The Web Gambit

The title of this post is based on a quote that I heard from Chris Patterson, when he was doing a presentation on Event Driven Architecture at the Dallas TechFest a few months ago.

To provide some background, Chris Patterson is one of the founders of MassTransit, an open source service bus implementation built on .NET. Mass Transit was originally developed by Chris and Dru Sellers when they were both working for two different companies in completely separate industries (healthcare and financial services) but they were both finding a lot of common ground in the infrastructure they were building. The core framework for Mass Transit was developed to solve the specific business needs of the companies they were working for, and they obtained permission from their companies to open source the Event Driven Architecture so that two of them could collaborate on it and bring in the wider development community to help make it more robust.

Chris used the phrase “Infrastructure is not Business Value” with his company’s legal team and leadership in order to justify the move to open source Mass Transit.

In a recent developer book club discussion at my work, this topic came up and generated a lot of discussion. The group debated whether or not this was the best move for Chris’s company. Is there real value and competitive advantage to be gained in keeping infrastructure closed source and in house?  Would our company benefit from utilizing Mass Transit or would we be shackled by it? Does Not Invented Here Syndrome actually provide competitive advantages?

I took the side that Chris’s company made the right move. The company is not in the business of building and selling a generalized Enterprise Service Bus and they were more interested in their specific  Healthcare industry needs.  By keeping Mass Transit lightweight and usable across other industries, the company reaped the benefits of having two really talented developers collaborate to solve a common problem. In addition, by opening Mass Transit up to outside open source developers, the framework can improve and Chris’s company is in a better position to reap the benefits of a more robust, evolving framework.

Companies like Headspring Systems in Austin, TX are based almost exclusively on this model.  Most, if not all, of their project artifacts that provide infrastructure solutions have been open sourced without exposing any of the business value that their clients required. By fostering a community that continues to improve these tools, Headspring is in a good position to provide business value to their clients, without getting bogged down in reinventing infrastructure.

Few companies can maintain an esoteric, domain specific framework in the long term without the technical infrastructure becoming creaky and obsolete over time. Over the long term, this can reduce any competitive  advantages that a closed-source framework would bring in the first place. Thus I believe it is in many organization’s interest to follow the mantra that “Infrastructure is not Business Value.”

After a long time of letting my blog go dormant, I’ve decided that it’s time to start blogging again. Giving my blog a face lift and moving it to Wordpress seemed like the most logical start. Others, like Keyvan Nayyeri, are also moving on from Graffiti so I felt inspired to finally make the switch.

It’s been obvious to most that Graffiti CMS has a shaky future. It is clear that there is no dedicated product team focused on Graffiti at Telligent and that the company is still unwilling to open source the product despite pleas from its remaining user base. And as I expected, the lack of attention has given hackers enough time to find one security hole so far. While the hole was patched, it existed long enough that many sites, including my own, were hacked and the default.aspx file was replaced. In my case, my site was infected with malware that caused Google and other browsers to block my site. Telligent has since provided a work around for the exploit, but this was enough of a red flag for me to decide once and for all to move on.

Now on to why I picked Wordpress. Wordpress was one of the first blogging engines I used back in 2002 so I was already pretty familiar with it. I knew it had come a long away since then and I was very impressed with the progress that the product has made. So far it has been very reliable and has a good community behind it that has stood behind Wordpress for the better part of a decade. Much of Graffiti CMS was inspired by functionality in Wordpress and so for me, the choice was easy.

I did contemplate taking on Rob Conery’s Jedi challenge of writing my own Blog Engine in ASP.MVC, but I didn’t feel that I would be able to approach the functionality provided for Wordpress or be able to maintain it long term. I also considered using another blogging engine written in ASP.NET, but none could approach the features, plugin model, and simplicity of Wordpress.

If anyone is interested in the steps to move your blog from Graffiti to Wordpress, I used this post from Jef and was able to follow all the steps to migrate my posts over. Since my blog has been inactive for so long, I’m not too concerned with permalinks being inconsistent, but Jef’s post had a solution for those who need it.

I learned a lot about software development while I worked at Telligent, and I thought it was fitting to list my top 5 while they were still fresh in mind.

1. Short, focused iterations are not optional.  An iterative-based approach is a must in today’s competitive environment. Tight iterations allow you to nail down attainable estimates, effectively utilize your project’s budget, and create higher quality releases.

2. There is no substitute for a great team. Methodologies, Processes, and Technologies can only take you so far.  You need great talent to make these things work.

3. Tools should not create much friction. Everyday tools that a developer uses for things like Source Control, Build Management, and Task Management should not be painful to use.  Otherwise, a lot of time is wasted and the team is left feeling extremely frustrated.

