of these items should be weighed in when deciding on a project plan. If you know there’s a very low risk in being able to deliver on time, it’s likely a good opportunity to begin trying new things or experimenting with new technologies that can be applied to some of the components.

If the risk is medium or high that you might not meet the expected delivery, using what you know will work should take precedence over experimenting with frameworks or widgets you’re unsure of.

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The last couple days I’ve been experiencing some pretty heavy comment spam on my site. Two things come to mind when I see this.

1. If spammers are seeing my site, then so are readers! My site must be reaching a popularity threshold that merits spammers to want to fill my site with their links! Yay!
2. Oh great, now I’m getting 50+ comments a day in my posts all about things I don’t even want to mention let alone have all over my comments list. It’s going to take me forever to monitor that every day.

So, there’s a good side and a bad side to comment spam as I see it. Mostly bad as far as having to deal with it, but at least it’s telling me something about my blog.

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Another project has surfaced at Problogger.net this week. Darren challenges everyone to come up with their blogging goals and post about them for all to see. I enjoyed participating in the last project (Habits of Effective Blogging) and look forward to the results of this project as well.

Keeping goals dynamic

Blogging goals for me may not be as aspiring as the many others that read Problogger. Perhaps it’s because I have no trouble changing my goals over time as circumstances change. The following are my current goals, but over time if opportunities present themselves I wouldn’t be afraid to modify them into more aggressive goals.

These are very realistic to me for now as I’m currently a very busy with my family and career. Being realistic is one of the most important parts about setting goals with blogging. Those setting goals without a sense of reality are more likely to give up. Sure, I’d like to be a six-figure blogger…but a more realistic (perhaps short-term is a better word) goal is to just not lose money.

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In today’s competitive software development world, companies are experimenting with many scenarios to reduce the cost of their software. Some companies prefer to develop everything in-house. Others prefer to outsource everything. With both options being rather expensive as professionals aren’t exactly the most affordable, some companies are considering outsourcing to companies abroad.

Offshore outsourcing has been proven to succeed for some companies, but it isn’t the alternative choice for everyone. One alternative with many similarities is to use college students as a workforce for the same elements you would consider off-shoring. I’m sure there are some companies that have found the off-shoring business model suits them perfectly. I say “good for them” if they got it to work out the way they wanted.

I have to admit that I’ve only been involved with one major project that involved an offshore development team and the entire experience was horrible. I can’t say much for how it works now (a few years later), but I imagine things have probably gotten better. What I am interested in pointing out is an environment I’ve seen work very successfully with many similarities.

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