MCCC here we come
MCCC is the Moodle Course Creator Certificate available to us through HRDNZ. I have meant to do it for along time. So, now I have picked to do it just before the launch of Moodle 2 so that I can be out of date before I’m in date! Anyway, I understand it’s just an upgrade to the Certification. You need to stump up with $500 and 8 weeks part time. It’s not a course, they stress; it’s a benchmark. Personal project, narrative, examination. Watch this space.
That is important
Kohl’s Global English Style Guide gives the use of “that with verbs that take noun clauses as complements” (Kohl, 6.3, p115) a priority of 2 for human translation, non native speakers, and machine translation (where 1 is high, and 3 is low). Do some experiments to prove it for yourself. This is what I did, using Google Translate:
English: Check that the cables are not loose or damaged.
German: Prüfen Sie, ob die Kabel nicht lose oder beschädigt.
English: Check the cables are not loose or damaged.
English: Check the cables are not loose or damaged.
German: Prüfen Sie die Kabel nicht lose oder beschädigt.
English: Do not check the cables loose or damaged.
Oops! I shall not be omitting the that!
QuickSOD
You maybe know S*O*D as a technique for assessing risk.
Typically S, O, and D are measured on a scale of 5 or 10 each with some precise criteria for scoring to help members of a large team work together consistently in their efforts to quantify risk.
But individuals or smaller groups might benefit from a Quick or Lite version of SOD. Personally, I use it all the time. Even to assess the risk of a Sunday drive in the country reaching a successful conclusion.
Personally, if I have 10 (or even 5) levels, I start to hum and haw and dither and debate. But if I have just 3 levels I find I can decide almost immediately. Hence the laborious business of SOD becomes QuickSOD.
S = Severity, O = Occurrence, and D = Detectability.
What I like is three levels. Say: 1, 2 and 3 where…
S3 severe
S2 moderately damaging
S1 merely inconvenient
O3 highly likely to occur
O2 quite likely to occur
O3 not that likely to occur
D3 almost impossible to detect
D2 detectable if diligent
D1 openly visible or instrumented
Example:
Subaru salesman said the H6 had one huge benefit (apart from 250 hp)… it had an internal chain driven cam instead of an external belt driven cam. Reluctant to be parted with my money too quickly, I ran QuickSOD on the back of an envelope that had previously contained his payslip.
Belt drive breaks: S3, O2, D1 = 6
Chain drive breaks: S3, O1, D3 = 9
Ha, ha I win. The chain drive is a riskier proposition than the belt drive. Because you can’t easily inspect the chain drive. As all good PMs know… visibility is everything.
Fanfare to the Common Man
If you’re a computer programmer working at the kitchen table, or the owner of a micro-enterprise with 1 – 5 employees and you haven’t read this essay by Freeman J. Dyson, maybe you should now.
“Wherever serious computing was done, young people learned to write software and to use it. In spite of the rise of Microsoft and other giant producers, software remains in large part a craft industry. Because of the enormous variety of specialized applications, there will always be room for individuals to write software based on their unique knowledge. There will always be niche markets to keep small software companies alive. The craft of writing software will not become obsolete.” —Freeman J. Dyson
A micro-enterprise is defined as being “a type of small business having five or fewer employees and requiring seed capital of not more than $35,000.” —Wikipedia
A micro-business is defined as being “a business with a single owner-operator, and no employees.” —Wikipedia
If you’re a software craftsman (crafts-person) with no employees… go you!
Right to silence
McConnell Tip #22 Don’t give off-the-cuff estimates. Even a 15-minute estimate will be more accurate. Memories of Goffman and his “information preserve” where people ‘above’ you can demand your attention (traffic cop, bank manager)… In our context McConnell writes: “What if your boss calls on a cell phone and insists on getting an estimate right now?” Answer: Do not comply; fight for your rights; say no; say something like this: “I will call you back tomorrow when I have done some calculations.” Seen over your whole career you will be remembered for your honesty, your integrity, your professional approach—not for getting the boss off the hook on one occasion. It’s just not how software estimators work.
NZCS Birds of a Feather
Birds of Feather: The Challenges of Contract Tendering
This session was held at The Waterloo Bar and Grill, Waterloo Quay, Wellington December 16th 2009. It was facilitated by Steven Howard of Illumine Consulting. About 13 people attended. Steven had prepared a handout with 10 questions on it which we tackled one at a time. They were all good questions and stimulated a lot of discussion. There was further discussion once the official business was over. The highlights for me were: the ‘chosen vendor’ thing is not a myth; equally, in many cases GETS is a fair and equitable process; vendors could find it useful to see the budget for preparing the bid as a bet placed against the odds of winning, but had they calculated the odds, and were they certain the race was not rigged; one you’ve got to be able to fulfill the requirements, two the financials have got to pan out, three you’ve got to build relationships otherwise get out early and cut your losses; the agile approach is to get to know people by working with them, not by exchanging documents. I’m really glad I attended. There was good networking after. Thanks Steven!
Fiddling while Rome burns
Should you really have your key people creating nice diagrams? There are some cool pieces of free software: Google Sketch Up, Gliffy.com to name just two. You can spend—literally—hours making pretty diagrams that unquestionably add value to the bid document. But shouldn’t you have your engineers roughing something out with that blindingly fast tool pencil and paper, and then have them pass this to the bid writer to make into something visually sweet?
Engineer's sketch
Made in Gliffy
If the bid writer needs the services of a graphic artist, leave it to him or her to put that work out to a local agency. There’s another point here: If each engineer does his or her own diagrams, they will not be in the same style. Consistency should be the Holy Grail of bid documents: structure, content, and visuals.
So what’s with the average?
Is calculating the average of three or five people’s estimates meaningless? Or is it, as it appears here, 42… The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Let’s assume Wideband Delphi has completed its final round (final because either time has run or out, or because we aren’t getting any tighter, or because from the start we decided three rounds would be it) and still there’s some kind of a gap…
Wideband Delphi Round One: Note the position of the average indicated by the blue dashed line.
Wideband Delphi Round Three: Estimates are a whole lot closer now; note how the average has not actually moved that much.
As I see it, there are various options:
- calculate the average, and simply use that;
- take the most pessimistic;
- take the most optimistic.
The most democratic is to calculate the average, and use that. Everybody feels their calculations or opinion contributed to the result. Taking the most pessimistic, which appears to be the ’safe’ option has an obvious danger: Parkinson’s Law. Taking the most optimistic, which seems mad, has two obvious dangers: schedule pressure causes stress, and stress causes errors; if it’s way over-optimistic the project will overrun with all the associated pain that this process is meant to avert. So although calculating the average is just a geeky way of pinning the tail on the donkey, it seems it might actually be the right way to go?