4. Do what is really needed instead of what people think they want. This can apply to clients, leadership, and peers.  With a client, understand the problem they’re trying to solve and provide a solution rather than blindly implementing what they have proposed.  With your leadership, understand how the information they desire will help them make better decisions so that you can provide it accurately.  With your peers, help them analyze their approach instead of just helping them find their way around one technical issue after another.

5. If you see a problem, take steps to fix it rather than complain about it. If you think your project lacks documentation, start it.  If you think your team needs training on a technology, learn it and train them.  If an in-house tool lacks functionality that you need, download the source and add it.  If an internal process is inefficient, gather the stakeholders and work to improve it.

Yesterday, February 13, 2009 was my last day at Telligent. 

As announced on the official company blog, there was a Reduction In Force at Telligent yesterday that saw myself and many of my colleagues let go en masse. It was a tough day for everyone, including those who survived the RIF, as many of those affected had been with Telligent for a long time and watched the company grow from its relatively humble beginnings into the leader that it is today.

While I have my own reservations about the decisions that the company made, I understand that in these times of economic uncertainty, pragmatism and confidence are often pushed aside due to fear and doubt. Thus for me, the RIF was not completely unexpected. I hold no ill will toward Rob Howard or the remaining leadership at Telligent, and I wish them the best of luck and continued success in the industry.

What was unexpected however, was the emotional response I received from many of my colleagues as well as the Twitter community. Within hours of my tweeting my lay off, I saw hundreds of Retweets and gained a number of new followers over the course of a few hours. I got a lot of emails as well from members of the community offering job postings and condolences. The community response was overwhelming and I want to thank everyone that has helped get the word out for those of us who are now seeking new employment.

It was a very emotional day for a lot of us. I’ll always have fond memories of the random drawings on whiteboards, discussing tech in the hallways with my coworkers, the random banter in the hallways, and the regular office pranks that we all enjoyed. I think few people get to experience that kind of open culture at their jobs and I will always have fond memories of it. I doubt that I will ever get the chance to work with a more fun, smarter group of people who were as dedicated to their jobs as my former colleagues.

Just like Jason Alexander stated, I truly feel that the people of Telligent were like my extended family and I hope to having lasting relationships both professionally and socially with them for years to come. And I will always cherish the fact that I got to be part of something truly great.

As for myself, my job search officially begins next week after a weekend to reflect.  If you’re interested in speaking to me about any opportunities, drop me a line at kar dot hariharan at gmail dot com.

I’m breaking my long time blogging silence for a major announcement.  My company, Telligent,  has now received a round of funding from Intel Capital.  This funding will help us to grow the company and it also values our company very highly, which is a great achievement for our leadership.

When I joined Telligent last year, I was really excited to see and understand how a startup worked and see how a company goes from being a small player to an industry leader.  I stopped telling my friends that "I work for a startup" about 6 months ago.  It’s been clear for some time now that we’re much more than that. Now I tell people that I work for a small, but growing social networking software company.  Rob and Jason’s vision has been always to turn Telligent into a great company that will lead the charge of Enterprise Social Networking.  Not just a flavor of the week on TechCrunch.  From the beginning we’ve been a profitable, revenue-generating business, with a focus on growth and industry leadership.

Back when I worked for Deloitte, I often thought about how a "Friendster behind the firewall" would be a great way to facilitate the personal networking which was integral to the Big 4 consulting lifestyle.  It’s been a great experience for me to see that vision turn to reality with Telligent’s Evolution product.  I’m definitely excited to help our clients build their intranet solutions around it.

Suffice to say that I’m very excited about what the next few years will bring and I look forward to the day when I see Telligent on the Fortune 500.  Congrats to Rob, Jason, Scott D, Scott W, and Tom.  You guys rock!

Earlier I blogged about how to sync my Outlook and Google calendar using Plaxo.  This has worked very well for me but now Google has released their own tool to do the same thing.

One of the interesting features that this tool allows is the ability to do 1-way synchronization.  You can get more information on how to set it up here. 

For now I’m going to continue to use my Plaxo setup since it already meets my needs.  But if you’re interested in a solution for Google and Outlook calendar synchronization that doesn’t require opening a Plaxo account, then Google Calendar Sync will be worth downloading.

Most consulting engagements usually end with a hand-off of the project’s deliverables to the client’s resources during the last few days of the consultant being in contact with the client.  This is often referred to as the “knowledge transfer” and can involve walking the client through the finished code artifacts and any documentation around it.

Most consultants dread this part of the process as it often requires mounds of documentation and tons of meetings with seemingly little accomplished.  Even after the process is completed, many consultants will still get a follow up call from the client six months later when the developer who was supposed to take over their project has left for greener pastures.

