We like to have fun at work too, so we took it to Twitter for the past couple weeks with a contest.  Sister companies Rocket Aldon, Rocket Seagull and Rocket BlueZone teamed up for a little “Best IT Tips” contest. We asked our Customers and the Twitterverse to tweet out their juiciest, coolest, most stellar IT tip  (product related or not) to earn their shot at winning Apple’s latest and greatest iPad 2 or one of three $50 Amazon gift cards.  In the end we got some great tips (below) and got to have fun rewarding our new followers. Now we’d like to officially announce our winners and thank them for their enthusiasm and willingness to share their IT wisdom.

The Grand Prize iPad2 goes to @kyleortman – Congrats on a tip sharing job well done.

The 3 $50 Amazon Gift Cards go to @mocheng123, @simulacra10, and @tmanns1 – Congrats to you three as well and nice work.

Now for the real juice — the IT Tip Highlights:

• Microsoft has a hidden Malware scanner that most people don’t know about: Start-> Run -> Type: MRT and hit enter… Your Welcome!
• Use ALDON LMi, it can automate and manage you source/object management without manual intervention
• We have been using Legasuite’s JAVA Client for years. A really quick way to bring your AS/400 Applications to the Web
• Protect your project and the team members like they are your children, give them guidance and no overtime and see them shine.
• One of the best solutions to modernize your iSeries application is use Seagull’s Legasuite Technology.
• Reboot b4 you call the helpdesk!
• Linking my e-mail address up with Community Manager, for auto generation of tickets.
• No disconnects in JWalk create push button, script for panel name set If stmt In project settings set Field ID 0n close IDs.
• To quickly lock your computer on Windows, simply press the Windows logo key + L.
• Aldon LMi, when doing a Deployment, can be overrode to deploy to just the Targets you chose
• DOn’t forget to run your system tools on a regular basis. Getting rid of the junk makes you faster.
• Using GNU Screen you can have unlimited terminal sessions to remote terminals, in a single terminal
• Using e-mail to close tickets via Aldon Community Manager has been a blessing to my company! status=closed
• One who is too insistent on his own views, finds few to agree with him.
• Go #agile and do not forget to include testers in the teams
• When going into a new client to fix issues never sound like a know-it-all, its makes your job harder if you can’t ask questions

If you missed this chance to play, we’ll have more contests coming soon.

As you go through your day you are constantly working with and assessing your Change Management (and other!) systems to make sure you are getting the ROI you want, the systems are effective, and most importantly like a good horse they are taking you where you need to go.

You want your Change Management to carry you off into the sunset but you always want to make sure to ask yourself am I Riding a Dead Horse?

(from “A Guide to Implementing the Theory of Constraints”)

Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover you’re riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount!

When you find yourself riding a dead horse do you in fact get off or instead try one of the following:

1. Buy a stronger whip.
2. Change riders.
3. Threaten the horse with termination.
4. Say things like, “This is the way we have always ridden this horse.”
5. Appoint a committee to study the horse.
6. Arrange to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
7. Lower the standards so that dead horses can be included.
8. Appoint a tiger team to revive the dead horse.
9. Ride the dead horse “outside the box.”
10. Buy a commercial off-the-shelf dead horse.
11. Create a training session to increase our riding ability.
12. Reclassify the dead horse as “living-impaired.”
13. Compare the state of dead horses in today’s environment.
14. Change the autopsy report to declare that “This horse is not dead.”
15. Kill all the other horses, so this one will look the same.
16. Name the dead horse “Paradigm Shift” and keep riding it.
17. Ride the dead horse “smarter” not harder.
18. Hire outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
19. Harness several dead horses together for increased speed.
20. Do a time management study to see if the lighter riders would improve productivity.
21. Declare that “No horse is too dead to beat.”
22. Call the dead horse a “joint venture” and let others ride it.
23. Provide additional funding to increase the horse’s performance.
24. Do a cost analysis study to see if contractors can ride it cheaper.
25. Purchase an aftermarket product to make dead horses run faster.
26. Declare the horse is “better, faster, and cheaper” dead.
27. Form a quality circle to find uses for dead horses.
28. Declare that “This horse was procured with cost as an independent variable.”
29. Get the horse a Web site.
30. Promote the horse to a supervisory position.

