Thanks TI2011

I want this post to be the last one in this category. I will try to sum everything up in this blog post, at least the most important things I learned. Like a closure to myself. What I like the most about this course were the guest speakers. I don’t thing anyone could have taught us that much things, no matter the experience. I think that, the fact of them being several people leaved me a complete perspective of the management world and the industry in general, rather than staying with just one point of view, regardless of the incredible experience the teacher could have had.

One of the biggest concerns I had starting the semester was my professional future. I am speccing to graduate this December. Starting this semester it hit me really really hard. I didn’t know what I wanted to my future self, specially between becoming a young entrepreneur or making my way into the industry. It did hit me. There’s something personal about me I want to share. I am that kind of person that worries about this things in an unhealthy way. It becomes part of my day.  I don’t feel special or anything; I think a lot of students my age tend to have the same problem, but it was like that at least the first two or three months. It was really frustrating to see that there are super successful people in silicon valley that are my age, or even younger. Having this guest speakers let me see their perspectives when they were my age and when they were having the same problems I have and how did they manage them.

This semester was in general hard for me. It was an amazing semester. I had incredible experiences and I had the chance of trying new things. I thing that, we as humans grow the most, or we get the most out of hard or difficult experiences. At least I felt that way. I had religious dilemmas like never before, professional dilemmas and even love/partner dilemmas as well. I found out that I love acting. I found out that I wasn’t secure of myself. I grew a lot, and I’m really thankful with this course. I am not saying this course solved my life, but I do think that this course opened those dilemmas for me to see and guided me into solving them.

What did I choose? I chose to try it. Try becoming a young entrepreneur and learned a bunch of new things in the way, at the end, what do I have to loose? I live really happy with my parents, thanks God I’m economically stable with them. I don’t have a lot of responsibilities. It will be hard, and it could not be the best way, but it is a way. I want to share that we only have one life and it’s ok to be wrong. Nothing is perfect and nothing has to be. We all have people that care for us and we should try to rally on them, we are not alone. It’s ok to chat about this things, even though sometimes you don’t know were to start or what to say. Sorry if I involve you in this conclusions. I’m talking about me and what I learned in this process, hope you can get something new with me.

I found out not a lot of people read this posts, I don’t blame them. It’s something personal that’s probably not in the public interest. If you are reading, nothing would make me more happy than knowing that someone is actually learning something from this posts. If you are feeling the same way and you’d like to chat about it, please please let me know. I would love to help you out.

Time is the most valuable thing we have, spend it wisely.

Thanks TI2011.

The Bright Side of QA

So I just wrote a horrible critic about my QA course. The truth is that, nothing can be that bad, in the case of the course, I loved how the professor talked bout his experience in the industry. He’s currently working for one of the biggest banks firms in Mexico, so he has a lot of interesting experiences to talk about. I will continue with this point in a minute.

Quick parenthesis. In this blogpost I want to share as well the course I’ve liked the most, so that the new students can get excited about it and start learning in advance, it was Software Architecture, with one of the best professors I’ve had in my career. Relating it to the book, the next chapter was architecture, it’s interesting and to the point. After taking the complete course, this chapter seamed like a small chat compared with it. What I learned about it was the importance of an architect in a project. I related with a director in a play. He is the one in charge of actually knowing everything, from the business to the technical specs of the project. Aside from the relevance of that position, there is a thing we didn’t see in class and Steve does mention it. He talks about the Software Architecture document. It’s basically the architect plan, written down. Document at which everyone involved in the project should have access to, including developers and stakeholders. Interesting course, interesting chapter, I learned a lot. End of parenthesis.

Back with the topic, I will relate this post with Final Preparations. I think I can compare this chapter with my QA course mora than with the actual QA chapter; the thing is, as I introduce at the beginning of the blog, my professor has an administrative profile, so at the end the class turns out to be more about project management than the technical side of testing and quality per se. So let’s talk about delivering projects and final stages.

