A Business Less Ordinary

A New Building and New Horizons

This weekend represents something significant in Exilesoft history as we have moved out of our two story premises at Park Street, only to take over our own five story building down the road, at 201 Sir James Peiris Mawatha. The move will officially be effective from Monday 8. August, when all our employees will report to the new location. The new Exilesoft Building is located close to the beautiful Beira Lake which stretches through central Colombo, and we're also within walking distance- or a short three-wheeler ride- from our partner hotel Cinnamon Grand. From any other of Colombo's business hotels, we're only few minutes away. This makes the new location even more convenient to our visiting clients and partners.

The new building will first and for all provide us with a lot more floor space to accommodate our growing organization, but will also provide us with greatly improved video conferencing facilities, including further improved leased line bandwidths.

It has been a challenging project as we have refurbished the entire building including all it's basic infrastructure such as power lines, diesel generator (backup), and total security. However, our own project team managed the entire project from the beginning till it's end, and delivered the building perfectly within both budget and time.

A soft landing for a hard project and a good Agile exercise!

A Business Less Ordinary

I think I have my words intact on this. This business is Less Ordinary.

We're closing in on our three year anniversary since inception here at Exilesoft, and just as our business was running smooth and steady, we decided to take on a new challenge.

A challenge which I feel in many ways is one of the toughest and most difficult any management team can set out for - namely acquiring the running business and staff of another company, this time even with slightly larger staff than our own. With it comes offices in two new countries to us; Sweden and Australia.

The most critical phase has already started; making everyone come together under One Company- and even more important; under One Identity. I have been down this road before, but it has been a while (..) and the circumstances are now very different from back then in Norway in the nineties.

Having said that, I know I have a great team with me on both sides in this process, and I look forward to this new year with great anticipation to see what this great new Exilesoft team will be able to achive!

So we've started out our business year of 2011 in Exilesoft with a larger team of highly skilled professionals, and with responsibility for running successful projects in 5 different countries.

Thats Less Ordinary if you ask me.

We've had quite a cheerful week here in office as the Microsoft Gold Certified Partnership was awarded us on Tueday. It's actually quite interesting to see how an achievement like this has a boosting effect on the overall spirit in the building :) I mean; we were just as good last week, but now Microsoft told us so! :)

If you're in town, you're very welcome to stop by The Parkway on Friday night and join our celebration! :)

Waving Hello and Goodbye

One of the things that truly fascinate me these days is Google Waves. It gives me the feeling of coming home. I mean there’s nothing in Google Waves I find “wow’ish” in the sense that I haven’t seen it “done” before- independently that is. What makes me love the Waves is how the thinking has been put together to erase the borders between different technologies.

The first thing I loved about my waves was the old “ICQ” way of communicating. You remember those guys from the late 90’s? I’m currently testing the environment together with a developer in the U.S. and the first time we waved online at the same time, I laughed loudly by seeing my question answered before I had finished the sentence. This happens as waves are instant keystroke by keystroke and so the message you’re typing is read and understood even before its final. Like ICQ in the 90’s.

Now you can add more people into the conversation and if they join late they can even press the “playback” button and get a rundown of the previous part of the conversation. The next great thing is to insert a comment directly into a previous sentence or relate it to a word or part of a sentence. So when I’m invited to join my kids discussion about their weekend plans (let’s just envision for a second such a remote possibility..) I can comment on my son’s party plans and attach my message directly into that part of their conversation. Better even; I can drag some pictures from my favorite ski resort onto their conversation and ask if that could be an alternative to the planned party? Even when dragging a cluster of highres images into the wave, the images will be visible to the others in low resolution almost instantly, and loong before they are actually loaded onto the Wave servers. I really love this.

Now, Waves wouldn’t fascinate me the way it does if its thinking didn’t invite for much more practical and real life applications to me than chats and playful stuff. Most of our software development days are spent on issues far from programming chat rooms or picture sharing software. A good deal of our work is related to “numbers” and “workflows” within systems like Human Resource Planning, Customer Relationship Management and Financial Systems. Not many “wow” factors there you’d say..?

Well let me take you into the future here with some of those applications. In our FutureWorld, independent systems from various vendors will be blending together on “Waves”. This means that instances and their related pieces of information will be made visible across boundaries and platforms and presented on your screen despite the fact that you never even installed the piece of software where the action is now happening! It’s now coming to you on a Wave. Still a bit unclear you’d say? Let me feed it to you.

