Another stupid idea that devalues the concept of social recommendations. If any of my friends sign up for this I am un-friending and un-following you.

For all of those who demonize Apple as closed, remember this and WebKit. The code is available under an Apache license.

The Apple Lossless Audio Codec project contains the sources for the ALAC encoder and decoder.  Also included is an example command line utility, called alacconvert, to read and write audio data to/from Core Audio Format (CAF) and WAVE files.  A description of a ‘magic cookie’ for use with files based on the ISO base media file format (e.g. MP4 and M4A) is included as well.

Dilbert is still funny

Following my last post, I wanted to look at each of Forrester’s recommendations and add a little color commentary where I thought that they either don’t go far enough or have some gaps that you should not overlook.

• Improvement No. 1: Define Quality To Match Your Needs. When you read the headline, it sounds great. But unfortunately, it’s framed in the context that it’s not possible to deliver perfect quality, so try to focus on delivering good enough quality. I don’t disagree with the premise – Zero Defects is a myth. Even 5-nine’s quality delivers some real horrific stats when applied to things like plane crashes and survival rates of open heart surgery. Now software is never a life-or-death situation, but it’s important that when you define “good enough” that the metrics you define are tied back to the impacts on the business. How do the technical/operational metrics impact application performance, revenues, customer attrition, support costs. If you frame “good enough” within this context…and have measurable metrics…and the ability to measure accurately enough (think about building something that requires tolerances of millimeters, but all you have is a yardstick)…you’re in a good place. But in my mind we see too many products rushed to market (Google is a prime culprit) that just aren’t ready. There’s a mindset that it’s OK to ship beta-level products to your customers as a general release that I don’t believe is healthy.
• Improvement No. 2: Broadcast Simple Quality Metrics. I believe this is directionally right, but only half the story.  On one hand this speaks to the maturity of one’s engineering processes. If you have no metrics at all, you likely don’t have much of a process and almost no chance to improve it as you can’t tell whether any changes you make help or hinder the effectiveness of your software engineering team. This is an area where Ness SPL’s strategic consulting practice has helped clients install proper metrics programs. But the other piece where simple metrics fall short is that it implies that you’re looking at your own team’s performance in a vacuum. You should also try to measure yourself against other peers so that you can identify where you have the greatest opportunity for improvement and therefore where to focus the efforts of your SLDC process re-engineering efforts.
• Improvement No. 3: Fine-Tune Team And Individual Goals To Include Quality. Absolutely agree. If you don’t measure your people on the quality of software they deliver, it won’t happen. And importantly, these measures aren’t just for the testing team, but the entire R&D organization.
• Improvement No. 4: Get The Requirements Right. I’d say this is a bit of a “Duh” statement if it wasn’t for the number of times that companies don’t get the requirements right. In a Capers Jones study “Software Quality In 2010: A Survey Of The State Of The Art”, defects injected at the requirements stage are the number one source of delivered defects, the hardest to prevent and the most costly to repair.

• Improvement No. 5: Test Smarter To Test Less. There are a number of methodologies to try to optimize the effectiveness of your testing regime based on risk.  I want to amplify one of the suggestions that Forrester made because I didn’t think it came through clear enough, but feel is a very important point: focus your testing on sections with high rate of code change.  If the code didn’t change, it’s highly unlikely the test results will.
• Improvement No. 6: Design Applications To Lessen Bug Risk. If you look at Six Sigma dogma, Dr. Deming’s third principle is “Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality.” The object is to design quality into the product from the outset. Again looking at the Capers-Jones study, defects injected at the Design phase are the most severe and pervasive. Forrester states: “Architectural complexity, spaghetti coding techniques, and poor design all increase the likelihood that your application will contain bugs. Mitigate that likelihood with better design principles such as separation of concerns, frameworks, and design patterns to reduce design complexity and the likelihood of bugs in your code.”  ‘Nuff said.
• Improvement No. 7: Optimize The Use Of Testing Tools. Another area of full throated support except for one thing: tools alone don’t do very much. You need the expertise to know how to get the value of the tool and create a sustainable benefit. I am a big fan of test automation, but as I’ve written before, the line you draw between desiring a test automation program and an actual well run, sustainable test automation program, is not always straight.

Are you following any of Forrester’s “7 Steps”? Please provide share your thoughts and reactions in the comments.

Forrester’s Lisa Visitacion and Mike Gualtieri wrote an interesting report a few months back entitled “Seven Pragmatic Practices To Improve Software Quality” (subscription required). The crux of the report is that development teams are constantly and consistently under pressure to deliver software faster and therefore don’t have the time to implement a true best-in-class quality program. So in lieu of making fundamental changes to your teams’ existing processes, they suggest seven changes that can help you ensure that your software is good enough.

