I really started to dislike the old blog look, especially after my old ISP finally decided to close my web hosting account and delete the images stored there... So I thought I should do something about it. And once again it became painfully clear to me that web design really isn't one of my stronger skills. Anyway, it looks a bit different, it will have to do for now.
Hopefully I'll get around to post a bit more regularly also (but no promises).
Don't forget to visit the other Citerus' bloggers, there's a lot of good stuff to read there!
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
But wait, there's even more!
Two interesting upcoming classes at Citerus:
First, Test-Driven Development and Refactoring - a two days hands-on workshop, December 11-12.
Second, Certified Scrum Master, January 23-24.
And don't miss Tobias Fors' talk "Am I Agile Now?" at Oredev, 11 am on Thursday November 16 (yes, that's tomorrow).
Oh, Blog turned Citerus billboard...
First, Test-Driven Development and Refactoring - a two days hands-on workshop, December 11-12.
Second, Certified Scrum Master, January 23-24.
And don't miss Tobias Fors' talk "Am I Agile Now?" at Oredev, 11 am on Thursday November 16 (yes, that's tomorrow).
Oh, Blog turned Citerus billboard...
Monday, August 14, 2006
Eric Evans: Domain-Driven Design Three-Day Workshop
Eric Evans, renowned author and internationally recognized for his significant contribution in the area of Domain-Driven Design, DDD, returns to Citerus fall 2006 to host a three day in-depth workshop on Domain-Driven Design.
Last time Eric visited Sweden and Citerus in the fall of 2005, the seminar sold out in just a few days; make sure to register on time!
Read more and register.
Last time Eric visited Sweden and Citerus in the fall of 2005, the seminar sold out in just a few days; make sure to register on time!
Read more and register.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
sventon 1.0 RC1
Just a short note to announce sventon 1.0 RC1.
Read more and give it a try: http://sventon.berlios.de
/Patrik
Read more and give it a try: http://sventon.berlios.de
/Patrik
Monday, January 30, 2006
On Shipping Crap. Part II
Some things are just hard to understand. On a daily basis I encounter really badly designed websites with poorly implemented technical solutions, and it’s really starting to get to me. Seriously, when is this, 1997? The web has been used commercially for about a decade now, and it’s not getting any better. We had the first simple web pages with a few images, and some text, preferably on the default grey background of Netscape 1.12N. Then the hype came along and we got insanely over-designed, mostly unusable, web pages that assumed that most users had a 10 Mbit broadband connection (which, at the time, pretty much no one did…). Then the bubble erupted. One would think things got better, and perhaps they did. But it’s pretty far from OK.
Yes, some companies do get it right, everyone’s current favorite, Google, comes to mind with a built in integrity that is really hard to beat. But it really is an exception. And that really is too bad. Unfortunately it looks like recent events in regard to Google’s China venture makes that integrity a bit less shiny.
Let me give you some examples from the last few days:
Oracle
In the aftermath (or perhaps it’s actually the beginning) of the Oracle PeopleSoft merger I got an e-mail from Oracle asking me to review their new privacy policy and update my registered profile. I usually throw most of these things in the trash, you only have time to read so many privacy policies and update so many web profiles, but I thought I should do this one. So I logged onto the given URL and an ordinary web form was presented. For some reason my area of work was set to "Fishing and Agriculture", so I changed that, and updated some other items. I did however not select a State, since we don’t do states in Sweden. State does not carry any meaning in the contents of a Swedish address. This is surprisingly often a problem with American websites; they assume that states matter in the rest of the world, which simply is not always true. It was marked as a mandatory field, but I must admit, naïve as I am, that I thought I could leave it empty and submit the form anyway. I couldn’t, an error screen was presented stating the missing field, and a Retry button. I hit the Retry button and was presented with the original form, with all my changes gone.
What is going on? This is Oracle, they have been shipping frameworks for building websites for ages, and surely they know how to keep the posted values during the validation phase, perhaps even present the errors in connection to the incorrect field? Any half decent framework will do this for you.
