The larger the mistake, the more profound the opportunity to extract deep and lasting value from the lesson.
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Tag Archives: Career Development
PERSPECTIVE: Dispelling some Myths about ITIL
Occasionally, I find people surprised of my interest in ITIL, knowing that the industry I work in is Internet. With curiosity: “How do you apply ITIL on website and internet!” people ask. In other occasions I found people surprised that I am implementing this gradually without having this as part of a formal and official Implementation program!
That said, I believe there are a lot of myths around ITIL and I find my self obliged to clarify the ambiguity.
- ITIL iss a governance framework, and that’s why it is highly required and valid for industries where governance is usually considered an integral part.
Completely wrong!. ITIL is a Service Management framework. ITIL is a set of good practices build upon the philosophy of thinking of all the effort and activities in the context of providing value to the end user in the form of service. IT should be aware that the end result is the value that is delivered and not a working set of IT components! . That said, ITIL can be applied to IT regardless of the industry.
Continue reading
TIP: Time-box your tasks
Don’t ever start working on something without defining a deadline!
Not defining a time to finish the task or at least to decide on the next step/action is definitely counter productive.
Not setting a deadline, puts the task in the control seat! It controls the situation and you keep following it. At best the task will take way longer than expected. Worse, it gives your manager the impression that things are not under control, which is true! .
REVIEW: Rework
Image by Mathieu Thouvenin via Flickr
A nice quick reading that is very suitable for small companies, entrepreneurs, and employees stuck in big corporates bureaucracy.
For engineers and developers who are just on board, I believe this book is a must-read.
Though most of the thoughts and ideas makes a lot of sense, I believe some are very specific to signal37 experience and cannot be necessarily generalized and dealt with as rules of thumb.
All in all I have enjoyed reading this book. Below some of the rules that I really liked:
“Start making something”
“Throw less at the problem”
“Interruption is the enemy of productivity”
“Tone is in your finger”
“Meetings are toxic”
“Don’t be a hero”
“Don’t copy”
“Say no by default”
“Don’t confuse enthusiasm with priority”
“Don’t write it down”
“Hire a manager of one”
“Own your bad news”
“They’re not thirteen”
“Send people home at 5″
and “ASAP is poison”
Related Articles
- Summary and Review of Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson (bookstove.com)
- Rework (feint.me)
- Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson of 37Signals (theequitykicker.com)
REVIEW: One Minute Manager
Cover of The One Minute Manager
One Minute Manager is a book that you could finish in one session! the book is a story-like where a young man is meeting the One Minute Manager, his reports and coworkers to understand the secrets of the One Minute Manager efficiency.
According to the book, One Minute Goals, One Minute Praisings and one Minute Reprimands is all you need to be an effective manager. The main idea of the 3 techniques is to give straight forward directions and feedback in one minute only.
It all starts with One Minute Goals. The goal is no more 250 words, fits on one paper and requires only a minute to read
As the employee start with the implementation, Continue reading
PERSPECTIVE:Changing the vector – Part 1
Knowing nothing about software security, software development methodologies, latest technology trends, web technologies, web protocols or even the most common used web protocol, HTTP.
This is the typical computer sciences major graduate in Jordan. He is clueless, lacking practical knowledge and real connections with the practical world.
Sadly, finding good fresh graduate candidates in Jordan is very hectic. I have experienced that over the last 5 years, as I have been directly responsible of hiring software developers for offshore offices
My latest round of interviews was really depressing. I have interviewed more than 50 fresh graduates, only 2 of them heard of Python1! During their entire study, most of the interviewees barely developed 1 or 2 applications. Some did not even have a graduation project as it is selective!
There is something wrong that leads to a poor graduates’ quality; might be university curricula, teaching techniques or educational culture.
Honestly, I was reluctant to share this, till I read “Shifting Geopgraphy of Offshoring” by A.T. Kearney 2. The report lists the top 50 destinations for providing outsourcing activities worldwide, based on financial attraction, people skills and availability, and business environment.
According to the report, Jordan scores .91 out of 3 for “people skills and availability”, it ranked 36 out of the 50 countries for this metric. Countries like Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Mauritius are ranked higher than Jordan.
To put this into context, the score is based on:
• Size of existing IT and BPO sector
• Contact center and IT center quality certification
• Quality rating of management schools and IT training
• Total Workforce
• University educated work force
• Work force flexibility
• Scores on standardized education and language tests
• Relative IT and BPO sector growth and unemployment rates.
So, what we used to consider an attraction factor – having a skilled resources pool – is not really as good as we think. At least six of the eight measurements are directly or indirectly dependant on the educational system. Apparently, we are not doing very well, at least according to the report. We really need to do something, we need to ” change the vector”.
Fortunately, we still have time to adjust. Jordan overall score is 5.49 out of 10. We rank 9th among the top 50 destinations. Enhancing our stand in “people skills and availability” is possible, yet it needs a lot of effort especially on our educational system.
