I'm not talking about the kind you get in college, but rather implementing progress reports on the Job for developers. My thoughts in organizing a development team is encouraging and, to some extend, requiring regular progress updates were developers would report on what they did in the last hour or few hours and how long tasks took. Be...
It is a good idea to give feedback to a software development team. What are you most dissatisfied/annoyed with in your development team? The topic could be anything. For example: roles attitudes the design the architecture the technology the personality of the other programmers the customers the office environment etc. Do you thin...
Hi, I have a desktop Human Resource (HR) application developed in WPF(C#|.NET 3.5) that does some employee management work for the HR,I need to implement user groups based security,meaning that I need to manage users who can access the system(username /password) and also give them CRUD Right and Screen Rights.Is that any basic framework ...
How to deal with the developers refusing to use certain technologies or tools? Note: Good help is hard to find, so answer 'Let them go' doesn't work in this case. Besides, they are very good in what they do, just don't want to do what they don't want to do. Examples: "Get away from me with this Crystal Reports stuff or you will never ...
I would like your opinion (through experience) of implementing stricter processes in the aim of improving quality of shipping software. Assume a fairly large software with lots of processes(89) and databases and messaging, IPC, sockets, web servers and the full works (enterprisy made in Java). Some parts are fairly messy (1000 line funct...
I am about to start working for a new customer who asked for a "firefighter" to help his only developer finish a product due at the end of the month. While I am confident I will do fine from a technical point of view, I could use some advice regarding the best way to "educate" this developer without sounding too pedantic. Have you ever...
One of your team members has been appointed "technical lead" or "team lead" yet he is technically incompetent and lacks major leadership skills. By technically incompetent, I mean that the person doesn't know the difference between an abstract class and an interface, doesn't understand why coupling should be avoided, doesn't understand ...
My group is a Perl shop in an organization that is very heterogenous. Although we support the odd Java, PHP, or Python installation, we're using Perl for nearly all of our web applications and systems/data marshalling tasks. All of our boxes are Linux, although we interface with IIS systems as well. We're coming under some pressure fr...
I can't tell you how many times I've run into situations where a higher-up says 'Look, just do it'. This is obviously at the expense of rigidity in the planning process, and will (probably) affect product quality. By now, I have more experience with this, and with that, I have the confidence to stand up for the quality of the applicatio...
Within your organization, is every developer required to lock his workstation when leaving it? What do you see a risks when workstations are left unlocked, and how do you think such risks are important compared to "over-wire" (network hacking) security risks? What policies do you think are most efficient to enforce locking the workstat...
After reading E-myth Revisited, I realize that I can do a better job at making my company less reliant upon me... I spend a tremendous amount of time answering silly questions (silly to me, but necessary for my developers to get the job done). I need to write a set of operating manuals for what to do in certain situations... For insta...
Suppose you're working on an enterprise project in which you have to get management signoff in order for you to develop a new feature set. Usually your management has no problem signing off on some bright shiny new UI feature. Unfortunately they have a hard time appreciating some behind-the-scenes issues that are crucial to the applicati...
... that you've never seen before. But at the moment, you are are focused on task X, and you really don't want to believe what you've just seen, so you let yourself believe that the crash/problem was just some random fluke. And then you forget all about it. Weeks or months later as your app gets wider usage and that fluky thing you s...
I'm part of a small 3-person development team (myself and one other local, the third is remote). Our manager will be leaving soon, so we're starting to look for a replacement. We're going to be involved in the interviews of our potential new managers, but I'm having a heck of a time trying to come up with things to ask them or look for...
What you use to manage your daily tasks as a programmer? I use Outlook built in Tasks Manager. I track them by emails. Use third party software for task management. I remember my all tasks. Or Others? ...
My problem: There are numerous (>100) tools the development teams use which are "home" written. They are sometimes a perl script, or a "web page", or just something that does a couple of small functions. I need to find a way (as part of my "Middle Manager in charge of tools" job) to collect these into a single catalogue. None of these...
Have to admit this, but I am trying not to be a pointy haired boss! My developers tell me when they think stuff will be done and how long it takes. They then can do it when and where they like. As long as they are within project timescales +/- a percentage of time. All is good, they get freedom and the sense of shipping on time most ...
I am working on a Software Project that needs to be translated into 30 languages. This means that changing any string incurs into a relatively high cost. Additionally, translation does not happen overnight, because the translation package needs to be worked by different translators, so this might take a while. Adding new features is c...
I've recently been working on a C# GUI. We used a third party graphical controls library (that I won't name). Some people really like this library and get all excited with "hey look its got a control that looks flashy, let's use that on this screen". My experience was that we compromised the usability of our GUI by putting some flashy co...
Apologies - not exactly a programming related query, but (I hope) valuable none the less. I've the opportunity to help develop the skill set of a future "general manager" (aiming at CEO level in a small to medium sized firm; something like a divisional head in a larger firm). The person in question has a solid business background, with...