One of the points that picked up my attention is, the importance of the developers’ confidence in the plans and estimates. At the end, they are people and we all need to feel motivated, we need to see the importance in our work. What happens if we declare that we are delivering in one month and the team doesn’t believe in it? No one is going to work for it, and if they do, it won’t be any close to the expectations. In the other side, if you are a great manager and you care for your team; you protect them from crunch working and from unreal due dates. What will happen when you have this confidence built up in everyone and you have a close deadline? Probably what will happen is that you’ll have a healthy environment with people that trust your call and believe in you and in the project. It will be much more possible to deliver. I could focus a complete blog post about this idea of protecting your team. We had a talk in class with an exatec student and he explained this concept of the importance taking care of your team. It was one of the talks I liked the most.

The last point I want to share with you guys is from actually from my QA class. Talking about delivering big projects, with big clients and providers, your word id very important. If you say you are delivering, you better be. My professor once told us about a project that was supposed to be delivered in a month from then, this project was delayed for a year already. Month after month he would swear they were delivering by the end of it. This lack of confidence costed a lot of money, but how? Resources and money is being moved by confidence. I will just spend money in the things I trust, in the people I believe in. Do you think this client will recommend my professors company? Or just have another project with them? I don’t think so.

I think this points seam obvious, like, obviously you need to build confidence and be trustworthy, but it’s like Ken has said; we won’t catch the importance till we live in that context. Very easy to read and understand but hard to follow and do. Ily.

 

Final Thoughts (beta)

Well, as you all know, I tend to leave stuff till the end, till the deadline! Chan chan… Haha, like the book, get it? Yes. This process was supposed to finish last Wednesday; I had everything scheduled down. I was mentally and emotionally prepared. I even wrote a report of my mental health in order to compare it later on that Wednesday. What happened was, we got more time. Unbelievable right?

I can’t understand myself. I had a rate of like, 4-5 quality posts per day. As soon as I received the news, none. I’m kind of angry with myself, it’s hard to get it. I really enjoyed writing. Those four days I dive into that working environment, I was pretty proud and happy with myself. That same weekend, I had plenty of time, plenty. How many posts did I write? You guessed it… None. I was even complaining about not starting before cause it wasn’t as bad as I expected, it was fine!

Something else I want to share is that, this semester I did surprisingly well, by semester I mean grades,  and I can’t stand that this course will be the one with lowest grade, even if I get 95. I am not saying the reason why it’s surprising is because this course is easy, it’s not. Here is my conclusion and hypothesis. I’ve never considered myself mediocre, finishing this semester I found out I am. If you look at my grades, you’d say I’m not. Let my express myself, I am mediocre, but I’m pretty demanding with myself with respect to my grades. I will give the minimum amount of effort, in order to get the maximum score. See? Did you spot the problem? I limit myself to rubrics and professors expectations to be honest. I will try to hit the 100, not more. It’s really not that hard, I’ve talked with my professor about this and  we’ve come to the conclusion that having a 90 seems average, when in reality, conquering 90% of the course is an odyssey. Grades at Tec, and overall Mexican universities, are messed up. Back to the point, I won’t give more, I won’t challenge myself to learn more. I have some reasons and guesses. The first one is having already the reward of the institution and everyone else based on a number, having that “excellent” number. It is much much easier to follow this metrics of effort rather than our owns, talking about me. Second one, I think I’ve lost the general meaning of studying and being in this institution. I’m here to learn a bunch of new stuff, make friends and connection and having a great experience in general. If I’d believe this, I wouldn’t care for grades and I’d base my efforts specifically in learning and achieving this goal I just mentioned. Hopefully I made myself clear.

Do I blame myself? I don’t. Well, a little bit. At the end, as I just mentioned. I wish I had my priorities more organized, with respect to my learning/grades, but at the end… The school is demanding my it’s own, I’ve learned a lot of things. It’s just that, paying more attention to what really matters and that is my and my well being. Again, if you made it till the end you are a nice human being. If you want to chat about this idea, I’d really really love to have a chat. Don’t hesitate to contact me 🙂

Still don’t like QA

Quick disclosure: Personal opinion, not much to learn about QA around here.