I did take a look under the state drop down box this time and found that they had dug up something called Län, I guess it could be roughly translated to State if you really wanted, but in Sweden, it simply bares no meaning in this context.
Filling out the form again was really not an acceptable proposition; I had already done it once. As far as Oracle is concerned, I’ll be doing Fishing and Agriculture also in the future. So I logged out, only to be presented with the following text:
Partner Application Name: EMKTAPMID2.amts402.oracle.com
Logout Status: OK
What a joke.
SAS
The number one website category on the unusability chart has got to be online hotel and airline reservation sites, and absolutely worst of the ones I have tried is Scandinavian Airlines' site. Nothing manages to drive me so close to insanity as this one…
In the IDG IT-business paper Computer Sweden the other day, we could read that almost all companies in Sweden they had talked to were unhappy with the result of outsourcing their IT department. The only exception was SAS that considered their IT outsourcing effort a success. I don’t know if web development and maintenance was part of the outsourcing deal, but I bet it was. If that is the case, SAS managers and I have quite a different definition of success.
I don’t want to spoil the fun for you by giving examples, just try it out for yourself! It will fail in new unexpected ways in all its glory no matter which browser/OS combo you use. I think I have tried everything from Camino, Firefox and Safari on the Mac to Windows XP with Internet Explorer and Firefox. They all fail at some point. Preferably they fail with an old-school Mac OS type error code, like -1233456243.
Apple
This could perhaps be considered the odd one. Apple is a company that’s offering products in the premium segment. If you are looking for raw power to the best prices, you probably should look for another vendor, why not Dell for instance. But if you look for an integrated whole, where your digital audio player (with video) seamlessly integrates with smooth software running on a beautifully designed computer with a modern and powerful operating system, there’s simply not much of a competition. You will pay a premium for this, which apparently more and more people are willing to do.
But this package falls apart when it comes to the web site. On the surface it’s rather nice, but when you start to use it the flaws appear: Dead links, missing images, incorrectly localized text, weird PeopleSoft pop-ups about expiring web sessions, forms that can not be submitted, and so on. Just the other day I got this message when browsing the Apple Store:
"Skickas vanligen: Momenteel niet beschikbaar
Gratis frakt
Sold out for the Holidays and we hope to have supply again later in January."
That's at least three different languages in one go, Swedish, English, and perhaps Dutch(?)
Another example from the Swedish version of the Apple Store: "Visa status för din Beställningsstatus", which translates to "Show status for your order status".
Apple, just fix it.
So, what does this have to do with software development? It got everything to do with software development. These sites are results of a software development projects, and once again we didn’t deliver.
Yes, some companies do get it right, everyone’s current favorite, Google, comes to mind with a built in integrity that is really hard to beat. But it really is an exception. And that really is too bad. Unfortunately it looks like recent events in regard to Google’s China venture makes that integrity a bit less shiny.
Let me give you some examples from the last few days:
Oracle
In the aftermath (or perhaps it’s actually the beginning) of the Oracle PeopleSoft merger I got an e-mail from Oracle asking me to review their new privacy policy and update my registered profile. I usually throw most of these things in the trash, you only have time to read so many privacy policies and update so many web profiles, but I thought I should do this one. So I logged onto the given URL and an ordinary web form was presented. For some reason my area of work was set to "Fishing and Agriculture", so I changed that, and updated some other items. I did however not select a State, since we don’t do states in Sweden. State does not carry any meaning in the contents of a Swedish address. This is surprisingly often a problem with American websites; they assume that states matter in the rest of the world, which simply is not always true. It was marked as a mandatory field, but I must admit, naïve as I am, that I thought I could leave it empty and submit the form anyway. I couldn’t, an error screen was presented stating the missing field, and a Retry button. I hit the Retry button and was presented with the original form, with all my changes gone.
What is going on? This is Oracle, they have been shipping frameworks for building websites for ages, and surely they know how to keep the posted values during the validation phase, perhaps even present the errors in connection to the incorrect field? Any half decent framework will do this for you.