There are many reasons why consultant-developed software often follows this pattern.  Firstly, most clients are plagued with the inability to identify a suitable maintenance resource in a timely manner.  Often this important task is put off until the last minute thus reducing the quality of resources that can be found to take over the project.  Also if the client’s resource is tasked with learning the code base in a very short time, they often don’t get enough information and are overwhelmed when they are expected to deliver a round of enhancements soon after the consultant leaves.

To increase the chances of a successful hand off, the client resource should be identified soon after the project enters its testing phase to ensure that they have sufficient time to get up to speed.  Also it can help to let the hand-off resource take a crack at some of the lower priority bugs that inevitably creep up so that they get familiar with the code.  Having them get their hands dirty when the consultant is still around to support them can be extremely valuable to the client.

Consultants should also make every effort to develop a maintainable solution that can easily be transitioned.  A complex custom application framework, a cutting edge technology, or an unfamiliar platform can all reduce the client’s chances of successfully maintaining their shiny new application.  While it can be appealing to try a new technology or build a new skill set, such decisions often create unnecessary risks for the client and their resources.

So does this mean that consultants should simplify their architectures to Typed DataSets and drag-and-drop GridViews?  Not necessarily. 

Even with the most non-technical clients, a consultant should take the time to explain the important architectural decisions in ways where the risks and rewards are absolutely clear to the client. If a technical decision is made that reduces development time but requires a specialized resource, then the risks and reward of such a decision should be clearly communicated to the client before it’s too late to turn back.  Projects often fail because of technical decisions that were made up front later on became extremely costly to support and were ultimately irreversible without re-writing large parts of the application.

Finally, consultants should beware of clients that expect to just pay an invoice and get some working software with very little personal involvement in the project.  No matter how much they may profess that they “just want something that works” they will have always opinions on how it should work. So a consultant is better off setting their expectations of the client’s involvement as early as possible. This will ensure both a healthy development cycle for the project and help transition it to a capable maintenance resource that can support any future needs.

I recently had a chance to attend Headspring System’s Agile/Extreme Programming boot camp for Advanced .NET developers led by Jeffrey Palermo in Austin, TX.  I had wanted to learn the proper techniques to approach agile development on the .NET platform from an expert and when I found out about this course, I eagerly signed up.

The three day course covered best practices in regards to Agile design and process while incorporating multiple deep dives into Jeffrey’s tools of choice when doing development.  The exercises followed a format of first explaining how a normal development process becomes more agile and then having the hands on experience of implementing that process with different tools and concepts.  Jeffrey explained how simple things like source control can become more agile through regular branching and merging and he demonstrated how to do this with TortoiseSVN.

While a lot of software development training is often presented very academically, Headspring’s was very hands-on and really pushed everyone to pick up the processes and tools very quickly, just as you would in the real world.

On day one, upon entering the classroom we were told to check out a Subversion repository hosted on Google Code that would house the code for the application that we would be extending over the next few days.  This application was a Work Order management system designed using Domain-Driven Design and built using a Model-View-Presenter implementation with NHibernate serving as the ORM between our entities and the database.  The application also had a suite of both automated Unit Tests and Integration Tests which were regularly run as part of it’s NAnt-based automated build script.  If you’re curious to see the system, download the Visual Studio 2008 solution here.

Over the next two days, we extended and refactored this Work Order system to support new features and workflows by first writing NUnit tests and then designing interfaces around the problem domain. By focusing our whiteboarding sessions on separating the concerns into smaller pieces that each group could begin implementing, the whole class of fifteen students was able to work as a team to successfully build and test the new features in a just a few hours.  Along the way we touched on many concepts like Inversion of Control by using StructureMap and reliable, targeted Refactoring by using Resharper.

Finally, we ended the class with a review of all of the concepts and tools that were used during the exercises and we identified some of the design patterns that were implemented by the final solution.

I really appreciated that Jeffrey tailored the exercises as per the class’s feedback.  Many of the attendees wanted to see more detail on NHibernate so Jeffrey dedicated a lot of time to going over some best practices around NHibernate mappings and he demonstrated ways to optimize the queries produced by it.

There was a obviously a lot more to this course than I could possibly cover in a single blog post. If all of this content sounds interesting to you, I would highly suggest signing up for one of Headspring’s upcoming sessions if you are looking for some practical guidance to help you hit the ground running with Agile development.

One final note: If you are considering taking this course, I would recommend familiarizing yourself somewhat with the following tools beforehand: TortoiseSVN, NUnit, and Resharper.  Also, I would recommend having at least a basic understanding of Test Driven Development, Model-View-Presenter, and Inversion of Control. The course moves very quickly and you will have an easier time keeping up if you at least have some working knowledge of these tools and concepts prior to attending the course.

Thanks again to both Jeffrey Palermo and Jimmy Bogard for a great training experience and chance to inundate them with questions as I am known to do!

