2007-05-28 Monday - some links...

I read an interesting article in the Seattle-pi.com today about price-optimization efforts in the retail sector.

From IBM, PHP and Apache Optimization articles:

Tuning LAMP systems, Part 1: Understanding the LAMP architecture - (How LAMP systems work, how to measure their performance, and how to tune the underlying operating system)

Tuning LAMP systems, Part 2: Optimizing Apache and PHP - (What slows Apache down, and how to get the most out of PHP)

2007-05-24 Thursday

I'm back in the Paciic Northwest. Three months aboard sailing vessel Renaissance - and I feel recharged.

This week I'm helping a client develop Detail Design Documents for one of their projects.

A quick google search yielded a few useful links to help direct the team toward some helpful articles on developing Click-Action-Response tables.

I think it is also useful for a team to familiarize themselves with the Software Engineering Institute's (SEI) Capability Maturity Model (CMM) - for example: CMMI for Development, Version 1.2 - there are many good ideas that can be culled from CMMI to help an organization improve their processes for software development. However, there is a bit of subtle art to knowing when and how to integate such practices into a production development team environment. I once taught CMMI to management at AT&T Labs in the late 1990's - and found it to be very helpful in providing a framework from which to begin process improvements. It certainly isn't a silver bullet - but it is better than no process discipline.

2007-03-29 Thursday - OS Vulnerabilities

I'm currently reading O'Reilly's Network Security Assessment book:

Seriously - you need to read that book if you are involved in developing software - or managing IT infrastructure.

Today I came across a very interesting write-up: 2006 Operating System Vulnerability Summary. Of particular note are the findings relative to FreeBSD 6.2 - relative to all the other operating systems.

2007-02-11 Traveling...

I'm flying out of Seattle this morning for a 4-5 month sabbatical - and a little bit of sailing.

I'm planning on using this time to do a couple of things:

- research application and architecture security threats / defenses / trends / developments

- an intensive period of Visual Studio 2005 development

- an intensive period of Java / Open Source development

When I return later in the spring / early summer - I will be re-charged, and with a much sharper edge.

2007 is going to be a great year.

2007-02-03 Software is hard...

There's an interesting article on salon.com: Software is Hard

I've been involved in software development efforts for the last 20+ years...over half of that time as a leader or manager - often still directly contributing to the coding effort.

Three of my most productive and successful periods of software development were done with none of the heavy processes that are quite often mandated in large mature organizations. Budgets were tight, production environments demanded rapid responses to competitive threats, resources were scarce. Under those conditions the teams excelled. In larger organizations, with massive budgets, and heavier processes - the results were more often than not: "crash and burn".

A handful of use cases, a good data model, the best talented developers you can afford, strong end-user involvement, and a strong architect leading the charge are what I have found works best time-after-time.

Too often, organizations that foster a culture of design by consensus via a committee - invariably end up burning 2x+ of their budget - and never produce any software that is actually deployed into production.

Case in point: U.K. Dept of Health: Prescription for Disaster