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Text Transcript of Show #438 (Transcription services provided by PWOP Productions)

Pat Hynds on why projects fail April 16, 2009

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Pat Hynds on why projects fail April 16, 2009

Geoff Maciolek: The opinions and viewpoints expressed in .NET Rocks! are not necessarily those of its sponsors, or of Microsoft Corporation, i t s partners, or employees. .NET Rocks! is a production of Franklins.NET, which is solely responsible for its content. Franklins.NET - Training Developers to Work Smarter. [Music] Lawrence Ryan: Hey, Rock heads! Come up with your own fricking joke! It's time for another stellar episode of .NET Rocks! the Internet audio talk show for .NET developers, with Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell. This is Lawrence Ryan announcing show #438, with guest Pat Hynds, recorded live, Friday, April 10, 2009. .NET Rocks! is brought to you by Franklins.NET - Training Developers to Work Smarter and now offering SharePoint 2007 video training with Sahil Malik on DVD, dnrTV style, order your copy now at www.franklins.net. Support is also provided by Telerik, combining the best in Windows Forms and ASP.NET controls with first class customer service, online at www.telerik.com, and by Data Dynamics, makers of ActiveReports.Net, simple, powerful and cost-effective reporting for Windows Forms and ASP.NET web applications, online at www.datadynamics.com. Support is also provided by CoDe Magazine, the leading independent magazine for .NET d evelopers, online at www.codemagazine.com. And now, the man who is looking forward to the video version of Mondays, Carl Franklin. Carl Franklin: Thank you very much and welcome back to .NET Rocks! This is Carl Franklin. Richard Campbell: And this is Richard Campbell.

what it is. Can you read this to me?" And I said, "Ah, this is an appointment for your vision and hearing test." And he goes, "What?" Richard Campbell: That's a ll you got, huh. I fly across the continent, come and sit in a booth with you, that's what you've got. Carl Franklin: C o m e o n , that's pretty good. All right, let's get on to Better Know a Framework. [Music] Richard Campbell: Carl Franklin: Richard Campbell: I love that tune up close, man. What? All right, what have you got?

Carl Franklin: Okay, so Better Know a Framework is this little spot on the show where I shine a little flashlight on a dark hidden corner of the .NET framework somewhere because there are so many things to know, and since people listen to us week after week -- by osmosis some of these things will sink in. It's not training, all I'm doing is calling your attention to something that's there. So we've been talking about the System.Windows.Controls Namespace which is where all the WPF and Silverlight controls are; right? Richard Campbell: Right.

Carl Franklin: So today we're going to talk about the Calendar control. That's right. Did you know that there is a WPF calendar? Richard Campbell: it. I did not know. Tell me about

Carl Franklin: And we're sitting here across from each other at PWOP Studios in New London, Connecticut. Welcome to my town, Richard. Richard Campbell: I'm so glad to be here and sitting across the booth from you. Normally we do this totally blind. We sound like we're in the same room but we really aren't. Now we finally are. Carl Franklin: We're not even compensating for the delay of the phone lines here, I mean this is the speed of light we're talking. Richard Campbell: very spoiled. Yeah, we're very spoiled, very,

Carl Franklin: Speed of electrons. Hey, you know, I was sitting down at a bar last night and this friend of mine comes up to me who is aging a little bit and he says, he is looking at this piece of mail and I said what is that, and he goes, "You see, I don't know

Carl Franklin: Well, of course there has to be a calendar. Well, that's all there is. It represents a control that enables it to be used at a selected date by using a visual calendar display. It's the same kind of thing that you'd expect to see, you know, like if you're used to working with the ASP.NET counter, same idea. There it is. Let me see what the remarks say here. A calendar control can be used on its own or as a drop down part of a date picker control. It displays either the days of the month, the months of a year, or the years of a decade depending on the value of the display mode property. When displaying the days of the month you can select a date, a range of dates, or multiple ranges of dates. These are just little things that you get with the rich user experience of WPF and Silverlight instead of the clunky awkwardness of ASP.NET. Richard Campbell: Right.

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Pat Hynds on why projects fail April 16, 2009

Carl Franklin: Richard Campbell: Carl Franklin:

So there you go. Awesome. There's more stuff but... Richard Campbell: sore. Carl Franklin: Yeah, his head was a little Yeah, I'm just saying.

Richard Campbell: I think it's enough to know that there is such a thing as a date control or a calendar control in WPF built right in. Carl Franklin: Yup. Built right in. So you got an email for us, Richard. Richard Campbell: I do indeed. Since it's Thursday, I can read a little of it and indulge an email although I thought of this one particularly funny. Carl Franklin: Okay.

Richard Campbell: "Well, the two years finished and I started to relearn stuff. Things were ticking along slowly until about a month or so I discovered your site and I thought, hey, maybe I will listen to one of these podcasts. Since then I've been hooked. After listening to a few shows, I came onto the realization that I have two years of technology to catch up on and your show is the perfect medium for doing this." Carl Franklin: That's great.

Richard Campbell: "Dear Carl and Richard. I've been promising myself I would email you guys and thank you for the great job you're doing and how it has revolutionize my business." Carl Franklin: Oh, I saw this.

Richard Campbell: "I recently started listening from the beginning of the archives and show 222 but soon worked out that with two new shows every week it will take me several months to get up to date so I revised my strategy and now listen to two new shows every week and I'm averaging a legacy show every day..." Carl Franklin: That's what I can't imagine listening to that much Carl and Richard. Richard Campbell: Yeah, I don't think I could listen to myself that much. "Right now it's show 260." So he still got 170 shows to go. Carl Franklin: That man deserves a mug.