I did take a look under the state drop down box this time and found that they had dug up something called Län, I guess it could be roughly translated to State if you really wanted, but in Sweden, it simply bares no meaning in this context.
Filling out the form again was really not an acceptable proposition; I had already done it once. As far as Oracle is concerned, I’ll be doing Fishing and Agriculture also in the future. So I logged out, only to be presented with the following text:
Partner Application Name: EMKTAPMID2.amts402.oracle.com
Logout Status: OK
What a joke.
SAS
The number one website category on the unusability chart has got to be online hotel and airline reservation sites, and absolutely worst of the ones I have tried is Scandinavian Airlines' site. Nothing manages to drive me so close to insanity as this one…
In the IDG IT-business paper Computer Sweden the other day, we could read that almost all companies in Sweden they had talked to were unhappy with the result of outsourcing their IT department. The only exception was SAS that considered their IT outsourcing effort a success. I don’t know if web development and maintenance was part of the outsourcing deal, but I bet it was. If that is the case, SAS managers and I have quite a different definition of success.
I don’t want to spoil the fun for you by giving examples, just try it out for yourself! It will fail in new unexpected ways in all its glory no matter which browser/OS combo you use. I think I have tried everything from Camino, Firefox and Safari on the Mac to Windows XP with Internet Explorer and Firefox. They all fail at some point. Preferably they fail with an old-school Mac OS type error code, like -1233456243.
Apple
This could perhaps be considered the odd one. Apple is a company that’s offering products in the premium segment. If you are looking for raw power to the best prices, you probably should look for another vendor, why not Dell for instance. But if you look for an integrated whole, where your digital audio player (with video) seamlessly integrates with smooth software running on a beautifully designed computer with a modern and powerful operating system, there’s simply not much of a competition. You will pay a premium for this, which apparently more and more people are willing to do.
But this package falls apart when it comes to the web site. On the surface it’s rather nice, but when you start to use it the flaws appear: Dead links, missing images, incorrectly localized text, weird PeopleSoft pop-ups about expiring web sessions, forms that can not be submitted, and so on. Just the other day I got this message when browsing the Apple Store:
"Skickas vanligen: Momenteel niet beschikbaar
Gratis frakt
Sold out for the Holidays and we hope to have supply again later in January."
That's at least three different languages in one go, Swedish, English, and perhaps Dutch(?)
Another example from the Swedish version of the Apple Store: "Visa status för din Beställningsstatus", which translates to "Show status for your order status".
Apple, just fix it.
So, what does this have to do with software development? It got everything to do with software development. These sites are results of a software development projects, and once again we didn’t deliver.
Monday, December 26, 2005
Total Recall – or Lean goes to France (or actually Czechia)
I am a proud owner of a Peugeot 307; it’s a great little car. It looks good, is fun to drive, has a spacious and modern, well designed, interior, good sound proofing; yes pretty much what you look for in a car of this size. As an extra bonus you’ll also get a really close relationship with your local Peugeot service center; since you’ll be bringing in your car for big and small repairs repeatedly there’s plenty of bonding time. It also gives you the opportunity to try out new cars on a regular basis, when you get a courtesy car to drive during the time yours is being patched up. Small tip to fellow Peugeot owners: If you collect and save your recall notices instead of calling the garage to make reservation as soon as you receive them, you can batch the recalls and perhaps only have to visit your garage once a month or so.
Well, seriously, it is a nice car. But when recall notice number three arrives by mail in less than three years (not counting the numerous times you have to visit the garage to fix something that is broken without an official recall), you start to wonder. Not only is it annoying for the owner to go back and forth to the garage like a yo-yo, but also, this must start to get expensive for Peugeot, both with regard to actual service costs and damage to their reputation, which eventually could hurt sales. Anyway, it is quite obvious that quality is not Peugeot’s unique selling proposition.
