Ahsen's Blog

How to be Happy?

2008-01-28T22:45:00.000-05:00

What makes us happy? money? fame? Why is it despite all the wealth USA is # 23 on the happiness list? Why so many famous people kill them selves? Why it is that a poor villager in the 3rd world can be more happy than say a silicon valley millionaire who spends every moment worrying about making the next million?

Happiness comes from inside, but we are schooled to look and compare to others. Very few individuals are lucky enough not to have the spirit of individualism beaten out of them, those are the ones who attain happiness.

A part of the reason we get sad is because we try to rush through life. The reason we rush is either we think we need to accomplish a lot of things, or we got ourselves involved in far too many things. A step in the right direction in the journey of happiness is to exterminate rush in life, by doing less things and doing them slowly.

On the lines of doing less, my list is simply short :-)

1) Know exactly what you want to do/be in life. Do not worry about what others think/want/do, be brave and creative.
2) At every moment of your life do the most important task (to reach your goals in life.)
3) Never take attention away from the task at hand (i.e. do one thing at-a-time.)
4) Exterminate rush, keep things simple, under-promise and over-deliver.

Agile Sessions

2007-08-17T00:27:00.001-04:00

In the last few days I attended the following talks/tutorials/discussions:

Jim York & Tobias Mayer: "The Power of Improvisation on Agile Teams"

Mike Cohn: "Effective User Stories for Agile Requirements"

Jeff Sutherland: "The Agile Enterprise: Real World Experience in Creating Agile Companies" [img]

Jim Highsmith: "Adaptive Performance Management for Agile Enterprises" [img]

Ken Schwaber: "The Enterprise and Scrum" [img]

Jean Tabaka: "Agile Enterprise Rollout: The Greening of the Software Industry"

Alan Shalloway: "The Business Case for Agility: The Lean-Agile Connection"

ratings:• great, • okay, • ugh

Agile 2007

2007-08-13T18:29:00.000-04:00

I am volunteering at the Agile 2007 conference in Washington D.C. This year the Agile Conference is about "Making Connections, Building Relationships."

Today I talked with Software Developers/Managers/Agilists from many different places including Houston-Texas, Portland-Oregon, Bangalore-India & Iceland.

Being the first day, more than half of it was without any session and I spent it talking, walking and sometime just waiting.

Scrum Evolution: Type A, B, and C Sprints

2007-07-31T01:12:00.000-04:00

I got interested in Sprint Types after reading Jeff Sutherland’s article. I wanted to implement Type B Sprint, and started to research by asking this on the Yahoo ScrumDevelopment group:

Does anyone know how many companies have successfully transitioned from Type A to Type B Sprint? or even Type C?

A week & 30+ replies later, this generated lots of discussions for & against Sprint Types, it seems to me there is a lot of confusion in the Scrum community regarding this topic. Later I realized that this is an old debate, and a year ago it was discussed that the Type B Sprint is what everyone knows / teaches as just “Sprint.”

I am sorry for rekindling this old debate, and hopefully Ken’s response will help in calming it down:

There is only one Scrum... There are many ways to fill in its blanks to optimize productivity and ROI, but those vary with each situation. I may implement Scrum differently if …but it is all Scrum.

Whoever is interested in finding more about this topic should first read the book “The Enterprise and Scrum,” I just started to.

Agile Transformations Patterns / Guidelines

2007-05-04T23:03:00.000-04:00

What are Agile Transformation Patterns / Guidelines, for transforming an organization into Agile? At the last Agile Philly gathering, this was the topic of discussion.

After an hour and half long, thought-provoking and engrossing discussion, we came up with the following Patterns / Guidelines:

1. Set upfront (Business) goals.

2. Communicate the goals, processes & tools to stakeholders.

3. Have passionate / excited people on project.

4. Have an Agile (Executive) champion.

5. Advertise the point of success.

6. Have a process to align Developer and Customer Goals.

7. Support personal growth of team members.

8. Recognize context, use shared language, e.g. "Velocity" can be easily misunderstood.

9. Maximize the use of Agile, while fulfilling the client's needs. e.g. in addition to burn-down charts, provide the client Gantt charts, if requested.

Adapting Holacracy (step 02)

2007-02-02T18:45:00.000-05:00

Today I introduced Holacracy to the Assistant Vice President of IT department at my company. He was excited to listen to what I had to say, and he is planning to implement the integrated decision making process in his meetings!

I will post the feedback later.

Adapting Holacracy (step 01)

2007-01-30T18:13:00.000-05:00

I took the first step in introducing Holacracy to my team-mates and project manager. I started with the 'Integrative Decision making process' [from here.] I am planning to organize the first meeting in coming days and I will post back the reactions and feedback. Hopefully one day the whole organization will see the benefits and adapt to Holacracy (or atleast the decision making process.)

Hol-lot-of-crazy about Holacracy

2007-01-29T00:35:00.000-05:00

I have never seen a meeting flow so smoothly as exhibited by some of the employees from Ternary Software, practicing revolutionary (evolutionary?) new methodology (or practice as they like to call it,) Holacracy.

