With OS Project, Is Google Over-extending Itself?

As reported by Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service.

Google’s decision to build a PC operating system could be a master stroke or a colossal blunder, depending on whether the company has the resources that such an ambitious and long-term undertaking will require.

Google plays in a variety of extremely competitive markets, serving a broad scope of demanding customers and partners. Although developing an operating system could yield big rewards, it could also distract the company and make it more vulnerable to rivals.

Of chief concern is Google’s continued reliance on a single type of advertising for most of its revenue, despite efforts over the years to diversify its business.

Google still makes most of its money from search pay-per-click text ads, a market that it dominates but where loyalty from consumers and marketers is thin, making the company vulnerable to the development by a rival of a significant technology breakthrough.

In short, if someone built a better search mousetrap — as Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask.com and a host of smaller players are trying hard to do — Google would suffer a sudden drop in search usage and consequently advertising, crippling its finances.

Google’s attempts to build alternative revenue streams from display advertising remain nascent, despite the costly acquisitions of ad services provider DoubleClick and video-sharing leader YouTube, two properties Google considers key to this effort.

Bold initiatives to provide print ads to newspapers and spots to radio stations both failed. The company continues its attempts to build a TV advertising business.

Google executives are the first to admit that the company dominates the Internet search market because it toils long and hard every day to continually improve its engine technology.

Yet, not content with waging battle every day in search, Google also provides enterprise search and business collaboration software, competing against the likes of Microsoft, IBM, Cisco and Autonomy, and trying to win over business managers, IT managers and CIOs.

Read the entire story here.

Startup Teams with HP on Cloud-Based Testing

I received my latest copy of InformationWeek recently and found this article interesting – especially since all discussions these days seem to center on either Cloud Computing or Agile Development.

Skytap is a startup that tabs themselves as the leading provider of cloud-based virtual labs that deliver 100% self-service provisioning of complex IT environments without any architectural changes. Cloud computing is poised to become the defining technology of the 21^st century and Skytap’s goal is to make serving up virtual machines over the internet as ubiquitous as delivering html to a browser. They are working to maximize efficiencies, minimize costs, eliminate unnecessary hardware, outsourcing, eco-efficient computing, and doing more with less.

I’ve worked many very large-scale government contracts where testing was a massive onsite effort involving additional hardware, software, and bodies in a compressed and stressful timeframe. Cloud-based testing would have made those experiences much more sane. And it was solely my responsibility at the time to make those tests happen and help ensure their success.

Likewise, my time in the gaming industry involved load testing for slot data management software. It’s necessary to test slot machines against large loads of usage – the last thing a very large casino gaming entity wants to happen is for their slot system to crash on a Saturday night due to heavy customer usage!

Without further ado, here is the article written by Charles Babcock for InformationWeek…

“Startup Skytap has cut a couple of powerful alliances for it’s cloud computing services, most recently joining forces with Hewlett-Packard to make it easier for companies to stress-test software against thousands of simulated end users without taxing their won data centers.

Skytap – named one of the InformationWeek Startup 50 in April, shortly after getting $7 million in venture funding – offers a Virtual Lab where developers try out applications by building test environments from its library of operating systems, databases, and middleware. Skytap already partners with Microsoft to enable Visual Studio Team System testing.

Skytap is providing HP’s LoadRunner testing tool to build test scenarios that push an application’s limits. The tests can be set up, managed, and torn down through HP’s Quality Center, which uses Skytap’s cloud computing resources to execute the actual test. The tests run as virtual workloads under VMware’s ESX Server.

Cloud computing is seen as a lower-cost way to offload workload spikes from the data center, and testing and quality assurance are likely prospects. Other cloud computing services such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud also can be used for testing. Companies pay Skytap from $1,000 to $10,000 a month for cloud-based testing.”

CIOs with, without PPM software discuss IT project governance

Another interesting article that talks about IT project governance.

How do midsized organizations manage IT project governance, and how many use project and portfolio management (PPM) software in those efforts?

Recently we asked readers those questions in our first comprehensive survey of IT project governance and PPM. The findings: that IT governance is an informal process at many midsized organizations. About half of the midmarket companies responding reported having either an IT governance board or steering committee (36%) or a project management office (PMO) (22%) to help set priorities and align projects with business needs, according to the 236 respondents from organizations with 100 to 1,000 employees.

About 17% reported using PPM software, two-thirds of them for three years or less.

Yet interviews showed that it wasn’t the level of PPM maturity or use of PPM software that made a difference — the existence of a governance structure determined how successful an organization would be in terms of IT project efficiency, customer satisfaction and project completion.

IT governance without PPM software

For example, Exclusive Resorts LLC, a 200-employee luxury destination club that was founded in 2002, adheres to agile methodologies for software development, which promote frequent inspection and adaptation of code and requirements throughout the project management process. It does not use PPM software.

However, it does have a PMO that manages projects and a technology advisory committee of all C-level executives. That group meets once a month.

Read the entire story here..

Agile Software Development in a Standard Project Management Methodology

I’m sorry everyone, but I’m going to do it again. I’ve learned a lot from the Agile vs. Standard software development process discussion that is still going on based on two other articles (“Agile Software Development Project vs. Standard Software Development Project” and “Agile vs. Waterfall – More Thoughts”).

In very early articles I discussed the general hybrid project management process I use to manage projects. In practice, it incorporates these phases:

• Phase 1 – Project Kickoff
• Phase 2 – Exploration
• Phase 3 – Design
• Phase 4 – Development
• Phase 5 – Testing
• Phase 6 – Training
• Phase 7 – Deployment
• Phase 8 – Post-Deployment

Process Flexibility

I realize that all project management needs to be flexible to some degree. We need standard practices and templates in place to follow or we are destined to failure. We need some flexibility because not all projects and customers and resources are the same. But not too much flexibility because structure and order lends to repeatable processes and practices and usually leads to greater success and a better understanding of how that success came about.