If you have tried any of the above on your Change Management system be careful – you may just be riding a dead horse and best to dismount as fast as you can (before it really starts to smell)!

Doesn’t it seem like whenever someone can’t find their phone, a sheer look of panic immediately hits their face? It’s crazy to think how much we depend on our mobile devices and the more we can do and reference from these devices, the more we expect.

Businesses are on the hook to bring more to this medium and soon — now challenged with:
a.)  finding ways to bring the business into a mobile app so that customers can quickly and easily access their products or services; and/or
b.) creating  mobile application packages that extend business processes and integrate with corporate solutions…all the while demonstrating ROI.

Makes perfect sense, because these business apps are going to be very cool!! But who’s really on the hook? Ah yes…application developers are now – or will be soon.

Think about the insurance adjuster who can plug his accident report straight into the insurance application on his iPad.  Or salespeople who can use their phone to accept credit cards when they’re on the road. Or the CIO who can approve and deploy releases from his Blackberry another world away. Or the tool manufacturer who has a mobile app for partners to process orders from anywhere. The examples are endless and it’s the developers who will be building them.

What’s crystal clear is that business and IT need to work closer than ever to deliver what their end-users need.

The big question is are your teams equipped with the right communication tools, processes, automation, and visibility so that you can re-purpose the right code, manage multiple releases, deploy apps to a multitude of new locations — and get all this stuff done sooner than later?

It’s time to take a close look at your infrastructure so that you don’t miss a beat.

First off, the successful transition from Waterfall to Agile is no easy task.  It requires open minds, intense collaboration, careful planning, clear objectives and proper change management.  We made the move last year for our IT shop of 40 developers, and there’s really no regret and no turning back.  Here is a list of what we found the most important considerations.

1.   Cultural Change is Inevitable – just let it go
2.  Think Small (projects that fit within a Sprint)
3.  Constant Communication
4.  Executive Buy-in critical
5.   End-User Buy-in critical
6.  Focus on Flow, not Utilization (see this post)
7.  Define Team Dynamics upfront – avoid dis-empowerment!
8.  Prioritization is a must-have and reprioritize when necessary
9.  Take a Gradual Approach over Big Bang Conversion
10. Physical Space Layout — need room for WhiteBoard and Standup meetings

If you want to hear and see the details check out this webinar from Dan Magid, who helped spearhead the transition to Agile at our IT shop.

http://info.aldon.com/l/904/2011-04-06/Q05HR

We just recently conducted a customer survey, and got some very cool, meaningful feedback.  First off, if you were one of the 340 customers that took it – thank you! Getting people to take surveys is not always so easy, but the feedback we get from you is truly invaluable. Our goal with this one was to help better understand companies’ biggest benefits for using application lifecycle management (ALM) solutions and how Aldon delivers, so that we can build the products our customers (and future customers) want and need.

And the saying ‘the truth hurts’ definitely did not apply here.  With this survey we got validation what we have done over the years has worked, along with valuable feedback on where we need to go.  We Can Handle The Truth.

Some of the highlights:

• more than 80% of respondents rely on Aldon ALM solutions most for successfully managing the build all the way through to deployment, enabling point-and-click deployment to multiple targets and multiple platforms.
• More than 50% confirmed they would easily move the wrong objects into production if they did not have Aldon in place
• More than 50% also said they were able to reduce errors by more than 55% across the lifecycle.
• More than 70% of Aldon customers indicated they realized ROI in one year or less.
• Nearly 90% ranked the Aldon product as an 8 or higher on a scale of 1 to ten.
• 50% of respondents  said they would “rather give up coffee than their Aldon solution”
• One respondent even said “I would rather eat glass” than stop using Aldon ALM solutions.
• 50% of respondents revealed that compliance is the second biggest benefit found with the Aldon ALM solution, known for providing a clear audit trail on who has touched what code, where it lives, how it has changed, who approved it and more.
• The rise in agile development is also highlighted by the results, with nearly 30% stating they are currently developing using the agile methodology or at least in the planning phase.
• The results also demonstrated the surge in mobile application development taking place with nearly 35% stating they are currently updating/writing applications to run on mobile devices or in the planning phase.

