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Software Development and Black Swans

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 08:24:00 +0000

In 2007, Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote a very influential book called The Black Swan - the title referencing to the idea that no matter how many white swans you see, you can never infer from them the existence of a (much rarer) black swan. The book was concerned with extreme events, particularly in the realm of investing, and how their likelihoods are so commonly underestimated. Taleb argues, among other things, that investors work under a flawed assumption that stock prices movements are normally distributed, so extreme market movements are unlikely. They are unlikely, but much less than expected, because traders do not always act rationally, and outside events can have a huge impact. He describes these unexpected triggers as black swans - surprising events, with a large impact.

So what does this have to do with software development?

Plenty, when it comes to estimating, planning and delivering projects. Most people have an assumption that a software project is, at heart, a reasonably predictable thing, and to varying degrees they're correct - based on experience, seasoned developers and project managers can usually come up with fairly decent estimates of how long a project will take. However, they all attribute incorrectly low probabilities to 'extreme' events occurring, which makes software projects more risky than they need to be. This is exacerbated by the speed of web projects, which, particularly in languages like PHP, are shorter and faster moving than more traditional projects. This means absolutely smaller events can have relatively larger impacts on the schedule.

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Scalability: People, Processes, Technology

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 11:45:00 +0000

In order to manage the success and popularity of a web site, it needs to be designed to cope with a growing number of users. A site designed to support 50 concurrent users can't serve thousands of simultaneous visitors without collapsing. Thus, the very success of a web site could also be the cause of its failure, if it is not able to sustain the sudden and exponential growth in number of users or requests.

A recent study by Computing & Double Take revealed that 83% of UK organisations admit downtime of several hours or more. Even if you manage to avoid a complete collapse, users will not stick around on a slow-loading site. The ability to grow (and shrink!) depending on need or availability thus becomes critical, directly affecting your revenue stream. A system that's able to cope with this changing demand is called scalable.
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What's current in the world of PHP?

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 12:20:00 +0000

2 weeks ago, Ibuildings organised the fourth Dutch PHP Conference in the RAI centre in Amsterdam. DPC is a way for us to help PHP developers learn new skills and improve existing ones, but it is also an excellent way to get experts from around the world together and learn about current trends in the PHP ecosystem.

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Integrating PHP And Java

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 10:20:00 +0000

PHP and Java are both languages with reputations for getting things done, and there are plenty of reasons for combining the two, particularly in an Enterprise environment. The most common situation is for an organisation with an existing Java infrastructure to want to develop PHP projects, for all the reasons any enterprise would choose PHP, such as speed of development, cost, desire to use specific open source applications, or availability of staff. Often this is inspired by an internal group who has started using Drupal, MediaWiki, Wordpress or similar to great effect, but without the integration to the rest of the organisation's infrastructure that would be needed for a full scale roll out.

There are many reasons to want to integrate these new developments with Java rather than just creating a separate silo - existing libraries or systems that would be difficult or expensive to replicate, well-tested systems providing key functionality, and an existing team of developers are just a few. So, the best way is often to mix and match the two - which is easier than it might first appear.

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Valuing Agile

Wed, 26 May 2010 08:28:00 +0000

It's not too hard to sell someone on agile, whether internally or between organisations. Almost every objection from a traditional project perspective can be countered by the flexible change process, and the potential for better results, and ultimately lower costs. However, at best this creates passive acceptance, which is just about enough for someone not directly involved in a project, but can cause a project to become massively unstuck if that person is a dependency. It is also a fragile acceptance - if a project goes awry, then the merely accepting person is likely to start pushing back towards traditional methods, to the detriment of the project. The eventual failure then reinforces any existing reservations towards agile.

