Autor: NicoPaez

Visual Basic migration

One more time this morning I have been asked about VB6 to VB.Net migration. I have my opinion about this topic.

If you have a VB6 application that is working well and that maintainance is relativaly easy, then, why do you want to migrate? Just because .net is cool?, no that can’t be a reason. The reason that I have started hearing these days is: «Microsoft won’t give us support for VB6». Ok, that is a good reason, but there is still another questions to be answer:

A) Do you want the same application (from user perspective and from technical perspective) running in a new platform?

or

b) Do you want to take advantage of the capabilities of the new platform?

If you answer is B, then I most of the cases you don’t need a migration, you need to build a new system, maybe you can reuse some assets like database schema, some stored procedures, etc.

But if your answer is A, then there are some useful resources you can count on. First of all lets hear the voice of Patterns & Practices Group at Microsoft: Guide for upgrading VB6 applications to VB.Net and VB6 to VB.net upgrade assessment tool. I think these resources are a good starting point to understand the implications of the epic.

There also some interesting materials provided by Artinsoft (a company specialized in software migrations) . They have developed a tool to automate the migration process and they have also written some articles about it: Design application migration strategy and some more specific ones.

Hope this help.

After Agile Open La Plata

Last Saturday I took part on this event. There were about 70 participants. During the morning there were some introductory sessions and something interesting happened: there were a session called «implementing agile», there were about 20 people but none of them know about agile, so one of them went to the session next door (where I was) and ask for somebody to talk about the topic, there I went. At the same time JuanG was giving an introductory session about Lean.

There also some classic sessions like: agile & cmmi, distributed agile and intro scrum.

After the lunch we make the classic «Scrum Bird Game» where I was the facilitator. It was much more organized than the one we did at Tandil, I think that because in this occasion there were much less people (4 teams, 5 members each) . During the last iteration of the game I had an idea for future games: change the birds between teams, this could be compared to common situation in software development projects: work on a product developed by someone else.

Finally I attend to a session about estimation were I had the pleasure to share experiences with «the huddleans» : Guille and DiegoF.

I like the event very much, it was over my expectations. My congratulations to Martin, Horacio, Liliana and the other members of the local organization staff, great work!!!

Agile at UADE

Last week Sergio Candelo and Federico Arambarri invited me to talk about agile project management in the their subject at UADE. It was very interesting for me because it was the first time I talk about agile with people from other industries (not software). There were some IT people, but there also were people from marketing, chemistry, electronics. One of the topics of my presentation was the state of the art in agile adoption. To talk about that I used Roger’s innovation adoption curve. and in my opinion were have crossed the chasm. The slide deck I used for my presentation is available here.

Agile Baires: monthly meeting

Yesterday was the June’s meeting. I was the facilitator and the topic of the meeting was «How do I start my project». We use a format called lightning talk, witch consist in a sequence of a time-boxed presentations. We gave 7 minutes to each speaker to make his presentation and 3 minutes more  for answer and questions.

There were 5 presentations and all  of them were very interesting. Here is the slide deck I used during my presentation.

See you.

More about Agile Open Tandil (estimation session)

Two folks asked me to write a bit more about the afternoon sessions, especially about the estimation one and here I go, I will resume what we talk in that session.

The format of the session was open, there were more that 20 people and each talk about the way he uses to estimate.

In may opinion the natural process is to first estimate the size, then the effort, and finally considering a certain team you can deduce duration and cost, but not everybody uses this process (or unless not explicitly), some stated to estimate duration at once.

In few words, the following methods were mentioned:

  • Parametric methods (or magic formula-based methods that is the way I like to call them), basically this methods propose to analize your requirements and count points to determinate the size. Then you use that points in a formula that adds some variables to adjust the estimation based on particular information of the project (programming language, experience in similar projects, etc). In this category are Cocomo methods.
  • Expert opinion and manager manipulation methods (this original name is mine): maybe this is one of the most commonly used methods. Several people in the session told to used it and I know that some colleagues in my company use it all the time. It is very simple, a manager (boss, project leader, project manager or whatever you call it) ask an expert (some time not so expert) to estimate certain items. Then the manager adds some buffer and that’s it. Not very formal, not very precise but fast and easy.
  • Several-experts-based methods: I know this is a very ambiguous name, but that is the idea, I want to use this name to refer several different methods that include Delphi methods and planning poker (I think that planning poker is a Delphi variant). In these methods you have a team of experts (when I say experts I am just referring to people that is capable of give a realistic estimation because of his experience). Something very interesting of these methods is that under certain conditions these methods get a probabilistic support: if there are 4 or more experts and each expert opinion is independent, then we can apply the central limit theorem and get an confidence interval.

In my case I always try to use methods in the third group, in particular to estimate the complete product backlog at the start of a project I prefer to use Wideband delphi and then when estimating tasks at the begining of an iteration I prefer planning poker. During the session I mention a spreadsheet I use for Wideband-Delphi and after the session some people asked me to share the spreadsheet, so I published it here.

When I started writing this post I get the idea of preparing an estimation workshop, I think it could be an interesting activity, well I will analyze it.

That ‘s all, see you.

After Agile Open Tandil

Well, finally I get some time to write about it. The meeting took place at the Unicen building in the center of the city.

We started about 8 in the morning setting up the place. During the morning we had only one session:»Scrum bird game», 4 product owners (jgabadini, dfondevila, mbelnicoff and me), and about 60 participants divided into 8 teams. I took us about 2 hours. Some retrospective items after the game:

  • Several teams try to build the birds assuming things about the requirements without asking the product owners
  • After the chaos of first iteration most teams improved their organization and that allow them to improved their performance.
  • It was not a good experience to have one product owner for two teams at the same time. The product should be always available.
  • The products should be full tested by the product owner, I let the team to test the flexibility of the bird :(.

After the lunch break there were three slots of 4 sessions each. I took part of the following:

  • How to work less: the idea was to debate about how collaboration with the customers can make us work less as a result of delegating some task on the customers/users. I gave the example of UAT written and executed by the user.
  • Estimation methods: it was an open session were each talk about the way that use to estimate.
  • Tools for agile development: after talking about different tools, we agreed that in every project is necessary to have certain tools: a source code repository (svn, cvs, whatever), a tracking tool to manage issues, risks defects, etc, and a wiki to use as a knowledge base.

I am very satisfied with the results and I hope to see some folks from Tandil next month in the La Plata.

That is all, see you.

Agile open Tandil first results

We have just finished the retrospective and these are the main items we got:

  • Organize some agile activities in Bahia Blanca
  • Organize monthly meetings in for the agile community in Tandil
  • Organize some workshops about agile implementation
  • Document a real case on agile implementation by the Tandil ‘s community
  • Promote integration activities between the different agile communities in Argentina.

After a week using Windows 7 RC

Well, I must say that I am pretty happy with it. I think this RC is much more stable than the Vista RC that I tried some years ago.

I have installed and run successfully some more software: Visual Studio 2008, Smart SVN, OneNote, Foxit Reader and Ant.

At the same time I have some minor issues to report:

  • In some cases when using winamp, my screen starts flicking when winamp has the focus.
  • Occasionally when I typing the cursor literally jumps to another position.

During next week I will try some more programs like Skype, Autocad and Paint.Net