Apparently Peugeot has reached this conclusion as well. When it was time for PSA to build a new assembly plant in Czechia, they decided to partner up with Toyota. And why would they want to do that? To tap into Toyotas boring design and lack of driving pleasure? No, probably not. Peugeot has a QA problem they need to address, and the way to do this is to build quality in from the beginning, as you will only have limited success trying to patch it on at a later stage. So they turn to the company that currently pretty much defines quality in the automotive industry for help. In the latest edition of the Peugeot customer newsletter, Peugeot New, there is a long feature on the new plant, and when interviewing the manager about the production system the reason for the joint venture is spelled out: “What you have to understand, when it comes to the production, computer and IT systems, it’s Toyota and ‘the Toyota way’ that is used.”
We’ll see how this turns out. Combining Toyota’s lean production system, credited for Toyota’s ability to consistently deliver the best built cars (and along with that a net profit of USD 11B last year), with Peugeot’s feeling for innovative design and character could work out. But I bet there are some corporate cultural differences that need to be solved along the way…
The first products coming out of the TPCA plant, the Citroën C1, Peugeot 107 and Toyota AYGO, are about to hit the showrooms. Time will tell if they deliver to expectations.
And then, as an instant reminder of the absence of the silver bullet, the latest large vehicle recall comes from no other than Toyota themselves. Recalling 160 000 of their environmental flag ship hybrid car, the Prius. You’ll never guess the source of the problem...
Well, seriously, it is a nice car. But when recall notice number three arrives by mail in less than three years (not counting the numerous times you have to visit the garage to fix something that is broken without an official recall), you start to wonder. Not only is it annoying for the owner to go back and forth to the garage like a yo-yo, but also, this must start to get expensive for Peugeot, both with regard to actual service costs and damage to their reputation, which eventually could hurt sales. Anyway, it is quite obvious that quality is not Peugeot’s unique selling proposition.
Apparently Peugeot has reached this conclusion as well. When it was time for PSA to build a new assembly plant in Czechia, they decided to partner up with Toyota. And why would they want to do that? To tap into Toyotas boring design and lack of driving pleasure? No, probably not. Peugeot has a QA problem they need to address, and the way to do this is to build quality in from the beginning, as you will only have limited success trying to patch it on at a later stage. So they turn to the company that currently pretty much defines quality in the automotive industry for help. In the latest edition of the Peugeot customer newsletter, Peugeot New, there is a long feature on the new plant, and when interviewing the manager about the production system the reason for the joint venture is spelled out: “What you have to understand, when it comes to the production, computer and IT systems, it’s Toyota and ‘the Toyota way’ that is used.”
We’ll see how this turns out. Combining Toyota’s lean production system, credited for Toyota’s ability to consistently deliver the best built cars (and along with that a net profit of USD 11B last year), with Peugeot’s feeling for innovative design and character could work out. But I bet there are some corporate cultural differences that need to be solved along the way…
The first products coming out of the TPCA plant, the Citroën C1, Peugeot 107 and Toyota AYGO, are about to hit the showrooms. Time will tell if they deliver to expectations.
And then, as an instant reminder of the absence of the silver bullet, the latest large vehicle recall comes from no other than Toyota themselves. Recalling 160 000 of their environmental flag ship hybrid car, the Prius. You’ll never guess the source of the problem...
Monday, December 05, 2005
sventon
It’s here! The first official build of sventon, a Subversion web GUI application written in Java for browsing SVN repositories. It’s still to be regarded as a beta release that needs more work and testing. But this first release has most features expected from a tool like this, and a few extra unexpected ones. If you have a Subversion server repository you’d like to easily browse using a web browser, please try it out! All you need is Java 5 and a compliant servlet container, such as Tomcat 5.5.
One thing that really bothers us is reading long installation manuals with close to a billion steps that need to be completed in order to get software running, so we spent quite some time on making the installation as easy as possible. Please let us know whether we succeeded or not.
If you decide to give it a try, please give us feedback on your experiences and new feature requests through http://sventon.berlios.de.
Many thanks to Alexander Kitaev for providing the JavaSVN library that sventon relies on for Subversion interaction.
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