The report provoked a few thoughts from me, which I’ll break into two posts.

First, while each of the recommendations is individually valid, they are also sort of a cop out. I worry anytime I see the word “shortcuts” in a document.   You need to know whether the short cut is saving time and effort (good shortcut) or, to use a construction analogy, is akin to using baling wire and duct tape in structurally important areas (bad short-cut).

Now I do not believe that Forrester is arguing against using fundamentally sound software engineering and testing practices. They are merely trying to provide helpful guidance to make incremental enhancements to existing processes, acknowledging that we don’t live in a perfect world where R&D organizations have the luxury of all the time and resources they want to release perfect products. But, going back to my construction analogy, I think it’s important to know whether you’re adding these improvements to a strong foundation or a house of cards.

One might think that adherence to good software engineering principles is de jure in the technology companies we buy software from. But as a company that works with leading technology companies R&D organizations on product development initiatives, not only in the travel space, but also in the ERP, CRM, BI, Storage and Life Sciences space, I can tell you there is wide variability in the maturity of their engineering processes (in a CMMI-style context). One company’s process is not necessarily better than another’s, they’re just different.

It’s also important to realize that the level a company’s software engineering practices is not as much a reflection of the team’s skill or knowledge, but often a by-product of their collective experience. It’s just human nature – more often than not, you do things as you’ve seen them done before, especially if you’ve achieved successful outcomes in the past. But that does not necessarily make those practices best in class.

Having worked with such a wide community of technology leaders, Ness Software Product Labs has developed best practices around architecture, development and testing and helped our clients improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their software engineering teams and define effective metrics and measures to track their progress.

So while Forrester’s recommendations are good tweaks, they don’t replace the need for a thorough and rational review of your software engineering practices which can measurably and materially enhance the performance of your software engineering organization.

I understand that pushing change through an organization is hard and cannot be implemented overnight, but it’s important that when you undertake any change – major or minor – you understand the projected impact of those changes, and measure them to know whether those expectations are being met.  Will modest enhancements to your process achieve the objectives of the business? If so, great. If not, then you’re wasting energy and need to re-evaluate whether you have to embrace more significant changes, no matter the short-term pain.

In part 2 of the post, I’ll look at each of the “7 Steps” and add a little commentary.

After having recently read Seth Godin’s Linchpin: Are You Indespensible, I’m just finishing up Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath.  Both books are great reads by themselves, but I think that adding them together makes a more powerful combination than they are separately.

Godin sets a great vision of why it’s important to become indispensable (or at least not first on the firing line when times get tough) in the new economy.  But while he provides general characteristics of what makes a Linchpin and broad suggestions of how to become one, he doesn’t lay out the path (people who have already read Switch get this first clue).  More likely than not it will require a change in an individual’s behaviors to actually become one.  That’s where Switch comes in.

Predictably, and perhaps sadly, I saw many familiar storylines in Switch – some related to companies I’ve worked for and others related to my own work-style.  But Switch gives the reader a framework in which to effect the changes called for in Linchpin – both for themselves and how to create leverage withing their organizations.  The approaches in Switch should be especially useful in cases where you have access to limited resources to move your agenda forward, which I would imagine is pretty standard fare for most people.

Amazon does list both books under the “Customers who bought X also bought Y”, but I didn’t see a special deal to buy the two books together on Amazon, but I’d suggest that you do anyway.

Have you read Linchpin or Switch yet?

I’m sure many of you saw the Mashable and TechCrunch posts about Adobe Platform Evangelist Lee Brimelow’s latest post on the Flash Blog where he ends the post “Go screw yourself Apple.”

As the Mashable piece states, it’s understandable that the folks at Adobe are hopping mad at the latest move by Apple which appears to say that apps created in apps like Adobe Flash Creative Suite, but exported to Apple code won’t be accepted…a mere few days before the release of CS5 (for more background see this post and this one from John Gruber – no relation – at Daring Fireball).  And I’m not even saying whether or not he’s completely right or wrong in his position or that the post is over the top (well, it is).  But from a pure communications perspective I think it’s a mistake for a number of reasons.