What agile needs to succeed in is understanding and support, and that requires a difficult mental shift - viewing work in terms of business value. Even experienced agile practitioners can get bogged down in implementation, and forget the why of what they are doing. This is because our experience teaches us to think in terms of problems and solutions, and to prefer the better known to the unfamiliar. We get so focused on building software we don't stop to think whether it does what we really need. Ryan Shriver describes this as not knowing the difference between "delivering things right, and delivering the right thing".

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Creating Content Site Requirements

Tue, 18 May 2010 08:03:00 +0000

Core site content management system projects are incredibly common, but they are also often drawn out and painful. They're complicated projects because they often have a large number of stakeholders across different parts of the company. They can be a key part of digital or broader strategies, but also used for the most minor parts of day-to-day business. This mix makes it very difficult to tease out the essential aspects of the site, leading to a series of disappointing upgrades and replacements.

A successful CMS project begins with a good vision for the end result, which is expressed as a good set of requirements. Where most projects fall down is not in gathering enough requirements, but in gathering the right ones - and that's all about finding the real business value.

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New White Paper: 8 Tips for Avoiding Vendor Lock-in

Tue, 11 May 2010 09:43:00 +0000

Vendor lock-in makes companies unable to switch suppliers without substantial costs or inconvenience. While standards bodies and an increased focus on interoperability have helped reduce the threat of application lock-in, website and web application development can still be a minefield. Often, site owners only realise the dangers of lock-in once they are trapped with rising support and maintenance costs, slow and expensive change processes, and the prospect of prohibitive costs to develop an equivalent solution from scratch.

In this white paper, Ian Barber, one of the technical consultants in Ibuildings' Professional Services delivery unit, looks at eight ideas that can help companies avoid vendor lock-in:

Separate suppliers

Integrate rather than extend

Retain ownership of your data

Retain ownership of intellectual property

Look for mindshare

Document the processes

Prefer extensibility to features

Get a second opinion

Following these guidelines, it is possible to realise the benefits of working with external suppliers without fear of lock-in.

Download a PDF copy now (free, but we ask you to leave your contact details)

Migrating a dev team to an OO team (Part 2)

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 14:17:00 +0000

It's been nearly six months after my initial post on converting procedural teams to Object Oriented teams. After reading all the insightful comments on that post I've compiled a list with 10 steps to migrate your development team to an OO development team successfully.

Ask yourself why you want to migrate
Make some resources available
Make a plan
Upgrade the knowledge of the development team
Launch a pilot project
Evaluate the pilot project
Document the lessons learned
Upgrade the knowledge of the whole team
Spread the knowledge
Organize internal workshops

With these 10 steps you are able to successfully migrate your team from a procedural team to an effective OO team. Read on for a detailed explanation of each step.

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What does the iPad mean for PHP companies?

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 11:53:30 +0000

Tomorrow is the big day that everybody and their mother have been talking about for the past few weeks. The iPad will finally be available, albeit only in a very select part of the world. Some have shunned the iPad as 'just a web browsing device' or 'a large iPhone, why bother?' and others have hailed it as the end of the laptop.

I see the iPad (and the non-Apple alternatives that already exist or are on the way) as a game changer. It brings new ways of consuming content and will reach audiences that the laptop has never reached. Similar to how the iPhone had a whole new audience that had no prior smart phone experience, the iPad will attract a new generation of web consumers. Whether it's simply reading email on the couch, or using recipes in the kitchen or new ways of reading magazines (Dutch page, but watch the English embedded video, it's awesome); we are moving into a new phase of web consumption.

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Community Powered Employee Development

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 09:27:00 +0000

The open source community is built on the hard work of active volunteers. But what if those hardworking volunteers are people on your staff, and motivated to contribute their energies to something external to the company? And what if they ask you to support their endeavours in some way? Most managers would find this hard to support, and in fact many actively discourate moonlighting, either voluntary or otherwise. But anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that this is actually an excellent way to grow the skills of your existing workforce.

As an example, I'd like to share my own story. I hope that it'll inspire you to encourage your team members to dedicate more time on open source/community efforts.

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