So, we have this Quality Assurance Chapter. To be honest I don’t like the topic, not yet, but let me tell you why. I have this course called, Quality Assurance, may be it has something to do with this blogpost. This class happens to be he only one with twice as credits as the other ones, so it’s twice as expensive. What I don’t like about that course in specific is that it’s basically just theory, which I get; it’s important in order to practice it well in real life, but! But ladies and gentlemen, guess the audience of that class. That’s right! Undergraduates! You guessed it. Ok too much feeling in here. What I’m trying to say is that, we haven’t seen any specific tool, or even practice in order to test. For instance unit-testing! I’ve seen more testing in my Advance Programming course than in that one. I think that, being undergraduates and students in general, we should’ve seen it more practically. We should’ve learned how to make quality code, and how to ensure its quality by testing it. In my opinion, that course name should’ve been QA Management.

Why am I writing this down? Why is this related with what I learned from the book? What can you learn from this post? The answers will come in a minute, but I just wanted to express myself. I really feel disappointed with the Tec; I really wanted to learn a lot from that course. Please don’t get me wrong, it’s not the professors fault, not at all, he makes an outstanding work there. I feel that every little aspect of that course came in together to form this really really bas experience.

Why am I writing this down? As my current Project Management professor says, I need to publish my voice, get it outside and let people know what I’m doing. Currently, I feel like I’m the only one, probably a phew more, paying attention and investing myself in that course in order to get something out of it, and I am! It’s just not what I wanted to. I am making an effort, so that the people in charge of managing that course can make something about it and you, the reader again, if you haven’t taken that course, wait till it’s fixed or just get yourself in the mindset that you won’t see anything practical and learn it in your own way.

Why is this related with what I learned from the book? Cause I’m not kidding when I tell you it’s everything we’ve seen. The QA Plan, the “V” model (developing/testing being parallel), measurable criteria, QA teams and how to manage them, etc… That course is full of this chapter, that’s what I like about it. I don’t hate it. I do think it’s useful, I just think it is not the approach I think we need as students right now. What can you learn from this post? Probably that speaking up is good. I’m not saying that I’ll get results from this post. I’ve talk already with the people in charge of the courses and explained my point of view, cause at the end it’s just an opinion, by no means I’m saying I’m correct; so if something happens it will be cause I talked about it with someone, I wrote about it so that it can be recorded and hopefully someone else did as well.

 

 

That’s it for this one guys. Love you.

 

 

 

Requirements… Didn’t like this chapter.

I have a phew complaints about this chapter… But first I want to post this video, I’ve been waiting for this topic to come so that this video is relatable.

 

 

The author describes three main stages for Software Requirements, which are:

1. Gathering candidate requirements.
2. Specifying requirements.
3. Analyzing requirements.

Which, make a lot of sense and I have no complaints about them. The problem comes in the suggested process. But first I want to review and talk a little bit about them.

“The most difficult part of requirements gathering is not the act of recording what the users want; it is the exploratory, develop mental activity of helping users figure out what they want.” Steve Ockonell.

So not even recording or documenting them, it’s all about figuring out what the users want in first place. This stage is so important that one of the guest speakers in our class has a company focused just in this matter. He started by making a meeting, such as the one in the video. Then he implemented some deeper activities scientist had already proved. Later on he end up adding a bunch of new dynamics which they thought were helpful, and found out that they were actually proved as well, just with different names. So, from software development to requirement analysis. He completely changed the business model of his company, that important is gathering requirements well.

The second point and third point is the actual goal of the first point. Specifying requirements is, at the end, being able of accepting and defining the final requirements with the client. Analysis is the last stage and refers to improving and setting up all of the requirements as they should be, the most effective and efficient requirement document ever created. That’s the job of requirement analyst and they can make a lot in the software industry. Sometimes it’s just a matter of translating between the business and the IT side of a company, as in the video again.