• Never write angry  (and he does). It comes through the words and I think you lose credibility with your audience, especially when you’re arguing for your self-interest. I think it distracts from whether their position is right or wrong.  It just becomes complaining.
• Brimelow tried to cast the issue of Flash on the iPad/iPhone/iTouch as a red herring, and it’s not.  It may not be the proximate reason for the post, but it’s surely a major point of contention and in the back of the mind of EVERYONE at Adobe today.  It’s just another statement that seems to belie the true intention of the post and lowers the credibility of the argument he’s trying to make.
• The biggest error I saw was at the very end of the post.  Brimelow tries to separate his views from the company by saying “Now let me put aside my role as an official representative of Adobe for a moment…” just before he says “Go screw yourself Apple”.  First of all the man is a developer evangelist for Adobe and his job is to use his blog and any other platform to communicate and energize developers about Adobe’s platform.  Merely asking us to ignore that for the last 4 words of the post is moronic.  It’s even stupider given that earlier in the post, he redacts a sentence at Adobe’s request.  In my mind, this is an explicit statement that Adobe communications pros have reviewed the post before it went out, which in my mind is defacto approval of the “screw yourself” statement by Adobe.  I mean am I wrong here?
• Lastly, I think it was a mistake to close comments on the post. Brimelow tries to play this off by saying he doesn’t want spam from Cupertino, but I think more likely he’s just afraid of negative feedback from others in the developer community.  Closing off comments isn’t going to stop Steve Jobs.  I’m sure that if Steve wants to, he’d go on CNN and rip this guy.

What do you think? Agree/disagree? Did I miss anything?

In the post by TechCrunch’s Evelyn Rusli, introduces many to Erply a new firm that just raised $2M from some reputable sources and was a 2009 Seedcamp winner.  Apparently they have a number of customers and are profitable.  All good things and I look forward to seeing what they do in the future.

But there was a comment by Saul Klein, a partner at Index Ventures (one of the investors in this round) and co-founder of Seedcamp, that puzzled me. Klein stated:

“We think Erply can do for business software what Skype did for telecom”

My question is whether that was supposed to be a complement. Skype is a wonderful product that I use every day. And yes, they sold themselves for $2.75B to Ebay, but Ebay divested Skype a few years later losing almost $1B on their investment. Not good business by most accounts. I will agree that Skype has disrupted many telecom players, but where is the business for Skype? I downloaded their app for free and make calls and IMs for free. I can pay to call landlines, but I don’t and why would I?

So I’m not so sure that Skype is a great company for Erply to model itself after…unless all Klein is concerned with is a profitable exit, not necessarily a sustainable, growing business.

What’s your take? Am I all wet on this?

The march of the app stores continues, but this time for the enterprise, not the smartphone.  Earlier this week Google launched their Apps Marketplace to much fanfare with about 50 apps including Intuit, Concur, TripIt and Zoho and reportedly bigger players like Netsuite are on the way.  The App Marketplace provides very tight coupling with their Google applications like Gmail, Calendar and Docs and With OpenID integration, Google Apps users can access the other applications without signing in separately to each.  Certainly a benefit for ease of use, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find that many CIOs and IT professionals don’t feel too good about entrusting a part of their security to Google.

I’ve read in a few areas that Google’s move is mean to bolster Google’s position against Microsoft’s cash cow, the Office suite of productivity apps which sells for $400 – and hasn’t really changed in 10 years other than the introduction of the ‘ribbon’ UI – versus Google’s productivity offering which is free or you can purchase the “business” version for a mere $50/year.

Clearly this is the thrust of the announcement at this point in time, with Google VP, Engineering Vic Gundotra stating: “The Applications Marketplace makes it easy for domain administrators to discover and install new software and have it integrated into Google Apps.”

But I’m not sure that this is the real target.  Dennis Howlett questions whether the Google Apps Marketplace is ready for primetime, but notes that surprisingly Salesforce.com was conspicuously missing from the announcement.  I was not particularly surprised and it leads me to my primary question: “What is SFDC CEO Marc Benioff thinking about Google’s little announcement?”

This to me is more likely another gambit to try to strengthen Google’s position in the Cloud/PaaS market than it is to try to destroy Microsoft’s in the productivity app space…although I don’t doubt it’s an objective.  I think that the Google App Marketplace is in direct challenge to SFDC’s AppExchange and SFDC’s attempt to become a Cloud platform company with Force.com.  Now I suppose there could be technical coexistence, but as each is trying to build their own app portal and become a PaaS play (Force.com v. AppEngine), there seems to be too many competitive obstacles for me to see them playing together.

