Yesterday, the House of Representatives introduced S.2989, the Small Business Revitalization Act, which punishes government prime contractors for failing to pay their subcontractors after the government has paid them for work performed.

While noble in trying to ensure that small businesses get compensated for work performed, the bill seems to miss the mark on the bigger issue with small business subcontracting.  I admit, I cannot find the text of the bill (and would love it if someone could point it out to me), so I could be wrong, but based on the article linked above, it appears that a couple of key issues are not addressed:

• Prime contractors actually meeting their subcontracting requirements.  In most large contracts, prime contractors are required to have a subcontracting plan and meet certain thresholds of work sharing amongst disadvantaged groups.  Very few enforcement mechanisms exist to ensure these thresholds are met, and this act does not address the issue.
• Prime contractors actually using the teams that they proposed in RFP responses.  If a prime wins a contract by describing teaming arrangements with certain companies, then it should actually utilize them as proposed to the government originally, or replace like-for-like on the team.  Again, no enforcement mechanism exists unless a contracting officer writes a constraining and binding contract.

As I have written before, set-asides and subcontracting goals go against my libertarian nature, as I want the most value for my money as a taxpayer; however, if they are going to exist, then the least the government can do is make sure that the rules are enforced.  Unfortunately, the Small Business Revitalization Act, it appears, fails to help meet those goals.

There is a true story behind this odd ensemble of a title. I remember it like it was yesterday. In fact, it was yesterday…..

The Story.

I was packing up my laptop when I was abruptly cornered by an energetic fellow.  He rattled off his problem in such a degree I could only process bit and pieces of his story.

He had spent 9 hours working with a software vendor who-must-not-be-named for credit card processors. They had gotten no where.

The first question screaming in my mind was why I being singled out to help him with a computer problem? I hide my geekness very well.  I strive to to prevent the typical questions like: will you fix my computer, vcr, dvd player, etc? Will you build me a website? Teach me HTML, please?

People fail to realize the differences between developers and IT. They also fail to see the different roles and specialization of certain knowledge for various parts of software development.

Touching a computer makes you liable for scape-goat-itis to consumers. Not only that, people have a bad habit of donning  you to become their free tech support [expletive deleted], whether you want it or not.

I turned around to see a co-worker,  that I now call Brutus, paying for coffee at the counter.  Having this flaw called empathy, I caved to energetic man in red. I agreed to look at the program and see what I could do.

Surprising the daunted man in red and the owner of this awesome local coffee house in the downtown mall of Charlottesville: I fixed the issue in about 3 minutes.

I’ve never seen the software before. The help desk and the developers of the software who connected remotely could not fix it. Why could I?  And no, I’m not super-developer-guy in skin tight and equally frightening spandex.

The Real Problem

The first part of the problem of is because many software vendors use a broken system. The help desk personnel reads scripted dialog, they don’t know the ins an outs of the software.

Some of help desk personnel at various companies even refuse to take initiative to go past the script. Even if its simple as searching google, they won’t do it.

Software developers are seldom familiar with the nuances of the operating system or system environments. They  are paid to develop software, not administrate or navigate all the pitfalls of minor differences in environment.

Thats why testing software and working with IT staff, users, clients, and people who know the business is so important.  Its important to have people who specialize in different aspects, like the desktop environment, performance and usability testing.

The attitude and mindset of the developers you hire is also important. If they stamp it “well it works on my machine” or “it the users fault”, its going to hurt your business and even hurt your clients/users.

The other major issue was that the developers did not take the time to really analyse the error message.  Instead they chased Alice down the rabbit hole, rather than simply listening.

The Solution.

I used the tech support cheat sheet that most of us savvy developers use to fix family computers and other things.

Taking the key parts of the error message, I put them into google. I glanced over a couple of posts. I saw a feasible issue. I verified the issue. The program was being started in a compatibility mode for windows 2000 on windows XP.

I tweaked the folder settings so the compatibilty mode was showing. Changed the compatibility mode. Restarted the application. They were now on their way.

So the solution was really listening to the problem and resolving to fix it.

The Story. Second Act.

It was an inconvenience to me. Helping people generally is.  But I’ve lost hours of life to soul-sucking computers and software issues.  I know pain and thy name is crappy software.

Besides with only a few minutes of my time, I was able to save a few people hours of pain and possible even a few premature grey hairs.   It was a good feeling to help someone and not deal with scape-goat-itis.

The man in red was certainly gracious. The store owner was kind to present me a token. A gift certificate for coffee. I really did not want anything, but its also rude to refuse a gift. It was kind of him.

With a few minutes of my time, I was able to help a local business owner and the man in red. The man in red, turned out to be a recent veteran, who was in business of credit card  processors.