Here’s the part which I have problems with. The author suggests this process.

1. Get key trustworthy users.
2. Interview them.
3. Build a UI prototype.
4. Get feedback and work on it.
5. Develop a style guide for the design.
6. “Fully extend the prototype” It’s the final, best prototype.
7. Treat it as the main specification and develop over it.
8. Write a document based on this prototype. Add change control.
9. Now write the technical document. Add change control as well.

 

It’s not an actual problem, it’s more a complaint I have. So this steps are focused on user interface based projects. I don’t know… I just wish he would’ve talked more about technical requirements development. In this list it’s just the eighth step, and he barely talks about it. It’s just that, it depends tremendously on the kind of project and kind of user you have, so I don’t feel prepared in this matter. But that does not stop me from reading more and investigating about it! For me, the most important requirements are the functional ones, those are the ones that will consume all your time, the ones that will make you have headaches. I know it’s a hassle as well to change design and user interface stuff, but man, changing key functionalities or extending their scope… I wish he would’ve talked more about it. What about not meeting efficiency, how to define that for instance. Nevertheless it’s a good process… If you just talk about user interface!

One of the things Sergio, a professor of mine for web development, teach me was, as I mentioned earlier, we need to know the kind of client we are dealing with. He told me that he has had a lot of experiences where he works for ours in functionality prototypes, and at the end the user just wants to see a beautiful interface, as Steve’s suggested process. In the oder hand, a client that knows about IT, won’t care about user interface, or web design, cause he knows that it will be made eventually, what kind of problems can you have with it? He won’t care about the design, he knows where the real work is. So functionality… These are the elements that will make you fail at your deadlines at the end of the day, so for those clients and for risk management in general he suggested me to start with the meat of the project, the core features.

So those were the things I learned, the things I didn’t like and the things I learned prior to the book and I wanted to share with you guys. Hope you enjoyed my grumpy cat stage. We don’t need to like everything, in fact, I think it’s a good things. We learn a lot more, and we develop more interest in the field.

Last comic… Poor him, but if he would’ve started with the design and pretty things first… Again, we should know the kind of user so that we can place him easier and have a better relationship.

 

Thanks if you made it up till this point. Love you ❤

 

Feature creep!? That doesn’t happen to me

When I was reading the Preliminary Planning chapter from Steve’s book, I found out that there are a lot of things The Novel and this book have in common. For instance, preliminary planning is all about planning ahead, planning even before starting the project. This book mentions the importance of hiring good employees and some good practices in order to do it; the novel talks about this “gut” and the process the main character follows to hire his team. If you’re interested in knowing a bit more of that process, there’s a post already in this category.

This chapter covers a lot of different topics. One of them being Risk Management, as the prior chapter and prior blogpost. The thing I liked about this one tho, and from which I learned a bit more, is that there’s a list of the 10 most common risks in software projects. Guess what’s in 1st place, you got it! Feature creep. This is a topic I like a lot cause it happens all the time in videogame development. Basically, it happens when you add new features to your project, but excessively. It’s a risk mainly because you’d be focusing your efforts in features you don’t actually need, or that are not part of the main requirements. There’s actually no problem with adding new elements and concepts, the problem comes when you can’t handle priorities. That is basically it. It was surprising to find that in the first place. Highly recommended give it a quick look at this chapter.

Besides hiring and managing sponsors for example, preliminary planning is the moment in which you can decide what is being done and what not. It’s your time to make time accounting as well. When I was reading this chapter, I related myself in school projects. I think that all of our planning efforts just reach this stage. We negotiate what will we do, how will we do it and when will we deliver it, but that’s it. As soon as the project starts, we program like monkeys with no actual planning or management. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just not enough.

Next chapter is software requirements, fasten your seat belts and follow me.

A lawyer? Huh… Who needs them?

We all need them. End… Shortest blogpost ever.