For sure SFDC has a huge lead in terms of apps available on AppExchange (~1,000) versus Google also has several advantages in this battle (if it’s indeed taking place):

• Openness: It’s true that to connect with either the Apps Marketplace or AppExchange you don’t need to leverage their PaaS platforms, but that’s clearly the direction both Google and SFDC would like you to go.  Google by far has a more open PaaS platform where you have much more flexibility in the code choices that you use.  Force.com on the otherhand requires you to use their proprietary APEX code which is much more painful to migrate to and, while similar to Java and doesn’t have a terribly steep learning curve, requires your developers to learn a new language and development environment.  And there’s a bit of “Hotel California” feel to the platform because as difficult as it would be to move to APEX, it would be equally as difficult to leave it.
• Rabid Developer Base: You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting someone who wants to develop on Google these days.  As Don Dodge notes in his post about the Apps Marketplace “Building a vibrant ecosystem on a business platform is all about developers. Giving developers an easy way to sell their products to millions of customers is a big plus.”  And there is no question that Google is committed to growing it’s developer base.  Don’s presence at Google is testament to that (and I’m still flummoxed as to why Microsoft ever let him go; but that’s another story).
• Larger User Base: There’s no question that Salesforce is an giant in the CRM industry with over a billion dollars in revenue and surpassing the million user mark and about 72,500 customers.  Compare that with Google’s Apps user base: 25 million people are using Google Apps in more than two million businesses. It recently said that only hundreds of thousands of those users were paying customers. But those are still huge numbers and doesn’t include the 150M users of GMail or takes into account the fact that SFDC has had well over a decade to build to those numbers while Google Apps is a relatively new service.
• Search: Oh yeah, that’s right.  Google does search too.  Now I’m not saying that somehow Google will automatically bump up Marketplace participants in their search results. But the fact of the matter is that a lot of people start their day in Google and that can’t hurt.  I can also see opportunities in the future where companies can enhance the functionality of their products by integrating Google’s search technology directly into their products and that can’t be bad.

Anyway, if I’m Benioff I’m concerned.  But so far it looks like everyone’s playing nice or at least deflecting any discussion.  Gundotra only focused on Google’s apps and recently Benioff has been talking about why enterprise software companies aren’t more like Facebook (who Google also seems to have in their sites, although Buzz and Wave have been less than inspiring so far).  So I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’.

What do you think? Should Salesforce be worried?  What do YOU think Benioff is thinking? Let me know.

This was the only commercial that my wife and I actually watched as we sped thru the Oscars on DVR.  But I was very disappointed.  Apple advertising usually hits it out of the park, but in my opinion this had no impact. It didn’t spend time really communicating any of the capabilities of the device. It all went too fast.  Apple hopefully will create a number of different spots promoting specific capabilities that they believe will drive consumer adoption. Personally, I still plan on buying one, but if I was on the fence, I don’t think that this ad would have pushed me over.

The only thing Apple has going for it is that their advertising is still miles better than Microsoft’s advertising and Google hasn’t bothered at this point. I must say that I’m appalled at the Microsoft Windows 7 ads. I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while, so as it kind of fits here, let’s go. The Windows 7 ads fails along several dimensions:

• It tries to be a little hip and isn’t.  It’s actually that uncomfortable in-between, just a shade better than Bill Gates wiggling his butt, which may be the all time worst moment in advertising history — or at least Bill Gates’ career.  The whole “I’m a PC”-thing doesn’t have the warm and fuzzies of a Mac campaign if for no other reason (beyond the abject awkwardness of the spots themselves) that “PC” is not a cuddly term the way that “Mac” is.  The “PC” as a brand of sorts represents nearly every over-structured, unfeeling, bland attribute that one ascribes to the factory-like businesses (to borrow a concept from Seth Godin’s Linchpin) that most people work for, and the very same attributes which most people dislike about their jobs.  They may have well featured the uber-boring “Knit Knots” from Disney’s kid-show the Imagination Movers (see pic) in the ads.
• It portrays mighty Microsoft as clueless about how software should behave, giving consumers credit for every good idea that made it to the gold code.  I understand that they’re trying to create a connection to consumers, show that they were listening to what didn’t work in Vista and other prior iterations of the Windows OS.  I just wonder whether a ‘mea culpa‘ ad that said “We listened, and here is your new operating system that we think you’re gonna love” would have worked better and felt more authentic.  But perhaps Microsoft’s general inability to admit mistakes is what truly makes this campaign authentic.
• Lastly, so many of the features that are highlighted are so basic (paraphrasing: ‘I wish it would start up fast and just work’) and seem to echo the benefits of Mac OSX that it could have had a slightly different, yet crushing ending with each of the people featured saying “It’s a Mac”, rather than “I’m a PC”.  Anytime an ad sets up that way, it portrays a fatal flaw, at least in my opinion.