It always cool to be able to help someone who served for this country.  They work hard and almost never expect anything in return.  They deserve much more than they ever receive. They never complain about it. Its humbling.

Even during lunch at a near by restaurant, the man in red came by to thank me again. Then voiced his disheartening opinion of the software that was just installed. I have a sneaking suspicion that the man in red, won’t be using that particular brand of software again anytime soon.

Things to ponder.

If you are using consultants, hiring software developers, or buying software; the question you should ask is who are you actually doing business with?

How much is your time worth?

Are they honest and transparent?

Do they cost more because of quality or support they provide, or because they are a brand name?

This past weekend was my first as a graduate student at the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce, where I am working on a Masters degree in Management of Information Technology.  It was a great 3 days of intensive classes on IT strategy, and I really enjoyed it.  Over the next year as I continue my studies, I will try to blog regularly about topics we are learning about.

As part of the program, the faculty regularly bring in interesting guest speakers with CIO experience.  This Saturday was a great example, since Jill Singer joined us.  Ms. Singer was formerly the Vice President for Project Management at SAIC, and is now the deputy CIO of the CIA.  She gave a great presentation on the role of the CIO, and the process they use at the CIA for evaluating, architecting and implementing their internal IT projects.

The CIA, despite the mystique and the fact that Ms Singer was not free to answer all the questions we asked, is still a lot like any other IT shop.  The process they follow for IT initiatives could easily be found in any Fortune 500 company.  In short, they follow these steps: understand the mission, establish the vision, develop the architecture, define plans, resource plans, execute plans, and measure progress.

Sounds pretty traditional, right?  Many other federal agencies probably follow a similar approach, which sounds a lot like a spiral development method.  But even within the constraints of this process, I was very pleased to hear Ms. Singer talk about regularly using Agile methodologies.

According to Ms. Singer, the CIA regularly uses Scrum, most often in 4 week development cycles.  Their customers, which would generally be some sort of internal analyst, really like the fact that Scrum encourages regular and tangible deliveries.  This allows them to try out the prototypes, and their customers also enjoy being able to add features and change priorities during each iteration.

This has worked very well for them on many projects, and Ms. Singer feels that the move from a more waterfall style to Scrum has really helped them improve many of their projects, though with an interesting side effect.

The biggest challenge she has seen on their is knowing when they are done, or as she put it, “defining what 1.0 is.”  They can’t fund their projects forever, just like any other IT shop.  Sometimes they end up doing iterations indefinitely though, and then realize they have gone longer than they originally thought because they keep adding features.  But unlike most project methodologies, if they slip on a project schedule using Scrum, Ms. Singer has found their customers are much more forgiving then when a waterfall project is late.

The reason for this is simple, and it is one of the fundamental advantages of Scrum and Agile, regardless of whether you are a start up company, a government agency, or even the CIA.  By engaging your business owners with burndowns, daily stand ups, and short iterations for which the customer helps set the priorities, you are empowering your customer.  It’s important to note that this is done in a way that does not infringe on the creativity of your development team.  Your developers are likewise empowered by choosing what they work on and in what order within a sprint, setting their own estimates, and providing regular feedback and ideas directly to the customers.

It’s never good when a project is late, but if the customer has seen constant progress along the way, and they are empowered to help decide what features should be added or removed, then you have successfully created a collaborative environment between your customers and your IT staff.

Determining “what 1.0 is” can be a real challenge – we just had a good discussion on that today with one of our current clients.  By employing Scrum, it sounds like the CIA has also learned the advantages of a highly iterative and collaborative process, and it is helping them to stay efficient and productive.  By the very nature of what they do, the CIA must be innovative, and so it should come as no surprise that they are using the latest in software development methodology.  I hope that other federal agencies will follow their lead.

I was very excited to learn earlier this week that I had a session proposal for Agile 2009 accepted.  In Chicago on Thursday Aug 27, at 4pm, I’ll be discussing How to sell a traditional client on an agile project plan. Here’s how I described the session:

You’re negotiating a project with a client or internal customer, but they balk when you don’t present a fixed budget and a predefined list of requirements. How do you convince them that the benefits of an Agile team outweigh a top heavy and fragile requirements document? Based on Agile experience with government and commercial clients, we will discuss ways to make your customer feel comfortable with process changes that don’t always result in the same set of documents they are used to.

One of the reviewers posted a comment about my session which read “This session addresses a very common question I come up against, and feel we should be offering the answers to.”

I was glad to see that comment, because I agree completely and that’s why I proposed the session. While I won’t claim that we here at OSC have all the answers, I do think we’ve developed a lot of experience in the area due to the wide range of clients that we work with. Some are very agile, some … not so much. Many are somewhere inbetween.