I came across Holacracy while searching for an interesting topic for my graduate MSSE course at Drexel. I was looking for something relating to Agile Requirements techniques. I am still in the very initial phases of reading up the background material like 'The Ghost in the Machine' by Arthur Koestler and soon I will get to “Requisite organization” by Elliott Jaques.

Even though I might not be able to convince/convert many people at my organization, very quickly, I have to say I am extremely excited about Holacracy. I had the good fortune of attending their presentation in New York City yesterday.

It’s very difficult to explain the whole mantra of Holacracy here, to see that it really rocks, you have to actually experience it, hence a 'practice'. My biggest take-away from the presentation:

• Compared to the time it takes to come up with an agreeable decision in today's organizations, Holacracy provides a boost that will make you feel as if you are traveling at warp speed.
• It de-mystifies the confusions surrounding accountability of roles, when people may get offended and the hurt as a result of some miscommunication. Holacracy points out the root causes of these problems that are linked with ego. It does not suppress the ego, but provides elegant mechanisms to make amendments in the organization's laws/rules, such that confusions like these do not occur again.
• It has built-in methods for everyone in the organization to feel part of the ‘whole.’ It gives everyone authority, to a certain extent, to make amendments in company rules and regulations, within their turf. This gives everyone a platform for their voices to be heard.

I am extremely excited about Holacracy and I think it will help organizations be a great success. As of now I have a very limited knowledge of Holacracy, but it feels to me that Holacracy might have some trouble converting many people because of extra pressure / demand. Most of the employees do not either care or are not capable of or may even not be comfortable with being in-charge of making extra decisions, which might effect how the company performs. Authority and accountability go hand and hand. Even though people would enjoy having more authority; they might not be very excited about the extra accountability part.

I wish I am wrong about this last aspect, and as I experience it more I will see differently, and if its a problem I am sure the talented people who created Holacracy will find a solution.

DIY project # 1– Desktop Computer

2007-01-28T00:17:00.000-05:00

I recently finished building my first computer, which I am using to write this entry. I am happy that I can actually follow instructions to put together delicate electronics :p

I followed instructions from this great article. I choose these:

CPU Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 Conroe 1.86GHz
Motherboard Intel D946GZISSL Micro ATX Intel
RAM CORSAIR 1GB DDR2 SDRAM
Casing Antec-Quiet Enclosure Steel Mini Tower Case&
Hard drive Seagate Barracuda 80GB
DVD Player SAMSUNG 18X DVD±R DVD Burner With 12X
Monitor Hanns•G HW-191DPB Black 19" 5ms DVI Wide screen LCD

OS Windows XP & Ubuntu with shared data partition

my work area

It took me 8-10 hours to put every thing together, I would have been done in 4 if I did not fail to connect the 2nd power cable on the mother board :|

I learned a valuable lesson: always read all the manuals before installing hardware! You can follow the manual for motherboard installation that comes with the mini-tower case, but be careful to read also the same that comes with the motherboard (how stupid of me not to!)

next potential DIY projects:

* Laptop picture frame
* Melting Coke bottle caps into something useful

come back to see the results of my next DIY project :)

chai and war

2006-06-19T01:49:00.000-04:00

I am really thankful to Hijabman for making this tee shirt. Not only because I love the witty message against war(s.) But now whenever I need to ask my wife for chai, all I have to do is point at the first line on my shirt :)

Investigating MDA part II

2005-11-08T11:13:00.000-05:00

In my opinion MDA has some real challenges, before it can gain widespread success.

The biggest problem I have is a philosophical one: MDA proposes that you can solve possibly any software engineering problem by starting from a high-level PIM (Platform Independent Model), and using complex transformations generate lower-level, and more detailed PSMs (Platform Specific Models), and eventually the running code.

Being a Java Developer I should be ashamed to agree with Jack Greenfield :) On a recent panel discussion (hosted here) he defended Microsoft's Software Factories vs. MDA. His biggest problem is similar to mine, "in the real world, we do not always know enough of a domain to model it effectively."

The other big problem: tons of PSMs will be required to be created and maintained. Every other month we see a new framework, or a new patch or an upgrade to the already abundant tools that we have out there. Who is going to take the responsibility of first of all creating all those PSMs and then maintaining them? The continuous requirement to update the models and the enormity of the effort itself might be a killer.

I am not saying it outright that MDA cannot be successfully at all. MDA can be a success, but under very strict situations: when the domain is very well known, and the correct PSMs exits. But as far as being an overwhelming success, I am sorry to acknowledge that it will most probably not happen, at least not in the near future.

Investigating MDA

2005-10-22T07:41:00.000-04:00

I am investigating Model Driven Architecture, will it succeed? Or have the same fate as the CASE tools from the '80s? I got to exposed to MDA a year back when I downloaded OptimalJ from Compuware. At that time I was impressed. Now I am investigating if it's the 'real thing' as I work on a paper for my Drexel class.

In the coming days I will write again, hopefully I will have a more educated opinion by then.