Keep the feedback coming.

Our Can you fix something that’s not broken? blog series continues with part two, only with a new question this time. Can you think of some technology that you SWORE you would never like, use or need – and then suddenly find you can’t live without it?

Relying on a computerized voice telling you where to turn? Trading stocks from a cell phone?  Playing a video game against someone you have never met who lives countries away? You can probably think of lots of things that apply here. What we’re saying is don’t fall into the “I would never use that” trap with your development tools. You may think you’re totally fine with your current change control tool or version control tool(s), all the while missing out on many cool things that a more complete application lifecycle management (ALM) solution can bring you – and seriously enhance your day-to-day life.  Here’s a scenario that might help you take that look at an ALM solution.

Is this you? You and your team members probably use a version control, one or  two different ones, maybe more — Subversion, CVS, or VSS, Perforce or Clearcase; these tools are everywhere.  There is no question they are great for keeping track of all the various versions of files; they work fast, users love them; and some are free.  However, when it comes time to automating process, managing the release and deployment, gauging project status, and reporting, they just don’t really cut the mustard.  

What an ALM solution will do: The right ALM will work in conjunction with your version control tool, only the ALM owns all the critical build, release and deployment functions.  You can do all your checkouts, check-ins, branching, tagging and other version control functions in your chosen version control tool.  Once you decide you have a build package ready, the package is automatically passed over to the ALM solution.  Then the build package moves through a pre-defined software development lifecycle (that you set up from the get-go) complete with all the compliance savvy functions you need like automated processes, workflows, notifications, and approvals.

• automatically builds, organizes, and maintains a central inventory of all application components…all from one screen!
• automatically manages releases and distributions, with a single path to product and point and click deployments.
• lets you easily reuse code, instead of recreate.
• automates approvals, notifications, task assignments, etc.

This is just some of what you can get…you can find ever more info here.

All we ask is re-think before you say “I’ll never need that!”

There are a lot of people that hold onto the notion that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.  We’re not on-board with that kind of thinking. Like most engineers, we believe that if it isn’t broken, “it doesn’t deliver enough benefits yet! It can do more”.  It’s this latter notion – and a belief our customers may feel the same way – that inspired this post. We would like to make you aware of some of the constantly growing list of features and benefits you get from an Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solution that you might not know about – and how it can be fully maximized across the IT enterprise.  It’s what we provide to more than 1300 customers.  By sharing a few “IT challenge” scenarios – some of which may apply to you, we want to show you how an ALM addresses today’s constantly changing business requirements and complex IT infrastructures.  If centralizing your IT teams, simplifying deployments, mastering release management, passing audits with flying colors, bringing process to agile projects, or just maximizing productivity sound good to you, then keep reading.

Scenario #1: Distributed Systems, Distributed Teams, Distributed Tools? Help!

Your teams might be spread across various geographic locations, departments or working from different platforms and/or SCM solutions. You may have one team working on the IBM i with Aldon Lifecycle Manager, but another working on Linux with Subversion or CVS or another SCM.  Does trying to enforce your processes work? Does keeping track of projects, code, people and SLAs get frustrating and counter-productive? Or maybe you are outsourcing, and you really just want to feel confident that the code is being worked on, checked in and out, and you are getting what you pay for.  Is all of this getting difficult to manage? If even one of the above applies to you, a centralized system is critical.