OpenSource Connections has methods based on our experiences, but I would love to hear feedback from others too. Are there any particular Agile war-stories that you have about convincing a traditional client to implement agile practices?

Today, OpenSource Connections received notification that they had been chosen as a University of Virginia preferred vendor for Web Design, Development, and Programming Services.  The new contract should appear on the University of Virginia Preferred Vendor page within the next two weeks.

The range of services covered under the contract include:

• Information design
• Web site design/redesign/implementation
• Programming and scripting, to include HTML, Java, C, C++, PHP, CSS, RSS, C#, ASP, XML, .NET
• Interactive database design and programming (SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL)
• Flash development
• Javascript development (JSON, DOM, AJAX)
• Designing for handheld devices
• Interactive design (polls, wikis, social media, learning management systems)
• Webmaster services
• Training
• Web standards (Section 508, Dublin Core, WCAG 2, etc.)
• Project management
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Online marketing, to include social media
• Ruby on Rails programming
• Search engine implementation (Solr, Lucene, Nutch)
• Database design

We are thrilled with the honor and look forward to working with many of our colleagues in the University on future opportunities.

Recently, Facebook released a new look and feel.  Over 1 million users complained about the new interface, citing, among other things, that it looks too much like Twitter.  Given Twitter’s 1,689% year over year growth, maybe Facebook thought it was onto something.

I was not surprised, then, to read that Facebook had recently attempted to purchase Twitter.  It rejected a $500 million valuation, much lower than its initial attempts at third round VC funding.  Perhaps cash in hand was better than Facebook stock in hand?

I think that a few lessons are applicable here for those following the subject:

• If you’re looking to be acquired, or, alternatively, to acquire, make sure that your technologies are compatible.  Facebook’s new look and feel looks very similar to Twitter.  Since Facebook can’t buy, perhaps it will build, or perhaps it’s trying to make a conversion of Twitter users less painful.
• When you roll out a new look and feel, give the users the option to revert back to the previous version.  Inertia is a powerful force to overcome.  We use Google Mail as our mail service, and the website still has an “Older Version” link in its upper menu tab list.
• Beta test with your users.  Nothing portends doom like rolling out a brilliant new idea that marketing cooked up without getting a subset of your users–and preferably the thought leaders among your users–to say what they think.  It’s better to spend a small amount on a test case that fails than to roll it out to your grand audience and pay the price.

Given the apparent haste and backlash with which Facebook has rolled out its new look and feel, it is reasonable to believe that the Facebook purchase of Twitter is still on the table, or it’s looking to assimilate Twitter users, the poker equivalent of a spite call.

This coming Wednesday March 25th, I have the honor of moderating a luncheon panel on the uses of social media in business.  The panel is hosted by the Charlottesville Business Innovation Council, and is titled “Incorporating Social Media into your business strategy.”  You can learn more about the event and register here.

On the panel will be:

• Ryan Adams, Intalgent
• Suzanne Henry, Four Leaf Public Relations LLC
• Scott Hildebrand, BoldMouth

It should be a great discussion and I’m looking forward to it.  As part of the event, I’m planning on bringing a large monitor to setup somewhere in the room and rotate through some screen shots of how local businesses are using tools like twitter and facebook.  You can see the screenshots I’ve collected so far on flickr.  I’d love to hear of other examples in our area – since I’m sure I’ve missed a lot.  Just leave a comment here and I’ll probably get your examples added to the rotation too!

Every year people tend to spend the first month or two making promises they are going to break a few moments, maybe weeks later.  We tend to lack resolve and have seasonal habits.  We act nicer in December to our fellow man (woman), unless it comes to taking the last tickle-me elmo off the shelf, then its every person for themselves.  We pull out the big grill  that you probably won’t use for the rest of the summer for labor day weekend that you got for xmas to outshine your neighbor’s 2k stainless steal beast he got the year before, all the while making tim the tool man tailor grunts while cooking, .  And of course, its January, its time for a new diet fad (this year it seems to be acri berry diets that boasts you don’t need to really diet or exercise, all thanks to Opera Winfrey having a show about the most nutritional foods with acri berry being #1).

But I digress.  However I do have some suggestions for the new year because more than likely people are more open to ideas this time of year and hopefully maybe one or two will stick, thereby making your life that much more productive and a little easier, or fun.

Optimize the way you work on a pc, Pimp your desktop.

You don’t need to be a power user like on linux or have to buy a mac to have an intuitive and shiny UI (User Interface, in this case, desktop) to be productive. Its taken me some time, but I’ve finally found the tools that really help clean up the desktop. 