In this scenario your accountant is just updating the company books and in the process has just entered your expense record from your recent trip to Paris. Now he entered the debit / credit amount of €250.00 for your hotel, and then wonders if any mini-bar items were included in the invoice. He simply marks the voucher amount, right-clicks it, and posts it on a wave to you where he adds his comments. You will immediately get the wave as a blinking “conversation” at the bottom of your screen and are free to answer it now or later. Let’s assume you will choose the latter. In this scenario your accountant will soon finish off with his work and go home for the day, while you’ll be ordering your take-out pizza for your (too regular) office dinner.

When you later in the evening open his wave you’ll see the complete transaction in a window together with his question. You can directly reply to the wave like you would to a chat, and drag an image copy of the mini-bar bill, which you have kept separately, onto the wave. Or record and add your verbal comments. This way or that way, tomorrow morning your accountant will find your message and image attach to the voucher itself, inside the bookkeeping system. And it will remain there for the eternity of the transaction, and available for the auditors if there’s ever a second question to the issue.

Similarly a security inspector who is out on an oilrig in the north Atlantic can open a real-time video stream on his iPhone and connect with a Wave to the security officer in Stavanger. Now, integrating text, video and voice, two senior managers are added to the Wave to make a decision, and the complete record of it all is forever stored in the Security system of the company.

Now these future possibilities makes a pretty big WOW to me.. and only your imagination will be the limit to where you can go with your applications.

For starters, I think you just got a hell lot closer to that Indian accounting guy down in Hyderabad..

About our P2P Cairo lecture, Scrum and Documentation

We're very much in the final stages of our preparations for Cairo- Thushara has even started to find the total mental calmness needed to do the totally cool performance I know she will eventually put on, once there. Exilesoft's hard-core Scrum Project management work is turning into a stage show for 2,000 P2P participants.

I think we've actually learned a lot in this process. Sometimes you just need to take a serious walk through the total logic of everything you do to get the right picture. Even redefine the way you do certain things to be able to get it really right! We've spent endless hours discussing the weight points, challenges, and joint experiences in projects from the past years to see how it all fits in with what we do every day and WHY we're doing what we're doing the way we do..

I'd say that even if Cairo and P2P was cancelled tomorrow our effort would have been worthwhile! Our ESPM (Exile Scrum Project Management) has been reborn :)

One subject that seems to become an eternal one in Scrum discussions is related to Scrum and documentation. 

I believe this is a very important discussion as there are so many people out there that seem to think there's a basic conflict between running scrum (targeting early delivery and "speed to market") and still documenting the system and what you do, and we'll face that question in Cairo - for sure.

Considering WHY you want the documentation in the first place may be a good way to get off on the right foot. Some would need it to get off the hook if anything goes wrong, or just to feel that they have control that everything has been done. Checklist. 

As offshore development is often driven by the desire of having a massive (but temporary) development effort, the final piece of software will often be passed back to an internal IT department for maintenance and modifications, once the offshore project is completed. This will require good system documentation to guide and manage the maintenance work, but probably stop short of a full set of UseCases.

Others would need comprehensive documentation as part of a future Due Diligence or IPO if the software in question makes up an important part of the corporate balance sheet or represents a key shareholder value. In this scenario the documentation would soon move into the RUP sized structure and seriously tie down any attempt of Scrum / agile strategy in development.

In several of these situations where the more heavy documentation is required, it may be a good idea to separate the actual documentation effort from the main development team and run it as a separate project or sub-project. As there are as many approaches and different motives as there are projects, getting this right should be given proper attention.

The delivered result is finally what matters - even in documentation.

Counting down to "Projects to the Point" (P2P) in Cairo

It's nighttime here in Colombo and for the first time in several weeks rain is thundering against my roof. I'm listening to my favourite radio station while enjoying the silence of the house around me.

But I'm bothered..

With only one week left before Thushara finally boards the Emirates flight to Cairo, I feel we have still too much work to be completed.. But I know we'll manage.

How did this happen? Thushara is the only one party asked to contribute with 3x one-hour lectures on Scrum and Offshore project management during this massive conference. Thanks to Brisk Consulting for showing the confidence.

2,000 project professionals will meet us there. I'm starting to realize we're doing something very right- and that our Project director is making a considerable impact in the world of international Scrum masters!

And she's very good. It's that simple.

When we started Exilesoft we were very clear on our priorities; People -> Process - never the other way around.

Do things right and fame will follow..? Yeah today I believe so.

Key Technologies for 2010

Gartner just came out with their technology predictions for 2010. No great surprises there, but from a software perspective they gave a clear underscore to the importance of Social computing, Virtualization and the Cloud, and Advanced analytics.

I think we all knew that, but that doesn't mean they are not huge challenges to many software companies and product owners alike.