So the agile question this time around is this…can an agile development process be fit into a standard project management methodology? Or does the entire project management methodology and process for the project thus become agile as well?

Project Management in an Agile Environment

Design, Development and Testing phases would be modified to accommodate the rapid and iterative development, testing, and rollout process that is dictated by agile development methods. That’s understood. But are the project management processes used on standard or waterfall development projects usable for an agile development process or does the entire project management process need to conform to the agile development process?

I’m pretty sure I’m educated enough on this to understand how this needs to go, but I welcome the on-going discussions here because it is certainly further educating me, and I know it is also educating and interesting others who may or may not be aware of agile development and project management processes.

One of my colleagues/readers on here noted that good project management must always be agile because requirements are never firm…they are always changing to some degree. Even I realize that even though I tried to present the ‘perfect’ requirements scenario in the two articles mentioned above.

He also stated that “outcomes” need to be emphasized over “output”. A very good point and observation. A standard project management process does a nice job of emphasizing output – each phase has outputs and deliverables that need to be reviewed and approved in order to move on to the next phase. Whereas an agile process emphasizes the outcomes – successful packets of work that build on each other.

I look forward to the discussion to follow – it will make me a more flexible and educated project manager…and I’m always interested in learning.

SQE Better Software Development Expo Findings

I had the pleasure of attending the Expo portion of SQE’s Better Software Development Conference & Expo last week.  The slant was definitely toward Agile Software Development which, in part, prompted my post last week about Agile vs. Waterfall software development and the costs associated with each process. 

During the Expo, I had the opportunity to speak with representatives from each of the following organizations:

• Rally Software
• QSM
• SQE
• InnerWorkings
• TechExcel
• Net Objectives
• VersionOne
• VMC

I’d like to take some space here to give you some brief info about each of these great vendors and their offerings.

Rally Software

Rally is the leader in Agile application lifecycle management (ALM) dedicated to making distributed development organizations faster and leaner by dramatically cutting the time, cost and effort needed to deliver high quality applications.  According to a study by QSM Associates, software-driven companies that rely on Rally’s Agile ALM products and services are 50% faster to market and 25% more productive than industry averages.

It was a Rally Software rep that I first presented my question concerning Agile vs. Waterfall development costs and two of their individuals have commented on the article so far.  For more information on Rally Software, visit www.rallydev.com.

QSM (Quantitative Software Management)

Quantitative Software Management was established in 1978.  Their principle business centers around helping organizations reduce the overall expense of software and systems development projects.  QSM’s SLIM software tools and consultative approach enable organizations to effectively estimate, track, and benchmark their software projects.  For more information on QSM, visit www.qsm.com.

SQE (Software Quality Engineering)

SQE assists software professionals and organizations interested in improving customer service, boosting productivity, and improving the return on IT investments through better software quality practices.  Beginning in 1986 with professional consulting services, Software Quality Engineering has acquired the largest portfolio of software quality information in the industry.  For more information on SQE, visit www.sqe.com.

InnerWorkings

InnerWorkings offers Enterprise software development organizations a complete solution for integrating Microsoft .NET skills learning and software process training.  Using InnerWorkings, individual developers and .NET teams build skills through practice writing actual code, including preparation for Microsoft Certification examinations.  For more information on Innerworkings, visit www.innerworkings.com.

TechExcel

TechExcel unifies the enterprise by bridging the gap between product development and service/support.  This end-to-end environment empowers companies to optimize the relationship between these important organizations without sacrificing autonomy or business processes and provides a collaborative environment that significantly saves time and resources.  For more information on TechExcel, visit www.techexcel.com.

Net Objectives

Net Objectives focuses on achieving scalable and effective software development – without the suffering.  Net Objectives’ clients prove that this is an achievable goal for any development organization regardless of size.  Utilizing the 3 P’s of Lean Principles, Agile Processes and Best Development Practices, development organizations ranging in size from single, small teams to large global enterprises can achieve their goals.  Net Objectives can help individuals with their analysis, design and coding practices.  They can help teams use agile processes, including Scrum, effectively.  Finally, they can help organizations scale their agile team approach to be effective throughout the enterprise.

Net Objectives helps organizations be effective not only in how efficiently software is developed, but also how to be effective in choosing the proper work for each team at the proper time in order to maximize the business value being delivered.  For more information on Net Objectives, visit www.netobjectives.com.

VersionOne

VersionOne is recognized by Agile practitioners as the leader in Agile project management tools.  By simplifying the process of planning and tracking Agile software projects, they help development teams consistently delivery software faster.  Since 2002, companies such as Adobe, BBC, Siemens, CNN, Disney, Dow Chemical, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Sony, 3M and Business Objects have turned to VersionOne to help provide greater value to their customers.  Today more than 10,000 teams and 70,000 users in 50 countries use VersionOne’s Agile project management tools to streamline and standardize their agile development efforts.  For more information on VersionOne, visit www.versionone.com.

VMC

VMC is a technology consulting company providing flexible and scalable development and integration, IT outsourcing, and customer care solutions for business.  Using an integrated PMO methodology and world-class talent and resources, VMC delivers targeted solutions for the unique business needs of their customers, with focus on long-term relationships with their customers, delivering quality, trust and value.  VMC’s focus on people is a key differentiator from other technology consulting companies.  From customers to partners to employees, VMC understands that the relationships are critical to the company’s success.  It’s these relationships that drive VMC to be the leading global partner in providing superior business solutions, enabled by technology, that accelerate our customer’s success.  For more information on VMC, visit www.vmc.com.