Richard Campbell: Y e s . "Just over three years ago, I put everything on hold including my business and programming career to do service for my church as a missionary." Carl Franklin: Good for you.

Richard Campbell: "It was something I really wanted to do but it meant that I had limited access to a PC and what I mean limited I mean I check my email for an hour once a week for a period of two years." Carl Franklin: Richard Campbell: imagine doing that. Carl Franklin: Richard Campbell: BlackBerry. Carl Franklin: Painful. That's incredible. I can't

Richard Campbell: Absolutely. "Anyhow, a few weeks ago I was listening to a legacy show where Carl made a comment saying who doesn't use source control nowadays?" Carl Franklin: Yeah.

I can't imagine. This guy didn't have a

Richard Campbell: "And I was like what the heck is source control? Well, since I am the boss, I figured maybe it would be useful and I should check it out and after two days of using SVN I couldn't believe we never used it before." Carl Franklin: Yeah.

No, he didn't.

Richard Campbell: I'm just trying to get my head around that. "I won't lie to you, it was tough especially since just before I began the two-years stint I just figured out how to solve a programming problem that I have been bashing my head on for years, and then I run out of time to code it before I left." Carl Franklin: Wow. You think he took a break while he was bashing his head for years?

Richard Campbell: "Then last week, I was listening to another legacy show where you were quoted on how few companies do unit testing, and again I was like what's that? Now I have checked the technology out and I can't believe how useful it is and what an idiot I've been for not finding out about stuff like this before and these are just two examples of many. So basically, in the space of literally weeks of your show, it has helped me remove several major headaches I used to experience in our development cycle before I

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Pat Hynds on why projects fail April 16, 2009

went on hiatus and now I've increased my business productivity tenfold." Carl Franklin: Wow.

Richard Campbell: Yes, I do remember show 200. It was the Quiz Show. Carl Franklin: Yeah. And all the previous hosts were

Richard Campbell: "Thank you for your great work. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Kind regards, Mark Pearl, and there's a P.S. Now I know I owe you guys already, but if I was able to get some swag that I could wear or use around the office, you would not only make my week but also contribute to making several other programmers that I worked with extremely jealous." Carl Franklin: You know what, yeah, I think he should have something to wear and something to drink coffee out of. Richard Campbell: I totally agree.

Richard Campbell: together.

Carl Franklin: So we've done so many shows now that the hundred marks seem to be meaning less and less to us, but the hundredth show was like a fun look back. We had some fun with the people that were on it and we also looked back and listen to some bits from critical shows. Show 200 was a quiz show. In show 300, I interviewed you and show 400 was a dismal failure. Don't listen to it. Richard Campbell: Montreal. Carl Franklin: Richard Campbell: show 500. Yeah, drunk in a bar in

Carl Franklin: Yeah, maybe two mugs, one for him and one for his favorite employee. Richard Campbell: Carl Franklin: Yeah, one that they can rotate. Yeah.

Drunk in a bar in Montreal. You know, this year we get

Richard Campbell: Employee of the month can get to use the other .NET Rocks! mug. Carl Franklin: And a T-shirt.

Carl Franklin: In show 500, we're actually going to throw a party. Richard Campbell: party. I think we need to throw a

Richard Campbell: "I will send that information to the gnomes at .NET Rocks! and we'll get that out to your right away. Carl Franklin: Absolutely.

Richard Campbell: Mark, thanks so much for your great email, and if you've got questions, concerns, ideas, shows you'd like to see, criticisms, or youd just like us to talk less... Carl Franklin: That's right. us an email at

Carl Franklin: Yeah, we're going to throw a party. I think it will be in Las Vegas but I'm not sure. Anyway, during show 200, we did this thing that Richard and I called the 64-bit Question. It's a .NET Rocks! quiz show. Rory Blyth was here, Mark Dun was here, Richard of course was here, Mark Miller was here, and Geoff Maciolek was here and we all did this quiz show. Well, we got that on video and we just released it so it's up on the .NET Rocks! website, check it out. It's in Silverlight but it's your standard DV format. Richard Campbell: Well, I watched it all the way through because I'd totally forgotten about it. I mean it was a couple of years ago. Carl Franklin: ago. Richard Campbell: Yeah, it was a couple of years

Richard Campbell: Send dotnetrocks@franklins.net. Carl Franklin: enough. Richard Campbell: Carl Franklin: it. Richard Campbell: Carl Franklin: 200?

We'll read the flame if it's good

Absolutely. If it makes us laugh, you've got

Very funny.

Carl Franklin: That was 2006, October to be exact. And TechEd... Richard Campbell: sweepstakes is on. Indeed TechEd, the TechEd

Yeah, anything is possible. Hey, do you remember show

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Carl Franklin: So what this is all about, of course, is TechEd 2009 North America is going to be on May 11th to the 15th and Microsoft came to us and said how can we get the word out about TechEd and we said, "Why, we will talk about it!" Of course we're going to not just talk about it, we're going to give away a ticket which is what we like to do, right Richard? Richard Campbell: to do. Absolutely, that's what we like

Richard Campbell: TechEd before. Carl Franklin:

And you've never spoken at a Right.

Richard Campbell: Ever, but you'r e a n experienced speaker, I want experienced speakers, I just want guys who have not spoken at TechEd. Carl Franklin: Right.

Carl Franklin: Yeah, we like to send some lucky winner of our sweepstakes: a ticket, hotel, and airfare kind of just like the royal treatment. Richard Campbell: All expenses are paid.