First off clean up your desktop, its rare that you really need those icons, especially if you have windows vista with the new start menu. If you like the mac’s quicksilver application, but like me, tend to work on a windows os, you can try launchy, skylight, or slickrun. Right now I prefer skylight since its written using .NET WPF and its extendable.  With Alt + Spacebar, the window appears and you can quickly find whatever program you want. 

Take time to find a desktop wall paper you like, deviant art is good place to start.  People in general tend to enjoy working with things that are appealing to eye. Everyone has different tastes and different styles of work flow. Experiment not only with the wall paper, but also where the taskbar is placed and what toolbars are shown, etc.  Also play with the visual styles of windows as well. Right now I tend to like the vista glass with a lil black in it.  If you have xp, you can get vista glass.  

Add lifehacker.com to your RSS feed, they always have some pretty nifty desktop ideas, tools, and even lists of pimped/tricked out desktops, and just good productivity tips in general. 

If you need icons or if you like the Mac’s Dock, give rocket dock a try, its pretty customizable and you can replace the icons for whatever your trying to open. 

Gadgets.  If you have windows vista, you can try the gallery for finding some halfway useful gadgets. If you’re using xp or want better gadgets on vista you can try yahoo widgets or google gadgets.  Though gadgets are a cool desktop concept, they have really yet to take off with usefulness or high end eye candy, but you might find one or two to meet your needs.

Practical websites

Live Mocha – This is actually social networking language learning website that really has nothing to do with coffee other than the colors of the website. Its a decent learning tool and not to mention a good way of finding pen pals or other people interested in the same languages that you can practice with.

Live Strong – Calorie Counter that has tons of foods, and exercises taken into account? check. Must have information on the latest diet fads?  check. Must have it as an IPhone or ITouch application? check.  Must be a social network so you don’t feel alone… loser, i mean check.

Mint – looking for a good online free way to manage/budget/invest your money with a ton of awesome tools and that you can take with you on your IPhone or Itouch, then mint.com is the place for you

Life Hacker – need ways to be productive, find new gadgets that are worth the money, or just like to learn new ways of doing things…

Mozy – online data/documents/files backup that is unlimited for just 5$ a month isn’t bad, especially if you’re the tech geek for your family. If they have under 2 gigs of stuff, its free.

Remember the milk – Into the GTD (getting things done) way of doing things? Then check out remember the milk for your task lists. They also provide google gears, iphone application, gadgets and many other ways of entering and keeping track of your tasks. 

Doing dot .net?

Pimp your color themes…    Visual Studio Color Themes and Is your IDE hot or not?

T4 (Text Template Transformation Toolkit) – Visual Studio has code generation that has been there for while under the covers, not really used, but very useful.  Why are people spending money on code gen tools when you already spent a fortune on visual studio and comes with this gem?

Gallio – The one stop shop for running your unit tests and it comes packages with the killer mbunit 3.0. 

Moq – need an mock library that doesn’t suck, isn’t confusing and uses lambda? then take a look moq (mock you). 

Test Driven .net – I’ve been using this on my opensource project.  This is one of the very few add ons that I install for visual studio. It lets you run tests, code coverage reports and other nifty things right inside of Visual Studio. A time saver.

Reflector – Red gate now owns and updates reflector, but its still free, want to look at the source code for a dll, check this out.

Linqpad – need to write some linq queries and want to make sure they execute correctly, check out linqpad.

General Coding.

E-Texteditor – The power of text mate on windows.  This is pretty my replacement of note pad.  If you have mac font envy, you can grab monaco for windows. Or you can just use Consolas.

Stylizer – css styling for ajax applications, even with tools like firebug, can be a pain, cause that doesn’t exactly help you with IE and it doesn’t always help with doing heavy ajax applications with pops up and such. Enter stylizer (also coming to macs soon), which lets you style with a real time preview of how it would show in the actual browser (IE and firefox). 

FTP

winscp – you can ftp down, edit in e-texteditor and ftp the file right back when you save changes to the file.  nifty. 

filezilla – slick fast opensource ftp client and server. 

Instant Messenger?

pidgin – all your fav instant messengers and even ones you don’t know wrapped into one program.  

skype – voip, phone calls, sms texts, chats.  Definitely the professional grade instant messenger/ communications program. calls are even encrypted.

meebo – you online web page instant messaging client, in case your away and can’t download a client. 

Challenge.

Anything that will help you to be more productive always costs something. It could be money, but most of the time, its costs time. But invest some time now that might reap huge benefits later.  So I challenge you to take some time, get organized, find new efficient ways of doing things that fit your way of life and if you know of anything, programs or otherwise, feel free to add those in the comments below.