The current piece of fat-client Windows software that you use everyday for your business needs, probably just isn't up to the challenge. Sorry.

The other day I got an interesting question from a prospective customer in Turkey. Could we implement "facebook" technology into his marble-trade ERP software? The idea was kinda neat. He trades in beautiful Turkish marble and sells his merchandise all over the world. Marble isn't very "virtual" in itself but the product is a highly emotional one. You buy because you "like".

So implementing Web 2.0 technology made sense to him, to enable his buyers to discuss and comment on every particular type of stone, exchange experiences about the different qualities and colors and so forth, and become "fan" of particular types.

This is Marble but your world probably isn't that very different.

Most customers will make their business decisions based on a set of hard values such as price, delivery, service agreements and so on, but then make the final decision based on a certain amount of soft values such as the people they interact with, the look & feel of your product, and how they are treated as customers- lets call it the "customer experience".

In many cases Web 2.0 can make a big difference in the way your customers sees and interacts with your company. And in the process give other prospective buyers a higher level of that "extra" customer experience.

I just love the texture of this marble... :)

Today I went into the Farming business- in Azerbaijan

This was one of those days- a usually busy day at office here, starting out with our first management meeting regarding the 2010 budget. Always a treat you can imagine.

Then we had final interviews with two shortlisted candidates which hopefully will help us achieve our high target and hopefully even add a laugh to the floor in the process! 

Evening came and my son Kim was staying late at Uni so I just kept going in office. Most lights went out, the a/c shut down and things became kinda quiet. I really enjoy that time of day in the office.

Then as I had a break from my budget and was drinking my coffee, I read another blog about Photography and Adobe Lightroom software, and there it was. KIVA. Never heard of it. Well to make it short Kiva helps people around the world with micro financing. So today I decided to invest US$25.00 in a small farming operation in Azerbaijan- to help buy 5 calves.

Mohubbat will pay me back next year. But there's a certain currency exchange risk involved. Hmmm I think I can manage.

My contribution is only 1% of his total loan so you may feel like going into business with me? You'll find the link to Mohubbat's loan down left on this page. I look forward to be business partner with you. Let's toast Mohubbat (in milk) when he succeed :)

It's all pretty Agile if you ask me.

Running Scrum Across Multiple Team Locations

Last year we officially trashed our "old" way of doing things and went Agile! Yeah nothing new there you'd say, loads of companies are saying "agile" with a voice indicating it's some kind of magic wand.. It is the answer before you even know your own question.. but truth is - agile is no simple match and can put severe pressure on both team members and clients. Having said that, going agile is also loads of fun - and I'm 100% convinced - provides far better value and results for your money. But let's have a look at some of the main issues;

Today let's look at first thing first; The requirements.

In our old model we would spend up to a few months working on papers describing pretty low-level requirements to be sure we had a) understood what you were looking for, b) made sure you understood what we were planning to make, and c) covered our ass in case you didn't read the 500 pages after all.. 

Now this both takes time and is a pretty exhausting excercise for both client and team, as you would want us to describe every nitty-gritty detail as you know I wouldn't include it in the price if you came back with it later. So one main challenge is simply to get to the point where you feel confident you have got it all covered, and where I feel confident our team can manage a proper estimation.

My problem is- already during these first few weeks or months, your requirements have secretly started to change..

As your customers, employees, board and other stakeholders are bugging you with their daily requirements to be able to complete their tasks in a most efficient matter, they will also come up with loads of things they "must-have" and which ends up as a CR's (Change request) and eventually delaying the iteration and frustrating me and everyone else.

In Scrum we do it very differently, but I'm not saying all issues are now solved..

The main principle is that we will never freeze any requirements for more than the current iteration, which again would never last more than 30 days. This sounds great as you can now add all you want to it and change everything every 30 days..? No I have to disappoint you there.

In a scrum team we start out the whole project discussing "user stories" (which of course is our all familiar "requirements") which is a high level discussion on functionality and specific technical issues. This will go around a while until we have measured that all are aligned on the major issues. Challenge now is that there is less paper to fill and a closer relationship is required as the process is somewhat open ended in both ends.

When you have the team split in two different geographical locations this further complicates things. We won't have the time together to discuss and adjust thru frequent meetings, so loads of things needs to be done with conferencing tools over the Internet. This can work really well after you have managed to glue the teams together, but there's a "bonding process" you need to observe.

To bring in faces and the "live people" dimension, we are successfully using tools like Skype (voice/video) and WebEx (common desktop) to do much of this, while Scrum-specific tools gives the capability to have an effective requirement gathering processes through electronic conferences. And as there are no sign off on "final specs", the commitment needed on both sides is to constantly repeat and update requirement work, and work closely together right throughout the total project.