Richard Campbell: They could have done handson labs, they could have been in the Ask the Experts, they could do any of those things but they haven't had got a break-out session because having a break-out session at TechEd is the hard part. Carl Franklin: What do they win if they become the person who impresses the judges? Richard Campbell: If you win Speaker Idol, that means you gave a five-minute presentation, you win your hit, you go to the finals, you win the finals, you get the full right or you get to be a speaker at TechEd in 2010. Carl Franklin: That is unbelievable because that's a coveted slot. Richard Campbell: It's incredibly hard to get and that's really how Speaker Idol came about which is recognition that it was so hard to become a speaker at TechEd, and so we had some great winners, Steve Smith was a winner, Keith Mayer won... Carl Franklin: Rhonda Layfield.

Carl Franklin: Except your bar tab and your food and all that stuff. Richard Campbell: Because goodness knows if they're paying my bar tab, that would be the end of that show. Carl Franklin: I was going to say the big expenses are paid but, you know, the bar tab is questionable. So here is what you do. Go to dotnetrocks.com, there's a nice green sticker over on the right that says the TechEd 2009 sweepstakes, click on that and then you need to register with us. Once you register, every week, every Tuesday we're going to ask a question, a trivia question from a previous show and if you're a listener, you know, you've been listening to the shows you should have no trouble answering the questions. Every week we're going to pull a winner from the correct answers and we're going to give that person a .NET Rocks! mug; then those weekly winners will be in the drawing on April 30 for the grand prize. Richard Campbell: And the grand prize is that free ride to TechEd. You're going to see us, we'll be all over TechEd this year. Carl Franklin: Oh yeah, we might be doing this 64-bit question live. I'm not sure about that. Richard Campbell: doing Speaker Idol. Still unsure but we're definitely

Richard Campbell: Rhonda Layfield, the really talented speakers that have never been able to get to speak at TechEd and came on the contest, won, and are now TechEd speakers. Carl Franklin: I think Rhonda Layfield, isn't she like headlining or something? I mean, I went to the TechEd website and you know how they have pictures of the people who are doing sessions and stuff and she was up there. Richard Campbell: from last year; so Carl Franklin: Absolutely, she was the winner

Carl Franklin: Definitely doing Speaker Idol which is a great contest in which presenters get five minutes to show their stuff, to do a presentation, impress the judges, and then we pick a winner. Richard Campbell: By the way, I'm still recruiting contestants for Speaker Idol. So if you're going to TechEd U.S... Carl Franklin: And you're not a speaker.

Isn't that great?

Richard Campbell: It's awesome and it's a ton of fun for us to just find these new folks. Carl Franklin: Right.

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Richard Campbell: So again send us an email dotnetrocks@franklins.net if you'd like to participate in Speaker Idol. Carl Franklin: Absolutely. Okay, now it's time to talk to Mr., Pat Hynds. Patrick Hynds was the first guest on .NET Rocks! He was the first guest on Mondays and he was the first guest on RunAs Radio. Richard Campbell: Indeed.

Pat Hynds: significant. Carl Franklin:

Well,

Site

Server

was

Yeah, it was...

Pat Hynds: But actually it wasn't even significant then so I'm outdated but that's okay, it's mostly the same stuff. Carl Franklin: So you're a security MVP?

Carl Franklin: And he's been on our show. The last time you were on, Pat, I think was show 167 which was a security update. Let me just read your bio here, Pat, a little bit. Pat Hynds is a Microsoft Regional Director, MCSD, MCSE+I, MCDBA, MCP+Site Builder and MCT -- and those are just like five or six of his certifications. He has got something like 75. How many have you got, Pat? Pat Hynds: seven years ago. Only 55, but I stopped about

Pat Hynds: Yes. Duane Laflotte and I both work at CriticalSites, we're developer security MVPs, we do a lot of security audits, helping companies understand what the security threats are and we're also branching out or Im branching out now into helping companies with business problems with projects how to keep them from failing, that kind of thing too. Carl Franklin: Yeah and that's on everybody's mind right now, it's got to be. I've seen some stories to the effect that the technology sector is actually weathering the financial storm here and holding fast. It's not falling apart like retail is falling apart, like manufacturing seems to be. What's your take on this whole thing? Pat Hynds: So my sources say that we're not out of the woods yet. I speak at the Code Camps and I go to TechEd and the other events, but I keep my ear on the ground pretty well. It sounds like there still are going to be a few layoffs in the IT sector that we haven't seen yet, where I think layoffs in other sectors have started to abate. I think IT organizations in Silicon Valley and around are probably going to take one more stab at allowing the economy to be blamed for them trimming things a little bit. Carl Franklin: It does seem to be it can ring an excuse, doesn't it? Pat Hynds: It certainly is. Well, you can follow Jack Welch's advice and just always fire the lowest 10% every year or you can let the economy be the bad guy. Richard Campbell: I also think that its not just that the people are exploiting this opportunity but that for the past couple of years things have been going so fast people took their eye off the bottom line. They were focusing on the top line, more sales, more markets, more products... Carl Franklin: Right.

Carl Franklin: Good Lord. I gave it up. The Chief Technology Officer for CriticalSites. Named by Microsoft as the Regional Director for Boston, he has been recognized as a leader in the technology field. He is one of the few certified trainers in New England for Site Server, an expert on Microsoft technology and experienced with other technologies as well: Websphere, Sybase, Perl, Java, UNIX, Netware, C++, etc. Patrick previously taught freelance software development and Network Architecture. He has been a successful contractor who enjoyed mastering difficult troubleshooting assignments. A graduate of West Point and a Gulf War veteran, Patrick brings an uncommon level of dedication to his leadership role at CriticalSites. He has experience in addressing business challenges with blended IT solutions involving leading-edge database, web and hardware systems. In spite of the demands of his management role at CriticalSites, Patrick stays technical and in the trenches acting as Project Manager and/or developer/engineer on selected projects throughout the year. And might we also add to this bio that you are like Mr. Security. Pat Hynds: I'm a security MVP now and that is a dated, dated bio; and a bit long from what I just heard. Carl Franklin: Yeah. Pat, what do you want us to say about you? You said, yeah, just use the bio from last one, but that was... Pat Hynds: Carl Franklin: A long time ago. 2006, my friend.