 

 

 

Just kidding, I have lots of things to talk about.

I think that, if we make a class survey regarding the conferences and ask for a topic in common we would get as number one. Drumroll… You got it! Get a good lawyer, at least one that knows software. This post is mainly about change control. I learned a bunch of new stuff in the conferences and later on I totally related it with the book.

Change control is not about not having changes, or even worse about prohibiting changes. It’s actually the opposite, letting changes come, cause you are prepared already. One of the first points the chapter touches is, we need to understand the impact of a project. Point. Without actually knowing the area a change covers, we won’t be able of controlling its impact. The book suggest a five step workflow which will make our project  change expert. The one that I find most important is the fifth one: Changes are proposed via Change Proposals. The first four are about things we’ve already talked about, planning well, but this last one is crucial. Change Proposals, just having this idea of a proposition thing instead of a mandatory thing, or horrible thing… No, we as project managers have to ensure that all changes pass through a nice and beautiful proposal. This document needs to be revised by all the parties within the project in order to be approved, this stage ensures that everyone involved understands the change and the consequences it might have. Then, and only then you can make an estimate of costs for the client and make a wise decision for everyone.

Coming back to the lawyers. They are responsable of making contracts that protect the company and the client as well. Protect them in the sense talking about possible changes, all the possible costs relating them, maintenance and everything a contract should have. In the talks we had, I remember that someone made a comment regarding this contracts. He said that, having a good lawyer that understands the business, is like having a shield or an armor against unpleasant experiences. At the end, this documents end up being Change Control Plans, as the Steve mentions in the book, plans that describe exactly what will happen if something happens… Haha.

I don’t want to make this post any longer. The idea with which I want to finish is, we are the ones in the position of controlling changes, not the client. It’s our decision how to treat them, how much to charge, how to manage them, but! But with a small, little notice. The client must know, everyone actually, this hows, whens and whos first.  If you don’t define them, you’ll be part of the horror stories we all heard in our conferences, stories about clients changing the project and not being able doing anything but follow their instructions. So, good lawyers, that’s it.

 

 

Haha, we are the special victims. Get it?

That time I said no

I’m currently (May 2016) an 8th semester student, hoping to graduate this December. As crazy as it sounds, I’ve never made a project by own for someone; I mean, a paid project with real clients and real work. This year, January, I received a call from a friend of mine. He has a marketing company and he wanted to know if I could deliver a mobile app, not only that, it was a complete system. As the title suggests, I said no, but it wasn’t that simple. In this blog post I want to talk about that experience and talk a little bit about risk management and project planning.

So I received the call and he tried to explain me everything, I’m going to call him George for anonymity reasons, George called me and he even sent the complete requirements document. So, at least I had all the requirements well written down, check for him. How would I create a feasible plan if I’ve never done anything like that, I was hearing deadlines, specific details, delivery methods and even money, (lots of money comparing with what my income was, still is, as a student). How would I practice active risk management as the book suggest if I have no experience to compare with, if I have no knowledge at all? Well, let’s talk about it! Chan chan! (Suspense sound effects).

Try to gain knowledge as quick as possible. First step, call my professors and ask for advice. I called an old friend and professor of mine, which has a lot of experience in the field. He told me it was too risky, too much uncertainty and too much money… Haha not really, but he did tell me that it was pretty descent and well payed. Ok, so first call and I was at the same point, except that I was more informed. I called a second time, but now I talked with a friend. I wanted him to help me, to associate so that I could reduce the risk and workload off my shoulders… Guess what, he didn’t want to.

The point of this blogpost is to emphasize the importance of risk management and the gut we all have inside us, cause, as the book suggests; I had everything in my hands already, with respect to a project plan. I had a productive environment, I had the client and users available, I had the requirements document, but what I didn’t have was the knowledge and confidence in the technologies he wanted me to develop on, and so you already know the outcome.