What we end up with is that if I can't manage to anchor the project right at the top with my customer's management, I am prone to failure. I must ensure that the KPI's of our team-mates in the customer's organization (or whatever performance measurement they apply to their employees), is linked directly to the performance of our project. Else I will end up seeing the guy on the other side being "busy" as he is at the same time trying to catch up with "billable hours" or whatever is driving his monthly paycheck and employment review process...

Providing a common goal is quite simply the cheapest tool you have available to ensure success in your outsourced project ;)

- Your comments are appreciated :)

You can read an excellent article about user stories in our Project director Thushara's Blog PROJECTIZED

Will New Datacenters Save My Day?

While most people seems to think that software is becoming a standardized commodity, an incredibly high number of companies will continue to rely on mission-specific and mission-critical software made to the specs for their industry vertical, to efficiently deliver their business.

I was visiting the CEO of a company in Europe a while ago, and I was very impressed by their new datacenter he proudly showed me, hosting a two-digit number of the latest IBM servers, and a rack panel with Cisco firewalls, routers and HP switches. This company is well established and running a nice US$10 mill. "people" operation with a fair profit for the past 20 years. Now, it’s not within my scope to try to ruin anyone’s day, and in particular not when someone is so happy with what they have just achieved - but I just had to ask why he was moving into the “hardware business” like this? His company now employs two full-time VMware network technicians.

This scenario is not made up and is not an uncommon sight.

I’m sure you know the answer to my question already- and the heart of his lengthy and somewhat frustrated response.  Situation is- their current Windows based software system just isn’t optimized for any offsite datacenter hosting, and due to the complexity of the total solution, no datacenter will take it on as a standard software platform, or provide any competence for managing the solution. Offsite maintenance of this system would therefore be a scary scenario due to high risk of receiving a slow response and being faced with a confusing process if anything goes wrong. Not to mention the additional cost which incur when you’re hosting a solution which was not initially made to support the model. 

So what choices will a CEO in this situation have, as alternatives to the decision of carrying all the overheads and risks by doing the hardware job themselves, although it’s not his business focus? 

Let’s have a closer look at what is driving technology these days.

SaaS – “Software-as-a-Service” is one of the most important initiatives in recent years, and rapidly changing the world of corporate computing. What is interesting is that SaaS technology institutes the completion of “the circle” that started with the beauty of the IBM 360 and mainframes of the 60’s and which was later replaced by the PC and then the distributed client/server networking model with local servers (everybody has one) of the 80’s to 90’s. Remember how we all thought IBM where Down & Done? Well look at those guys now..

SaaS really leads the way for mission critical applications to move back into centralized, highly secure, and high performance datacenters, boosting performance and competitive edge for the companies using them. SaaS applications are developed based on a philosophy that the application represents a set of “services”, which should be readily available to the users on a 24/7/365 basis – no exceptions – where the user gets access to the services he wants, when he wants, without worrying about hardware, software or even licensing for that matter.

SaaS technology is also widely associated with the pay-per-use business model, where there are no more “licensing” or “maintenance” fees involved, but rather a simple sign-on and transaction-based model that will give an efficient- and variable cost model- directly linked with the business performance of the company which is using the service.

Globalization and integration

SaaS also makes a lot of sense when it comes to efficient cooperation between different legal entities, be it customer – vendor or business partners, and even cross-border businesses. As we see every day, a massive consolidation is taking place where major players are growing, through acquisitions, into multi-national companies. This involves different judicial systems, different legal entities, and limitations to data aggregation. Different systems, different time zones, and different formats- all adds to the overall pain.

Not only mergers, but also more loosely coupled co-operations through vendor networks are on the increase, as many smaller companies are working hard together trying to gain the benefit of a larger unit. Some of the challenges here are that these companies not only don’t have the same Board of Directors, but don’t even run on a common IT platform. Cooperation and data exchange across a variety of different software solutions from different countries of origin means working with a selection of vendors that most often don’t even intend to cooperate.. Now you can picture the benefits of a centrally hosted SaaS-based solution tightly integrated across borders and legislative environments..

One of the main obstacles to the adaption of any “next-generation technology” within an industry vertical is always that current vendors may be somewhat resistant to stimulate that change. Reason being that they are worried about losing their current position, the potential danger of disturbing current revenue streams, and in the end potentially pushing their existing customers into a new “evaluation” phase where they just may not come out on top..  Yeah- none of us wants that, do we?

PC, laptop, web, or even mobile phone- just hand me those data please…