Richard Campbell: And so in a reflective moment when you're not so quite frantically trying to sell, you'll back a little at the bottom line and go, wow, we're doing some dumb stuff.

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Carl Franklin:

Right.

Richard Campbell: Or there are just few people around the office, you look at them and go, "What is it you do?" Carl Franklin: What are you doing exactly?

Pat Hynds: And people were getting discounts because it's like buying a car now. So what if I buy this software before the end of March? Well, in that case I'll give you a discount and tickets to this and it was definitely a buyer's market even in the software industry. Richard Campbell: Carl Franklin: Absolutely. Yeah.

Richard Campbell: What is it you do? Why don't you go do it somewhere else? Carl Franklin: You should learn to recognize that look. If somebody gives you that look, you may want to go home and rethink your life. Pat Hynds: I wonder what the economy would look like if people actually didn't lose sight of these things and we should just keep working without blinders on. It seems like with the Dot Bomb we had the same result. Richard Campbell: And I also think it's one of the reasons IT guys are so jumpy. It's that the last major down term was an IT centric downturn and this time it's not. Pat Hynds: Right. Yeah, January, February, and March were not banner months for software companies. I have the advantage that most of my customers I get to see how they're doing so there are not a lot of oversight into the market in general. A lot of ISVs, a lot of banks, but in the ISV side of things what we're seeing is almost no sales in January and February. You could call them like black holes. Richard Campbell: Right.

Pat Hynds: Consulting, not so much. It's hard to deeply, deeply discount consulting but we saw a little of that too. Carl Franklin: Yeah.

Pat Hynds: Then when I went to April, and things are picking up a little bit because there's a little bit of an uptake in the economy, the DOW hasn't been going down into the sewer, it's back over eight thousand again and even though a lot of people don't pay attention to that it's worth a techies while to watch the DOW because it's about whether or for the decision makers... Richard Campbell: Sure.

Pat Hynds: The people who are spending the money they watch the DOW as if it's a heart rate monitor. Richard Campbell: And there is some merit to that. I mean not every business reflects that tightly on that. Pat Hynds: Well, I taught MBA school so that people that's making decisions on the money that's what they're doing and that's who you have to keep tabs on. Richard Campbell: Absolutely and I think big things are starting to function, pieces of these are working and people are trying to get work finally. Bit by bit there's some corporate reports coming out and they're all not doom and gloom. You know, if you're not in the auto sector or the finance sector, you're probably okay. Pat Hynds: Right. Well, there's a huge amount of money, there's a huge amount of pent up money and the big thing is you have to be in a place that's not whimsical. Richard Campbell: Carl Franklin: Right. Right.

Pat Hynds: And then pent-up demand, if you had a product that actually had a business case and someone actually could say, yeah, we can't just forget about this, then... Richard Campbell: Yes.

Pat Hynds: March was actually pretty good because you had a whole quarter worth of pent-up demand and whatever was going to land landed in March. Richard Campbell: It was almost like a panic. You've waited too long, you've got to move quickly now. Pat Hynds: Richard Campbell: surge sale. Right. And so we had this sort of

Pat Hynds: You should be in a place that actually adds a value. If you have an ROI, you're going to survive if you don't do anything stupid.

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Richard Campbell: And I did get to sense that even in technical field we took our eye off the ball of are we actually providing value to our company. We were enjoying our technology, sort of exploring and indulgence even and now they're sort of turned back to that bottom line thing, how are you making the company better. Pat Hynds: Yeah and that's the kind of feast and famine. We were in a feast environment, people thought they had the luxury of time and energy to focus on things like social networking, and social networking I'm not bashing it, it's just that it's hard to make a pitch that we need a Facebook page when you're GM. Carl Franklin: By the way, you know, I think it's kind of difficult for people in the United States anyway, and maybe around the world, to wrap their minds around what actually happened in this recession, you know, with the different stimulus that caused this downturn and I've got to tell you one of the best explanations I've heard was on a show on NPR called "This American Life" and the name of the s h o w w a s "The Giant Pool of Money" a n d t h e producer of that show actually sat down and explained things in a very, very easy to understand way, and I shrinksterized that at shrinkster.com/15yh, so you obviously like listening to the radio because you're listening to us so go check that out if you're not sure, but what he basically talk about was the mortgage crisis. He talks about the giant pool of money being the trillions and trillions of dollars all around the world that people have to invest, and companies have to invest, and it needs to go somewhere all the time, it needs to be somewhere, people want more than their 2% that their savings account gives them. Pat Hynds: I don't know. The last quarter doesn't really bear that out. Carl Franklin: Oh, that's true. Well, you know, they want more. So the mortgage companies were creating funds, they're buying up mortgages and from banks because the banks are the ones that gave them mortgages. These mortgage companies that trade mortgages are the Wall Street firms. So they would get as many as they could and then they would sell that as a fund and they would sell shares of that to other people and of course the return was great because these are mortgages; those checks are coming in all the time. Pat Hynds: derivatives now. Carl Franklin: Yeah. Yeah. You're talking about

Pat Hynds: in, that's where...