How ALM solutions help:

A sophisticated ALM solution puts everyone onto the same process-based system – regardless of platform, language, or location – so you can have total visibility across IT. From a single screen, you can track project status, view service request completion, monitor hardware and software requirements, and see who’s working on what code. You are able to view each and every IT asset you have, their interdependencies and what happens if you change them. Users are able to work on a multitude of file types, compare and merge files,– all from multiple platforms.  Another key feature is the services metadata registry optimized for SOA that is easy to navigate and instantly accesses all services.  It will help you easily identify, find and reuse code from different applications.

If you the right ALM – e.g.  Aldon Lifecycle Manager – there are also no limitations on what kind of application objects can be managed, promoted, distributed, or the kinds of distributed environments. From source code, object code, HTML, PERL and ASP to graphics, audio and other content—to any platform, whether it’s UNIX, Linux, Windows, mainframe, or IBM i—every object is managed identically, facilitating automation, maximizing ease-of-use and ensuring accuracy. So go ahead; build, test, and promote that  new interactive gaming app to an arcade kiosk in the Philippines and Aldon will automate the entire process regardless of platform, objects, or location.

What you get:

• Logical, business-oriented view of an application’s structure
• Single-click code promotion
• Simultaneous development on same applications and files
• Automatic inventory builds of files from production server
• Conflict tracking
• Point and click process definition; no scripts needed
• Role-based and/or individual permission definitions
• Individual (or private) development without checking out code
• Support for IDE integration

And if you need to be compliant and are subject to IT audits, having everyone on a single SCM solution system is a no-brainer.

Stay tuned for Scenario #2!

It’s time for part two — now we’re going to focus on the strategy for getting agile buy-in from the business side and help you to build a powerful, yet simple business case.  (Part 1 here covering agile resistance and the house remodel syndrome).

When you are talking about major company transition and cultural shifts within an organization, it’s important to be armored with a business case & not just a list of benefits (although know those too!).

Try focusing on these five notions when pitching your agile business case. They worked for us, and we know have worked for many others.

1.)The Business will have More – not less – Involvement
By going agile, there will be more business input than ever. With daily meetings, weekly sprint reviews, a framework to make swift changes, a constant check-in on progress, & a validation of requirements, the  business will have a powerful voice throughout the process.

2.) Delivery of Product Will be Speedy and Constant
With Agile methods in place, teams are better able to deliver totally developed and tested features every few weeks. While these features may be “smaller” in terms of functionality, they are delivered to the business quickly, continually improved on, and teams can add more functionality to them throughout the life of the project.

3.) The Business Will Never Lose Control over the Projects
The very nature of agile, means you are not wondering the status of projects and when they’ll ultimately be delivered.  You set a date and you deliver a product with the features you were able to get in there by that time.  If you run into roadblocks, they are quickly identified and priorities are adjusted. You discuss everyday what the status is across each project. You know what each team member is working on and how best to allocate resources. 

4.)  Project Prioritization Will be Smarter, Faster, Easier and in the Hands of the Business:
All too often in the waterfall way, by the time features were finally delivered you might not even care about them anymore.  With the speed and flexibility that agile brings, you can easily arrange, then rearrange the priority order of any feature requests, enhancement requests, bug fix, you name it, based on the customer’s current need or even nonsensical whim (that discussion gets its own blog posts).

5.)  You Will Have Happy, Accomplished, Empowered Teams:
Team members are delivering results and delivering results regularly which totally boosts morale. They are communicating and solving problems collaboratively and quickly which builds trust and motivation. They are stepping in to help when needed, which leads to the self-organizing team status.  They are dabbling in other areas like testing and documentation which leads to a broadened skill-set.

Okay, start with this and don’t give up!

And like we covered in Part 1..Were you able to say this 10 times fast?

“Release cycles faster; products out sooner; changes always welcome; customer heard first; requirements met; teams in synch; teams empowered; everything quicker; faster; morale better, and much more…”

We do have fun at work, agile style.  Check out our little ditty about Bill & SuAnn song.

