Agile Application Development

I read an article on Agile development: “Agile Adoption – Crossing the Chasm: Why is it so difficult to switch to agile process from waterfall?” by Udayan Banerjee

The article explains how the old school waterfall process of locking down requirements when developing solutions is flawed. This process does prevent scope creep but at the end of the day the solution does not meet the business needs because business needs are changing and it is impossible to really know the requirements right from the onset. The result is that you end with an application that meets the requirement document and is completed on budget and on time but does not meet the business needs. There is a gap between what the business needs and the requirements at the onset of the project. The only way to close the gap is by using an iterative agile process like scrum. Successful application development teams know this and are actively pursuing this kind of methodology. The challenge of course becomes around budgeting, scheduling and how frequent to release each update to the user team. This article does a good job of walking through this.

Is there a place for a more agile design and deployment process for infrastructure implementation? Not completely however, understanding why agile development is effective and the direction for application development should help when doing infrastructure implementation. Keeping the agile concepts in mind and working toward more integration of the users in envisioning planning and deploying an infrastructure solution will help ensure the business needs are met.

Here is a link to Mr. Banerjee’s article:
http://udayanbanerjee.ulitzer.com/node/1137387

Goals for 2010

If you have not already created written goals for 2010 it is time. This can be done in less than an hour, so don’t let the task intimidate you. You may want to wrap it all in to a New Year’s resolution - “This year I will exercise every day and lose 20 lbs……and this time I mean it!”

Clearly the hard part about goals is executing on them. If you don’t know what they are how can you possibly execute on them. Write your goals down and keep them handy – try to review at least once a month to see how you are tracking. Create a relatively short list as too many goals are overwhelming. Create clear measurable goals and target work, personal and family. Share them with someone who will support you and this will help drive success. If you really want to put yourself out there, share your goals with everyone! You probably do not want to do this around financial goals as this can create problems.

Create one year and five year goals and it is incredible how effective this can be with a little discipline! Ok, a lot of discipline….. Nothing worthwhile is easy.

IT Budgeting for 2010

Since we are heading into a new year it is appropriate to discuss IT Budget for 2010. I read an interesting article in CFO Magazine that suggests you should be able to cut 9% to 11% of your budget: “How to Save 11% of Your IT Spend” by David McCann.

The essence of the article is that by modifying last year’s budget IT spends 10% more than they would if they did a from scratch green field approach. This includes the cost associated with the additional time to do a budget from scratch. The article does point out that there are diminishing returns if you do this every year so it suggests breaking the budget into 12 segments and doing a different segment every quarter creating a 3 year cycle.

Creating a budget from scratch does help for all budgeting - not just IT. We have been successful cutting costs dramatically by revisiting expenses with a fresh perspective. There is nothing like a challenging economy to motivate companies to examine costs.

Here is the article “How to Save 11% of Your IT Spend” by David McCann:
http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/14461534/c_14462479?f=home_todayinfinance

Desktop Virtualization Update

I read an article “Desktop Virtualization: Ready for Prime Time or Still Hype?” by Jessica Davis. I have been following the desktop virtualization market since the mid-90s with Citrix Metaframe. I saw many very un-happy desktop virtualization customers in the late 90s and early 2000s and fortunately we did not implement those solutions.

Here is an excerpt from Steve Ballmer at the Paine Webber Technology Conference back in 1999:

"You know, when you get guys like Scott McNealy and Larry Ellison and Lou Gerstner talking about the end of the PC era, … Fully 60 percent of the personal computers that are sold around the world are used by knowledge workers. They're not just used for manufacturing or order entry or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They're used by people like the people in this room, to send e-mail, to take notes, to do presentations, to do financial analysis, and that is best done today with an intelligent device. Maybe with some of the intelligence, more split client and server, but we can't take tools away from knowledge workers. There are just so many more things knowledge workers want to do. "

So, in ten years has this changed?

A little has changed as we are now constantly connected to the internet. We can do more with a terminal today and a terminal is easier to manage and secure. However, it will be a long time before I give up my PC and this article supports this showing 74% of CIOs do not have a plan for desktop virtualization. The one industry that does have a plan for desktop virtualization is the financial sector and this makes sense as security is extremely important.

Clearly there are situations where it makes sense to save money by implementing a desktop virtualization solution. When it is time to do a desktop refresh IT leaders will want to investigate both a PC and a virtualized desktop option. Each situation will be different and needs to be analyzed on a case by case basis. Every year desktop virtualization will make more sense than in the past year but will not completely replace the PC - Not yet anyway.

http://www.channelinsider.com/cp/bio/Jessica-Davis/

VMotion Sickness

I read an interesting article regarding VMotion Sickness : “Virtualization Will Cross the Chasm in Two Years” by Greg Ness

VMotion Sickness is a term coined to describe the effects from too many virtual machines moving around and VM Sprawl. This causes everything to run slower due to the overhead associated with VMs moving. This negates the basic virtualization benefits of better utilization of resources. VMotion is of course a management tool yet it can be a part of your virtualization management problem.

How do you deal with VMotion Sickness?

It starts with planning and management. Do a comprehensive capacity plan and implement structured management. Here are three keys to success:

1. Monitor right from beginning so you have a long history of data to troubleshoot problems
2. Keep a keen eye out for any virtualization bottlenecks
3. Know what is running on your infrastructure – keep details and avoid server sprawl

You may also want to read this article: “ Virtualization Will Cross the Chasm in Two Years”:

http://web2.sys-con.com/node/1203744