That's where leverage comes

Carl Franklin: That's where leverage comes in; so basically this giant pool of money sunk trillions of dollars into this mortgage, this sort of these funds and they wanted more and there weren't enough real mortgages out there to provide the supply for their demand so they started laxing the rules on who could get a mortgage. Oh, well, now you don't have to have a job, you just got to say you have a job, you know, they came up with all sorts of crazy types of mortgages where you just had to -- they basically were encouraging people to lie. Pat Hynds: You know, the pendulum has swung so far and I was talking about with a mortgage guy yesterday, a guy who I have known for years with whom I did my first refi with back probably 10 years ago and he said that if you own a multi-family home even if it was a duplex and you live on one side and your parents live on the other, they're assessing, I believe that's a one percent penalty on the loan. Richard Campbell: Wow.

Pat Hynds: And if you take any cash out, it's at .75% penalty on the loan. Carl Franklin: Wow, indeed.

Pat Hynds: S o y o u 're basically trying to keep people with, you know, who want cash out or who they perceived as having investment properties, any multi-family is considered an investment property, and condos are also getting penalized in this as well. So the pendulum has slid very far back the other way. Carl Franklin: Yeah. Well, to wrap up the story, what happens when people can't pay their mortgages, and everybody is counting on that, not only those funds go down and people lose their money but the insurance, the mortgage insurance that AIG provided, for example, these companies would go and say, hey, I have a piece of this fund, can you give me mortgage insurance on that. So these mortgages were being insured multiple times if you think about the slices of mortgages and those shares of those funds that were insured with mortgage insurance, and of course when that tanks all of those people say, okay, I want my money, AIG is out of money because they can't pay off all at once. Yeah, that's essentially what happens so all of these investment money all around the world needs to find a place to go. So there is still a lot of money out there looking for a place to go. Pat Hynds: But it's all cautious money.

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Carl Franklin: that's right.

But they're holding on to it,

Pat Hynds: And so the opportunity here, and if you guys don't mind I'd like to discuss a little bit, is if you can show that you're a good bet, like the mortgages as a technologist or as a project, you're going to get funded, you're going to get the green light to go forward and one of the things that a lot of people don't realize is we're still, the statistics I've seen recently were still averaging around 50% of technical projects fail. Carl Franklin: Right.

NTP Software, and a consulting company specifically on security, CriticalSites, I get to see the insights of a lot of organizations and the insights of a lot of projects and I also get called in quite often when things are in trouble. Carl Franklin: Right.

Richard Campbell: They wouldn't call you if they weren't in trouble, right? Pat Hynds: Well, they might call the software company and I do some work with architectural design in large deployments there because I do have the networking site as well. Richard Campbell: Right.

Pat Hynds: Now, if you look at the numbers overseas, off-shoring, because of the challenges of communication, and some people certainly have different opinions on that, we can talk about that, but those fail on average 60% of the time. Carl Franklin: Wow.

Pat Hynds: But when they're typically calling CriticalSites they're very paranoid, and they're regular customers, when they're in deep trouble and they need help. Richard Campbell: Carl Franklin: Right. Yeah.

Pat Hynds: But they're cheap so some people were willing to try it twice. Richard Campbell: I c a n 't believe we still can't build software more reliably. Pat Hynds: Well, Agile technology, the Agile methodologies like Scrum and those kinds of things do have a better track record, they're about 70% but still a third of the project has failed. Richard Campbell: I would wonder if that improved percentages have more to do with that methodology being newer and so the people who are embracing it tend to be more interested or dedicated to building software successfully. Carl Franklin: Maybe.

Pat Hynds: So a lot of times the technology isn't the problem most of the time, occasionally it is, sometimes somebody picks the wrong thing or someone will try to go with two cutting-edge not realizing what they're getting in for. They'll use estimates for Silverlight with a VB programmer as if they're writing VB code, that type of thing. Carl Franklin: Yeah.

Pat Hynds: But most of it has to do with setting expectations and making sure that everybody understands what you're building. Carl Franklin: Yeah.

Pat Hynds: I think that's part of it but I also think that a big part of the Scrum and other methodologies in Agile development use communication. Richard Campbell: Right.

Pat Hynds: I've seen back in the early days, back when the dotcom boom was in full swing, we had a customer, no names, who we were doing PDF integration for information that was under HIPA compliance, that's all about I could say. Richard Campbell: Right.

Carl Franklin: Well, they just work. You know, Test Driven Development, these Agile methodologies, continuous integration, they work, they produce results. Pat Hynds: Well, they produce results but therein lies the rub. About a third of all the projects I've seen fail and I get a little bit of a unique perspective, you guys probably do as well because you talk to so many people, but because I'm involved in a production in a commercial software company,

Pat Hynds: And because of the library we chose, what they chose, we gave them a choice of three libraries to choose from, we integrated the one they picked based on features and functionality, we implemented it and it triggered a security warning, a dialogue, on the browser. I think it was IE 5.0 or maybe 4.0, something like that. Richard Campbell: But it was just a warning.

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Pat Hynds: It was just a warning, it's just a little thing and the C.E.O. saw the demo, it was like our third demo, we're just about to finish the project and he flipped, we absolutely lost it because he said this is unacceptable and we said, well, if the browser has this setting set, which is not a default setting, but if they set that setting that warning goes away. It was unacceptable. So we had to negotiate our way out of the project near the end... Richard Campbell: Right.

Pat Hynds: The one word rule and the most important thing is status. If you're not paranoid early, you're going to be unhappy later. Richard Campbell: Right.

Pat Hynds: Youve got to check status constantly, you got to verify things, what doesn't get check doesn't get done. The second rule is never guess, never assume. Carl Franklin: Pat Hynds: Carl Franklin: and me. Because when you assume... Go for it, go for it. You make an ass out of you

Pat Hynds: In order to save it and we didn't save it. I still consider it a failed project even though they didn't sue us and we lost some money but not a ton, but there's nothing wrong with the technology, everything worked. The customer's expectation was that we would fix Internet Explorer and we couldn't. Richard Campbell: Carl Franklin: Right. Right, yeah.

