The answer is yes if you work for a large corporation. There is no way to release enterprise software quickly in the IT world. Everyone on the streets would like to speed, but you’re governed by speed limits enforced by the police. The same goes for software. You *could* release the software quickly but you’d have to break the rules governed by your Chief Technology Office. As much as I support XP and scrum-style methods, we must leave it to the small business world.

My first crack at doing a video review.

I’ve recently joined LinkedIn (for those who care, here is my public profile). I’ve noticed an influx of “wanna-be” project managers. I mean those folks who claim to manage projects because they coordinated events, or communicated a newsletter to several teams. That is not project management. Project managers live within the bounds of scope, time, and cost. They care about the deliverable. Project Managers seal the deal with a PMP certification from PMI.

That is all.

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(ugly ass splash screen that is SO1999)

I thought Sharepoint was a headache. Welcome to Lotus Notes. If you do a google search you will see how many thousands of people think it is poorly designed software. Not only is it extremely slow, but it also defies conventional Windows UI design. As if Window’s UI wasn’t bad enough, Lotus Notes merely adds on to the problem. Search is unusable, formatting documents is difficult, and its scripting language for automation is archaic. I never realized how good Outlook is when it comes to corporate e-mail.

When I want to take a leak at the office, I’d like to do it in peace. I don’t want to talk about scope, code complexity, whether or not Jimmy is getting fired. So when nature is calling, please take a moment of silence. We can go back to all things software related in 30 seconds or less. That is all.

With more and more technology companies outsourcing development overseas, many complain about the job market here. I tend to disagree. Then again, I’m the type of guy who likes to exit through the entrance.

When your company offshores its development, new leadership opportunities come your way. This is a totally different skill set from your innate technical background. No longer will you be developing, you may be managing and assuring the quality of development being done off shore. These are great skills to have.

You may argue that you are a true coder at heart. No worries my friends’ outsourcing means there needs to be some in-house knowledge of the product your company delivers. They will need a technical guy who understands the architecture, because lets face it, developer retention is a big problem.

I’d like to hear thoughts from the developer community. Feel free to leave a comment.

When deciding which platform to select in an IT strategy there are always two things to consider:

Time and money.

As a developer interoperability, efficiency, and complexity are the types of challenges we are proud of tackling, but in the grand scheme of things, scope is measured by the above two points. After all, its the business you are trying to satisfy at the end of the day right?

This brings me to discuss one of the holiest wars technology has ever faced - Microsoft vs. Sun, Good vs. Evil, .NET vs. J2EE.

I come from a Java background. Java is touted as the be all-end all of all things to come. I truly believe it is, given a long project time line with no budget. What I have against J2EE is configuration. Deploying an enterprise archive is a nightmare. Once you’ve got your application in production, kudos to you, but the time it took to develop and deploy the application all of a sudden outweighed budget and cost. Can you honestly tell me your application is supported long enough to justify the development cost a-la Pareto? Chances are most applications don’t fall under this category, unless it is truly an organization wide enterprise application (setting it up to become legacy software as technology moves too rapidly).

This is where .NET comes in. It’s quick and dirty (hacks galore). It’s expensive. You’re locked into Microsoft’s products, and interoperability is only made possible by XML. So what? Applications can be developed and deployed easily because .NET works out of the box. There is little configuration. Your application meets budget, and after a few years the application is decommissioned and off you go writing another application. This is the vicious cycle that developers cannot deny.

So you choose your destiny. Butter or guns? .NET or J2EE?

Give me a real shell.