I’ve been an avid user of Google Calendar since its inception.  It’s been a great tool for personal organization and helps my wife and I to keep track of social engagements, personal events, vacations, and errands. We both have access to each other’s calendars and can assign events to each other with ease.

Before I got my AT&T Tilt, I had a phone with no Internet data plan. Luckily, I was able to configure Google Calendar to send me an SMS message as a reminder for any events in my calendar.  This has worked out great.

Now fast forward to 6 months ago when I started working for Telligent.  Like many other companies, Telligent uses Exchange Server/Outlook for resource and employee scheduling.  All of my work-related meeting requests, appointments, and tasks go through Outlook.  Accessing this information outside the office requires an Internet connection so having an connected mobile phone is helpful to keep up on the road.

My Tilt allowed me to access my Outlook calendar wherever I was, but this created an issue of trying to keep my Outlook calendar at work and my personal calendar on Google synchronized.  If I ever had a personal errand or appointment during a weekday saved in Google calendar it would not show up as blocked off in my Outlook calendar and a coworker could unknowingly invite me to a meeting in that slot not knowing that I was busy.  So I did a lot of searching and initially found some very complex solutions to this problem.  None of them worked consistently and often required me to install third party utilities from somewhat untrustworthy sources.  Or they required me to spend money to get automatic calendar synchronization.

Being the stingy person that I am, I looked for a better, free solution and found it in Plaxo.  Plaxo has been around for a while as a contacts synchronization service and has recently dabbled in the Social Networking space. But one of the key features that Plaxo offers is calendar synchronization between Google, Outlook and a number of other sources.  In order to keep outlook/exchange synched up, you have to download a small plug-in for Outlook that you can get via the Sync Wizard on the Plaxo site. 

Once you have everything installed and configured properly, all that is required is to leave Outlook running (as I typically do on my work machine) and it will periodically sync with Plaxo to keep things up to date.

I’ve been using Plaxo sync for the past few days and it works great.  If you’ve been looking for a solid method for keeping Google Calendar and Outlook synchronized, this is definitely the way to go.

This post is definitely a departure from my usual style, but since many of us software geeks also happen to be fantasy geeks I thought I would share the recent news that Tor books has announced a new author for the Wheel of Time series of fantasy books.

Ever since Robert Jordan’s passing last September, the fantasy world has been mourning the loss of one of its greatest authors.  I myself felt the loss pretty hard since I have been reading RJ’s books for over 10 years and it was the first major fantasy series that I started reading.  I’ve always been an avid reader of fiction but WoT really introduced me to a different type of genre.  I even converted two college roommates into RJ fans back in my third year of college.  These were guys who had never read a book over 300 pages unless they were required to.  To see them voluntarily put down multiple 1,000 page fantasy books definitely speaks volumes of Jordan’s amazing storytelling ability. 

The greatest tragedy for Robert Jordan was never completing his epic series.  While working on his 10th and final book, he passed away due to complications with amyloidosis.

The new author, Brandon Sanderson, is a younger author and longtime fan of Robert Jordan.  He’s also an avid blogger and he posted a great personal eulogy to Robert Jordan recently.  Sanderson also recently gave an interview to the DragonMount fan website upon receiving the news that he was chosen to be the successor to Robert Jordan.  Here are a couple of my favorite parts of this interview.

In what ways do you think you’ll have to shift your writing style to match Robert Jordan’s? Will you be trying to write in his "voice", or will you approach the novel with your own?

To attempt an exact copy of his style would, I think, be the wrong move. If I did it poorly, it would feel like an awkward parody. Yet, at the same time, there are some very important reasons people love these books. Depth of setting, detailed descriptions, and complex and lengthy characterizations are all hallmarks of Mr. Jordan’s style.

So, I think it will need to be a balance. I intend to be more detailed in my descriptions and linger a little bit longer on side characters than I do in my own work. However, I am not Robert Jordan, and the fans know that. Every author is different, and I think that my style will indeed influence how the text and ideas are presented.

Are there any particular aspects of the book that you think will be especially challenging for you?

The first is the depth of the setting. Though I’ve read these books several times, there is just SO MUCH to wrap your head around…I’m certainly glad for the Internet and the resources fans have created. I suspect you’ll find me on Dragonmount occasionally asking for someone to look up an obscure fact or name for me!

The other item of particular challenge is the worry that I’ll disappoint the fans. I am confident in my writing, but. . .wow. This is like being the final man at bat in the last inning of the World Series–I’m the guy who has to step up and either strike out get a hit to win. All of my training, practice, and studies are coming to a head.

I don’t want to be the guy who ruined The Wheel of Time. I’ll work very hard to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Read the rest of the interview here. 

I’m very excited at this news and I’m eagerly awaiting the final book, entitled A Memory of Light, which will be hitting store shelves in Fall 2009.