Pat Hynds: Well, we really could. What we actually did was we wrote a hack that allowed a script to change the setting on the browser but we were very clear in warning them that this was something that customers might not appreciate. That aside, that's really where a lot of things go out in flames. Perception is so much more important sometimes than the actual result. Most people can't judge a project as successful other than by appearances and delivery date. Carl Franklin: Well, you know, and I think what you're touching on here is just because the software works and it's bug free doesn't mean that project is going to succeed. Pat Hynds: Exactly.

Pat Hynds: And it's so true because when you assume, you're breaking the third rule as well, which is don't be wishful -- a n d I know d o n ts a contraction -- d o n 't t a l k to me about that, but you know, in a vernacular don't is one word so don't be wishful. If it's not done when the coding is done -- let me say it again. A project is not done until after the coding is done and lots of other things happen. Richard Campbell: Right.

Pat Hynds: So if you think the customer will appreciate the fact that you're done coding, but they're not going to be able to use it for another three months because you screwed up the QA plan, they're not going to be. Richard Campbell: I think the word done is just an evil word because done for a developer and done for a business owner are totally different things! Carl Franklin: Yeah.

Carl Franklin: That just means that the last mile is covered in other words. Pat Hynds: Carl Franklin: Right.

Pat Hynds: Well, there has to be no equivocation. If I ask you if something is done, the answer is either no and this is why, or yes with no other words. Carl Franklin: Yes, buts. No yes, buts.

Yeah. Richard Campbell: Pat Hynds: No. There's no such thing as yes but. Wishful is really the thing that kills most people and most projects. Status is something that everybody does. They just don't do it as well as they should and they don't do it early. Richard Campbell: Right.

Pat Hynds: I have four rules that I live by now and everyone of them has produced many scars when I veered from it and they're kind of conveniently rank by the one word rule or two-word rule or threeword rule and the four-word rule, and if you don't mind I'll go through them real quick. Carl Franklin: Sure.

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Pat Hynds: Most people get deep down in status late in the project when it's much harder to fix things. Richard Campbell: news. Yeah, status tends to be bad

Richard Campbell:

Yup.

Pat Hynds: Fixed bid. I want a house. Okay. You're never going to build a house on TNM but if you do your builder will love you because you'll never be done and it will cost you billions of dollars. Richard Campbell: Yeah.

Pat Hynds: Right. Well, not in our organization. We've got a system now where everybody that works in all the companies I'm associated with where no status no check. Richard Campbell: Interesting, yeah, amazing how motivated people are. Pat Hynds: Well, you don't get paid if you don't put in a status and if you don't put in a status then we assume you were not working so we can charge you vacation or we can just call it job abandonment. It doesn't come down to that because we look people in the eyes and say I will fire you, no matter how brilliant you are, no matter how important you are, if you don't send me the status regularly. Richard Campbell: Right.

Pat Hynds: But a lot of people want a fixed bid price when they give a TNM spec. Richard Campbell: Yes.

Pat Hynds: The never guess thing i s , youve just got to say show me. If you have an opinion and no proof, I'll pick my opinion over your opinion at any day. So we just kind of torture people over their guesses and say, okay, show me that, to make sure that they're not guessing. Don't be wishful is all about if you haven't confirmed it with the customer, and the customer could be me, then confirm with them, it's not true, you have no basis of really believing that the customer understands that this is going to work this way unless youve shown it to them and explain it to them and demo it. Then the last rule is probably, I won't say it's the most important but it's the one that starts the seeds of destruction which is no spec, no estimate. Carl Franklin: Richard Campbell: I love it. Yeah.

Pat Hynds: I'll give you an example. I have a client that we dealt with a couple of years ago. Good client, but we had to educate them. They walked us through their existing application and told us what they didn't like about it and then expected a fixed bid proposal for the new system and I said okay, so I understand what you want but here's an analogy. If I walk you through my house and I comment that I don't like the size of this bathroom, I don't like this type of countertop, I think this floor is creaky, I don't like the overall Feng Shui of the building, can you actually go and build me a house that will make me happy without an architectural diagram, without a specification what materials would make me happy? Richard Campbell: Right.

Pat Hynds: All you know is what I'm annoyed by. You don't know the exact specification of the thing that would make me happy. Carl Franklin: Right.

Pat Hynds: So you can't fixed bid it and if you do we're both going to be unhappy at the end of it because you're going to underestimate; and I'm going to overestimate and our expectations will never meet. Richard Campbell: eventually... Carl Franklin: Richard Campbell: to be happy. Pat Hynds: order comes. Richard Campbell: The reality is going to hit you

Pat Hynds: I will work for you TNM from now on until the end of time and happily rewrite, recode, rework... Carl Franklin: Pat Hynds: Richard Campbell: TNM, define that.

That's right. But you're never actually going

Well, it's usually when the court Nice.

Time and materials. Just bill them by the hour.

Pat Hynds: It means you hire a landscaper and they come in and they do the work, and if they work for 50 hours because you told them to dig up the same tree five times and move it, you pay for it.

Pat Hynds: But if we as a group, developers, engineers, architects, can rein in that failure rate, okay, if we can rein it in so that we fail 5%

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Pat Hynds on why projects fail April 16, 2009

of the time, think about the productivity boost to the country and to the world. Richard Campbell: Sure.

