The Mythical Man-Month meets the Yellowverse

In 1975 Fred Brooks wrote a book that he called 'The Mythical Man-Month'. In that book he claimed that assigning more programmers to a project running behind schedule will make it even later, due to the time required for the new programmers to learn about the project, as well as the increased communication overhead. I suggest that with the introduction of corporate social software Fred's theory is no longer automatically applicable to the world of software development, because when I want to add a new programming resource to a project I don't always need to involve a new programmer.

Let me explain...

Serious social software tools (which excludes Facebook) foster a community of software resources who are willing to add value to your project without being formally involved. They post code samples and tutorials on their blogs (thanks Declan et. al.) and respond to technical questions in software forums. We all have different reasons for doing this but the end result is that our skill set is made available to other Lotoids without us needing to be fully briefed (or even aware of) their project. So a Man-Month of work for a clued-up developer can be made more productive on demand by incrementally adding the diverse skills of the Yellowverse as required.

The other side of the Man-Month is very real financial pressure felt by larger IT organizations who have a need to optimize their resource usage. If they are paying a developer $100k per year then they naturally want that person to be billable for as many days as possible with minimal management intervention, and the easiest way to do that is to put them on a customer's site for a large slab of time - three months is good and six months is better. And if they can find a way to justify a Team Leader and another Software Specialist in the project then that makes even more profit for them.

In my experience the smaller Business Partners don't work like that. When you are a team of only three or four consultants it doesn't make sense to tie up one third of your resources for six months at a time. You want to get in there and finish the work ASAP to free yourself up for the next opportunity.

So if we look at a paying customer who has a half finished spec (hey... he's a Retailer, not a Business Analyst) then how does he get maximum value for his money? Is his need best met by an organization whose business model thrives on throwing more bodies at the problem (thereby raising the total cost and invoking Fred's curse on his project), or does he get better value by engaging a Business Partner who knows how to work the Yellowverse and how to tap into the zero-cost skill sets of the Lotus Legends?

The answer is obvious... the problem is finding a way to say that into your proposals to customers.
.

Running BES and Traveler on the same R8.5 Server

Is it possible to install Traveler on a Domino R8.50 server that is already running BES 5.0?

The server runs on Windows Server 2008.
At first glance I don't see a problem, but has anyone done this before?
Are there any gotchas I need to know about?
.

Backup software for Domino R8.5 servers

Yesterday I started working with a customer is having all sorts of troubles getting his integrated backup s/w to work with newly upgraded (R8.02 to R8.5) virtualized Domino servers. Now I'm not going to mention the backup s/w name at this point since negotiations are still underway with the vendor about what his documentation meant when he said it " ... supports Domino R8.x ", but I am interested in what experience other people have with backing up R8.5 Domino servers.

What software do you recommend and what do you curse?
.

A useful tool for all computer gamers

I play the odd computer game and once I figured out that waiting three months after release halved the price of most boxed games I found I could even afford to play them. My biggest problem has been trying to read the system specs written in 2 point Myopia font on the bottom of the game boxes, but now I've found a website that will do that for me. Well actually its the other way around. The 'CanYouRunIt' site reads my computer specs and advises me whether my PC will support a game selected from their list.

Their list is not exhaustive - no sign of the Diablo franchise (but I already know I need a new computer before Diablo III arrives sometime within the next three years). Still, it's a useful site to bookmark.
.

What is the $$$ cost of migrating Notes applications?

I've just started talking to a customer who is looking at migrating away from their R6.5 Notes environment with the help of their current Business Partner. They have the usual half dozen CRM + Helpdesk + Asset Manager apps and " ...will migrate them when the email migration is finished."

OK, we've all heard it before, but what I need is a White Paper which exposes the pain and the cost of rewriting Notes applications in other environments. Does anyone have anything beyond anecdotal evidence which can be presented to a CIO?
.

Channelling Don Bradman

I blogged previously about the recent Lotus Cricket day in Bowral and now the intrepid Matt Paddon has posted photographs of the day. I appreciate that our American cousins may not appreciate the finer points of this noble sport however let me draw your attention to the pristine conditions of the grounds and the gentle beauty of the surrounding countryside.

Wouldn't you love to play a social game of your favorite sport on such a beautiful park?

... unless you're into ice hockey I guess.
.

Putting the Microsoft Cart before the Lotus Horse

Ed Brill and Thomas Duff have already commented about Microsoft's suggestion of 'discarding' applications that aren't completely supported by Windows 7 or, as Microsoft's Norm Judah puts it...

“There’s also the question as to whether customers really need an (incompatible) application,”

IMHO any Operating System is only useful insofar as it facilitates a users interactions with their chosen software applications which drive their business. If Windows 7 is incapable of supporting those existing applications for a business then it is Windows 7 that is incompatible and should be discarded. After all, a computer with a shiny new operating system which won't run your chosen applications is like the proverbial chocolate teapot.

I probably wouldn't have blogged on this issue except this example of Microsoft's approach to marketing their shiny new technology bought the phrase 'Big Lie' to mind, and while googling that term I came across the following description of ... well, you can guess who (the underlining is mine):

"His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it".

If Bleeding Yellow meant I had to behave like that then I'd want a blood transfusion ... I guess the standards are different in Redmond.
.