Why not pool the many artistic talents – music, singing, acting, film making – from the Aldon staff and make some agile music MTV style.  And agile it was.  Swift changes to the lyrics, short iterations w/shooting/editing, content tested constantly, end-results delivered promptly. Cool. A collaboration between sales, R&D, marketing, HR, support and management. Check it out.

Credits:

Bill………………………………………David Romo, Senior Software Engineer
SuAnn………………………………….Michelle Hu, Marketing Specialist
Artist (vocals/guitars)………………..Paul Johnson, Director of Sales
Sprint Team member 1………………Chris Franz, Lead Senior Engineer
Sprint Team member 2 ……………..Dan Magid, Chief Product Stategist
Sprint Team member 3………………Doug Weber, Senior Software Engineer
Sprint Team member 4………………Rebecca Levin, Senior Manager Human Resources
Sprint Team member 5………………Chris Cholotte, Project Manager
Aldon Chorus:…………………………Dan Magid, Chief Product Strategist
Aldon Chorus:…………………………Brent Hensley, Senior Marketing Manager
Aldon Chorus:…………………………Lee Greenberg, Project Manager
Aldon Chorus:…………………………Joe Baumgarten, Solutions Engineer
Aldon Chorus:…………………………Peter Webb, Product Owner
Aldon Chorus:…………………………Rebecca Levin, Senior Manager Human Resources
Aldon Chorus:…………………………Jeff Seideman, Senior Software Engineer
Aldon Chorus:…………………………Barbra Schora, Quality Assurance Engineer
Aldon Chorus………………………….Carol Wilson, Office/Sales Administrator
Aldon Chorus:…………………………Jan Holman, Application Services Manager
Aldon Chorus:…………………………Joe Frasier, VP of Services
Aldon Chorus:…………………………Yev Kryukov, Quality Assurance Engineer
Aldon Chorus:…………………………Michelle Hu, Marketing Specialist
Aldon Chorus:…………………………Chris Cholotte, Project Manager
Aldon Chorus:…………………………Hugh Caley, Linux System Administrator
Writer/Director/Producer…………….Sarah Johansen, Corporate Communications Manager

We hear it all the time. Getting the buy-in for a transition to Agile development can be a big pain in the @*$, particularly because the benefits seems so clear *to you*.  So some words of wisdom here is that before you dive too deep in getting the business to sign-off on the move, it’s important to be well armored with:

(a.)  a very clear understanding on where the resistance comes from
(b.)  what the current IT issues are vs. the benefits that agile promises
(c.)  some five star agile selling points that the business side needs to hear

This marks the launch of a blog series where we’ll cover (a.), (b.) and (c.), starting here with (a).

The Remodel Affect: So why exactly is there so much resistance with the agile buy-in with the business side?  I like to compare it to a house remodel. They may know it will be a much better space in the end (for some parts of the house at least) but will probably be living in a total mess for awhile – much longer than they can imagine – with every comfort zone disrupted. And they are not the developer/subcontractor, so the work at hand is totally out of their domain; and the end result and benefits seems painfully far away, so they think “why bother?”.

It’s sort of like the agile transformation (from the business side at least), and convincing them that the space will be so worth it, and so much better,  is the real battle. But what’s so frustrating is when you look at it – and years of painful release cycles – it seems like an easy sell-in.  Before Agile, a typical development scenario often resulted in:

1.)  requirements not being met, not matching original or original design no longer relevant to market
2.)  projects delivered late
3.)  projects delivered over-budget

And why would that keep happening?  It’s because almost 80% of all IT projects include some, one or all of those scenarios, and teams often go in thinking that it’s okay to be late or over-budget because “it always happens that way”.  Planning becomes a useless exercise.  Agile promises a better way to address all these issues.

So what’s the trick with getting the agile buy-in? Maybe start by saying this 10 times fast…
“Release cycles faster; products out sooner; changes always welcome; customer heard first; requirements met; teams in synch; teams empowered; everything quicker; faster; morale better, and much more…”

More of all that in part two. Stay tuned.