Pat Hynds: If we can get it down to where project failure is a rarity instead of almost a certainty in some cases. Carl Franklin: This portion of .NET Rocks is brought to you by our good friends at Telerik who bring you this message. One of the drawbacks of using third party tools is that you have to deal with numerous vendors so say goodbye to consisting quality in service level. Fortunately, that's not always the case. Our friends at Telerik, for example, are true one-stop shop for .NET. They recently rolled out their Q1 release which is just packed with good stuff. Start with Silverlight, an incredible grid, chart, editor, and everything else, a whole suite. A 3D chart, yes, 3D in Silverlight is coming soon as well. The traditionally strong ASP.NET AJAX we got even cooler. New controls, Visual Studio extensions for quick project kick-starts, new examples and scans, you name it, and how about web testing. Yup, Telerik is now offering a powerful solution for automated testing of modern AJAX applications. It's called WebUI Test Studio and is developed in partnership with ArtOfTest. Then comes reporting, WPF, Win Forms, but I'm running out of time so just go to www.telerik.com, and be amazed. And hey, don't forget to thank them for supporting .NET Rocks! Communication is so key; and I remember getting a call one day from this project that I was working on and hey, what's up? And the guy said it doesn't work. And I said, well, can you be a little more explicit? He said it doesn't fucking work. Pat Hynds: Richard Campbell: That's pretty explicit. Thanks for the input. That's

Pat Hynds: So in other words, if I give you a spec I'm going to give you everything this document says and nothing more. In other words, if it's not shown or described in detail in this document, it will not be done. That puts great focus on the person reading the spec. Richard Campbell: Yeah.

Pat Hynds: And you need to be fair with them and say you have to understand that this is exactly what I'm building and when we're done then this is going to cost you X thousand dollars and if you expected something else to be in there, it won't be. Richard Campbell: Yeah, just expect it won't be there, and if you're going to add it later it's going to cost more. Pat Hynds: Right and you have to be very explicit about CYA. It sounds bad but you have to destroy any hope they have that you're thinking the way that they're thinking... Richard Campbell: Yeah.

Pat Hynds: By it being explicit. I mean, in web projects we state explicitly what resolutions we will support and none others. Carl Franklin: Richard Campbell: Yeah. Right.

Pat Hynds: What browser versions we will support and no others, what back-end database versions and libraries we will support and no others, that kind of thing. Richard Campbell: Yeah and the challenge is actually getting specific enough that you cover all the details. Pat Hynds: I find for everything you say you're going to do, you have to define one or two things you're not going to do. Richard Campbell: Right, in fact you end up with more things you're not going to do than what you are going to do. Pat Hynds: Right but I also find that if you set expectations early, you get to a much better result but a lot of people are afraid to set those expectations, they're afraid they will lose the deal. Richard Campbell: Yeah.

Carl Franklin: Yeah, thanks. awesome. Hey, I'll get right on that.

Pat Hynds: Yeah. Well, how about if you make it work, how's that? Carl Franklin: Yeah.

Pat Hynds: The other thing -- I mean, estimation is a tough thing. It's always possible to mis-estimate but one of the things you do is you tell people not only what you're going to do but what you're not going to do. Richard Campbell: Right.

Pat Hynds: And the deal can be working for your boss, it could be that they will pick a different

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developer to work on this new feature, this new capability but you don't want to -- so there's always someone out there who is willing to bid less to do a bad job. Richard Campbell: Pat Hynds: Carl Franklin: Yes. Cheap. Isn't that awesome?

problem. I think as a client, you need to first identify which technologies actually make sense and bring value, and then go the experts in those technologies. Richard Campbell: Absolutely. Hey, you do a lot of offshore work. I know you do development here in the U.S. but... Pat Hynds: As part of CriticalSites, I run a team of about 30 people over in Egypt running out in Cairo mostly. Actually we have somebody up in Alexandria but they were down back in Cairo now. Richard Campbell: With 30 people, you're not dabbling in offshore development. Pat Hynds: I'm not. That's a lot of work.

Pat Hynds: Yeah. You know, it just seems to be the truth and I can't tell you how many times I've said, oh, that project is going to cost you $80,000 for that first phase, and they say ridiculous, they go off, they spend $30,000 twice. Carl Franklin: Richard Campbell: Pat Hynds: Carl Franklin: For nothing.

Richard Campbell: Yeah. And they get nothing out of it. Yeah. Richard Campbell: Pat Hynds: And then they have an axe to grind with someone overseas and they've got a local buddy who they don't speak to anymore and they're godchild i s their kid. You know, the road to hell is paid with good intentions. Carl Franklin: Yeah.

Pat Hynds: I'm actually willing to give away some of the hard one secret here if you guys want me to. Absolutely.

Pat Hynds: I've also got experience with Indian offshoring but not through a team that we own or a team that we hired, so not employees of ours. The people in Cairo are actually employees. Richard Campbell: Okay.

Pat Hynds: And unfortunately, the road to heaven for developers is paid with specifications. Richard Campbell: Carl Franklin: Richard Campbell: Pat Hynds: Richard Campbell: works for you. Yes. And Bob can do it in Access. Yeah, this weekend. Well, go for it. You let me know how that

Pat Hynds: Yeah. Unfortunately, all widgets are not created exactly alike. What suited well for one technology isn't suitable for another and we definitely have a hammer and nail mentality. If I'm a Rich Internet Application developer, I tend to see Rich Internet Applications everywhere. Richard Campbell: Carl Franklin: Right. Yeah.

Pat Hynds: And I've also got very good experience in dealing with the consultancy over in Egypt named DashSoft. So you got to pick your battles well. You have to pick the right people which is true everywhere, but the secret to offshoring are all the rules I just gave you. So it's the same secrets as here but a bit more so. So status, you have to set up a status system with people regularly and status is very specific to not only the task but to the person doing it. So I'll give you an example. Youve had kids work in your yard probably. There are some kids you tell them what to do, you'll leave them at 8:00 in the morning and by 5:00 they're done, they've done everything, they figured out problems, they pulled stumps you didn't know needed to be pulled, and they're just a machine. Richard Campbell: Right.

