My Hero - Tom DeMarco

Project Management is not about technology it's about people.......

A long night.......

Sometimes you just need to dig in and get your hands dirty to really understand what you're dealing with. I spent a LONG LONG night last night understanding:
CodeIgniter MVC and jQuery (including ajax-forms and simpleTree)

Here's the end result: IT Project Guide-Risk Management

You'll probably not notice much (and potentially nothing if I'm working on it and break something) - but behind the scenes there's a lot of MVC, ajax and CSS (no tables) going on. I think I gave myself a master's training course in heavy duty coding. Some take aways:

• MVC does force you to be a better programmer, even during the initial investigative/hacking phases
• CodeIgniter is solid...and has a great forum and support community (a big plus)
• javascript is javascript no matter how you dress it up - jQuery will make you life better, but the underlying javascript will remain problematic and buggy to work with
• well planned css does make development and design changes much easier (do away with those tables)
• not everything works as planned (lots of problems refreshing the tree menu) - but there aways seems to be a way to get what you want done (even if it involves some serious banging of the head against the wall)
• small changes with instant results is gratifying (aka good programming) as opposed to some tasks in project management (aka waiting by the phone for a developer to let you know when the system will be fixed)

Anyway - it was a long long very good night....next steps: potentially moving from the IT Project Guide - PM (project management) tool to IT Project Guide - RM (risk management) - basically a complete rewrite

Ed Yourdon Risk Management presentation

Somewhat interesting ideas - Twitter for Risk Management???
http://www.yourdon.com/downloads/AustinRiskManagement.pdf

Great Advice from the trenches

The proof is in the pudding - OR - you're successful endeavor should reveal what steps should be taken for the next success (info directly from:http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/03/how-to-build-a-web-app-in-four-days-for-10000-say-hello-to-matt/):
Tips on working wisely
Here are a few tips that you should keep in mind if you’re focusing on building apps quickly:

1. Limit meetings to one 10 minute chat in the morning and one 10 minute wrap-up at the end of each day. Meetings are the best way to kill productivity and crush creativity so keep ‘em short.

2. Get people away from their machines at lunch. Go for lunch together and maybe throw the frisbee or play Wii. The excitement and creativity will quickly deteriorate if you don’t have a break during the day.

3. Simplify the site and app as much as possible. Try launching with just ‘Home’, ‘Help’ and ‘About’.

I highly recommend reading the rest of the post...if understood, it'll save you from years of reading many project management books

Happy 4th of July!

CodeIgniter Book

I've been 'focusing' on the CodeIgniter PHP framework - possibly looking to rewrite the IT Project Guide - PM tool with it. So, as usual I Google around for info and buy books (Amazon of course). It always seems easier reading and experimenting from a book then from a webpage (must be the age I grew up in- like working with a $10 chemistry set making some skunky smelling smoking thing). The only book currently out for CodeIgniter is 'Code Igniter for Rapid Development'. Overall a good book, some great insight into CodeIgniter and some interesting background on the author of CodeIgniter: Derek Allard. The major downside to the book is that it's a little choppy in delivery and does not (at least more then half-way through) provide complete examples....but, a good source

Workout time

I'm into exercising a bit...and ran across Men's Health Belly Off program. Good work out (aka lots of pain and agony) and well done sub-site. Video, meal plans, more video, podcast and print outs...nicely done overall approach and GREAT content. It's summer time - drop those keyboards and get a movin'!