Said that, I believe we are obliged to take serious action to guide college students and graduates to be productive, knowledgeable and skilled. University, private and public sectors are all sharing the responsibility. I n the second article of this series I will shed the light on some ideas to do so.
1 Python is one of the 3 official languages used in Google, the biggest player in the web arena
2 A.T. Kearney is a global management consulting firm that uses strategic insight, tailored solutions and a collaborative working style to help clients achieve sustainable results. Since 1926, we have been trusted advisors on CEO-agenda issues to the world’s leading corporations across all major industries. A.T. Kearney’s offices are located in major business centers in 36 countries. For more information, please visit www.atkearney.com.
PERSPECTIVE: tools change, experience persists
Which programming language do you use to develop applications? A question usually asked by interviewees the first chance they can ask the interviewer for a software development position.
Such question, I believe, reflects immaturity and lack of vision and experience. On the other hand, an employer looking for a PHP – or any other specific language – developer lacks the knowledge and the vision as well! At best case, it implies that the employer is looking for a donkey-worker rather than a real developer!
Looking for or offering a ”tool-oriented” developer position is very similar to looking for or offering a “Hammer Expert” rather than a “Carpenter”.
Programming languages, by themselves, are just tools and not solutions. Keep writing code is not really a valuable experience. After all how long does it take to learn new programming language syntax? one week? two weeks at most?
Experience is what we are looking for. After all, your experience, determine your market value and, in turn, your salary. Real experience for software developers lies in enhancing problem solving techniques by getting exposed to real challenging issues. Experience lies in understanding business issues, their technical context and constraints, deciding the most appropriate approach to solve them and finally using the “tool” to implement the solution.
That does not mean that learning a certain programming language techniques and tricks is not important. But it should not be a vital factor in the hiring/accepting decision.
Taking web development as an example, good web developers have good knowledge in front-end engineering, web security, SEO, design patterns, and web protocols . All of them are not programming language specifics.
So, you’re looking forward to have a decent career path in software development, you have to :
- realize that you need more than a tool – programming language – Under your belt
- realize that you should control the tool and not the opposite
- reject any “tool oriented” position – if you have the luxury
- - ask the right question “What type of development challenges I will be facing”, to give the right impression about your career aspiration
Finally, always remember, tools change, experience persists.
EVENT: A Step in the thousand mile journey
Time went quickly, this is how it goes whenever you’re having a nice conversation, and this is how it went with Dr. Adnan El-Nasan, Dean Assistant in Hijjawi Faculty of Engineering.
Dr. Adnan’s visit to Bayt.com is part of Hijjawi Faculty of Engineering initiative to build relations with businesses. Hijjawi Faculty of Engineering, represented by Dr Adnan, is seeking to break the ice and to build a feedback loop and real interaction with businesses.
Dr. Adnan came with a very clear agenda. Together we went over the following:
- Curriculum development: We agreed that students should have better understanding of different computer engineering and science concepts. And they should have more exposure to and knowledge in:
- open source concepts and technologies: Fortunately, Hijjawi Faculty of Engineering has already started with this, they have been building relations with international organizations interested in supporting open source. At the moment, Hijjawi Faculty of Engineering teaches a Linux course as part of their curriculum. The course covers different operation system aspects down to customizing the operating system to meet your own needs!
- Software development methodologies: This is already part of the curriculum and is taughtas part of Software Engineering course. However, the real challenge is to convince students with the importance of methodologies to produce quality software. We agreed that business can play a vital role through seminars and presentations that reflects real life examples and applications.
- Web architecture, Web Development and Web concepts: we agreed that the curriculum should emphasize more on them. Again, businesses can play a vital role to help students understand that web development is very challenging and requires much more than HTML and JavaScript
- Interaction events: we agreed on the importance of participating in workshops, seminars and presentations held in the university. This is highly required to help student realize the importance of the concepts introduced to them and how they are practically applied. It will also help students to broaden their horizon and to prepare themselves better to be competitive in the job-market.
- Professional training and job opportunities for college students.
The discussion was very fruitful and reflected a sincere desire from Dr. Adnan and Hijjawi Faculty of Engineering to improve the quality of their graduates in order to have a higher positive impact on the community.
I was really very pleased to meet Dr. Adnan. His passion, energy, and focus have inspired me. And who knows, this step might be one step – if not the first – in the one thousand mile journey toward having a real software and computer industry through collaboration between universities and businesses in Jordan.
LINK: Top 25 Dangerous Programming Errors
Do you want to develop secure applications?
Do you want to architect secure applications?
Are you a security analyst? or interested to do so?
Then you cannot miss this link. It is a list of the most dangerous 25 programming errors compiled by over 30 experts from different international organizations concerned with software security.