Later on, as I was reading this book, I found out I was doing risk management without even noticing. I summed all the horrible outcomes and their probability. One of the was that I wouldn’t be able to finish on time, the second one was, I do finish on time but I’d be abandoning school and actual student responsibilities. Since I didn’t have experience, I couldn’t calculate the percentage, but! But the uncertainty was just unbelievable, so I didn’t take the risk and I’m not embarrassed, I know that I could’ve made a good product, but I know it could’ve taken me way more than what I was expected to.

What I learned from this couple of chapters is that, risk management and project planning is not about tossing a coin, calculating the probabilities, summing it up and making a wise decision. It’s really about informing yourself, investigating, asking, planning, looking at yourself and the project in the future as accurate as you can and being able of saying no.

This is me, and my inner me.

 

The end is coming. (Quick update)

So as usual… I left everything till the end, and I’d leave it for later if I could… Good thing that I’ve read already so I just have to post my learning process. Let’s dive into it, follow me! Haha… Just kidding, I’ll try to post interesting things so that you, the reader, can have a good time with me:) What do you think?

The purpose of this blogpost is to record somehow this experience, and measure my success. As I started this post, I tend to leave everything till the end. I’m arguing with myself between keeping this practice or not.

Pros: I enjoy my semester and focus on the things I found more important. I keep a single week in which I can now focus in the important work, a bit stressing but still productive.

Cons: No contingens plan at all; if something wrong happens, I’m screwed.

So here’s the idea, I’d like to have 95 since I’ve already lost some points. I need to finish reporting my learning process in both books. So… At the end I’ll post again how much did I enjoyed or hated this experience and compare it with my overall grade. Till then folks, see you in like 10 cups of coffee and three days. Next post regarding the experience will be online till Wednesday night. Wish me luck.

Here’s a picture of me balancing the semester.

Diet

Following a diet, how hard could it be… Well, results it’s actually harder than it looks. I want to talk about it because I think it’s closed related with project administration. When you read books, enroll in school courses and projects, you are getting a recipe, a structured way of doing things, such as in a diet. Turns out that, when you graduate and you finally get out of this controlled environment and start real life, things change, or at least that’s what everyone has told us.

Recently I motivated myself into exercising more; later on I found out that eating and having a diet is an essential element of my healthier lifestyle I want to have. From the outside, looking at people following diets, I’ve always thought that it wasn’t necessary… I mean, we all know what is good and bad for our body, so just avoid bad things, consume good ones right? That was my mind set at the moment. Well, turns out it’s more than that, it’s about having the right timing, getting your body used to an schedule, eating more vegetables, less sugar, healthier carbs, it’s a whole religion.

As soon as I started this diet, I got myself into a lot of situations described in the book, having to make risk analysis, time management, etc. Of course, in a much smaller scale. For instance, every time I go out at night, may be for some chicken wings, I need to make an actual risk chart in my mind… How probable it is of me having a beer, may be a couple of them? How hard will it be to ask for a salad when theres a double cheese burger in the menu? How late will I stay if I have to run in the morning? Will I even go running then? Hard stuff one as a student with simple goals face.

I want to get used to write more; I know this blogpost is not reviling the secret of project management, or even that its relevant, I just thought it was funny how hard it was to follow a diet, and how much it was related to this course.

There’s also a secret intention in this post, I want to encourage everyone with this kind of scratch in the back of their minds, about having a healthier lifestyle, to try to take the challenge. Way back at la fortaleza, just besides the football court, the Tec nutritionist has her office, and it’s completely free (and she is super nice)… She will only take half an hour every couple of weeks, so there’s really no excuses, at least give it a chance, same with the gym, pool, and sports in general, go to the court an chat with the professors; you’ll be amazed on how nice they can be.

I’ll share my diet so that you can get an idea of how it is. It’s not square in terms of specific courses. It describes the portions of food groups you should have at an specific time. Just don’t follow it, this one specifically is made for my specific goals and body situation, it’s just to encourage you and remove the tabu out of the idea.

Thanks for you attention and time if you’re still reading… Love you :*