Pat Hynds: And there are other kids where if you don't sit there and tell them which leaf to rake, they will get it wrong. Richard Campbell: Yeah.

Pat Hynds: If I'm a web developer, I tend to see ASP.NET applications everywhere. So that's the

Pat Hynds: So developers, they fall in the same kind of granularity.

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Richard Campbell:

Absolutely.

Pat Hynds: W e d o n 't. We found that if you're a four-hour person, you can't work for us. Richard Campbell: Pat Hynds: hour people. Richard Campbell: Okay, right. So they're there. I've met one Wow.

Pat Hynds: I t d o e s n 't matter whether they're here in U.S. or somewhere else, and that is there are some developers who I can tell I want a system like this and they go and a month later they're still on target. Richard Campbell: Pat Hynds: my mind. Right. As long as I haven't changed

Richard Campbell: And arguably thought through the problem more than you have and have found opportunities you didn't know about. Pat Hynds: Exactly and I have checked resources and they can justify alternatives and they can talk about all sorts of things. Those are incredibly rare people, most of them run their own companies, most of them have probably been guests on your show and they're just so rare. Richard Campbell: Those are rare gems whether they're here or there, it doesn't really matter. Pat Hynds: Richard Campbell: Pat Hynds: way though. Richard Campbell: And in any industry. Yeah, yeah. You can't treat everybody that No, not at all.

Pat Hynds: And when someone is learning a new task, a new technology, I might check on them hourly for the first couple of days just to make sure they have all of the things they need... Carl Franklin: Make sure they're not churning. explain something

Pat Hynds: I d i d n 't badly, that kind of thing. Richard Campbell: Pat Hynds: coaching. Richard Campbell: Right. It's

not micromanaging; i t 's

Yeah.

Pat Hynds: After that, I can check on them twice a day if it's an important task and I'm not willing to waste half a day to make sure they, you know, again that I haven't oversimplified things, that kind of thing. But if someone can't do a day's work without my intervention and stay on target, they can't work for me. Carl Franklin: Pat, do you do project management as well? I mean project management is a huge piece of this puzzle. Pat Hynds: I do. I pick my projects very carefully. Usually I try to get on the ones that I think are either in the greatest danger or have the biggest potential. Carl Franklin: Do you have any secrets to share about good project management styles? Pat Hynds: Yeah. We do have quite a bit. You know my buddy, Bruce Backa. Carl Franklin: Sure.

Pat Hynds: So someone has to really, really, really earn the right. They don't get the benefit of the doubt that they're a one month resource. In fact, I've only met a couple of one month resources in my entire life because they almost have to be in the same mindset as you to get it. Richard Campbell: Yeah.

Pat Hynds: Or they're going to be checking back with you more often than you check back with them. What's much more likely is you get developers who fall into the one hour, four-hour, eight-hour, couple of days, full week to a month. So the majority of developers, you can give them a task and in a day or two they'll need guidance to make sure that they're on the right track. Richard Campbell: It sounds like most of my experience talking to you, talking to Stephen Forte and others, it's a daily scrum, every day you're talking to these guys, but you're talking to some of them -you talk to them twice a day?

Pat Hynds: He is the C.E.O and founder of NTP Software and that's the software company I'm associated with. Bruce has got a lot of experience and I've been able to mine a lot from him and we've also built up a lot of experience together working on CriticalSites, and what I found is a format for status reporting that he actually came up with that's very

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useful which is what did you do today. So this is assuming the status is for the end of the day. What did you do today, what did you get done? I don't need details, I need to know I worked on the email messaging projects for etc, and I got this library tested and checked in. What did you do that you didn't plan on doing? In other words what happened that somebody walked in your office and said, we got hit by a virus, I need you to go and check this. Richard Campbell: Right.

Richard Campbell: And I think the thing is we're dealing with offshoring, it's you're not in the building. Pat Hynds: Right.

Richard Campbell: So all those things that you pick up from wandering around you've got alternatives for. Pat Hynds: Exactly. I'm glad you've mentioned alternatives because one of the other key indicators of a really good developer and somebody who is going to save you is someone who actually considers alternatives, and this is a direct quote from Bruce: "Most developers or technical people are so thrilled that they've come up with any solution to a problem they have that they go and implement it." Carl Franklin: Yeah, that's true just because there's one solution doesn't mean it's the only one. Richard Campbell: Yeah.

Pat Hynds: And what did you plan to do but you didn't get it done and why? Richard Campbell: And funny that order of things is pretty much how you would explain it in the first place. Pat Hynds: Right. So that's the first part of it. Then the next part of it is what do you plan to do over the next time period tomorrow, next week, whatever. What do you need from others and what are your problems? Carl Franklin: Yeah.

Pat Hynds: That's my status. If I get that from everyone and I read it, I can ignore half of them because half of them are doing what they're supposed to do. I can intercede to ensure that people get what they need and I can corral anyone who is on the wrong track. Carl Franklin: Pat Hynds: manage a project. Yeah. So I can be at TechEd and still

Pat Hynds: Well, actually it turns out that let's say there's five different ways to do something. What's the odds that the one you came up with first is the best? Richard Campbell: Yeah, almost zero.

Pat Hynds: It's 2 0%, it's one in five. So you should think about alternatives and you should war game and this is where extreme programming comes in where you have two developers in the same keyboard because they will bring up alternatives. Richard Campbell: Yes.

Richard Campbell: Yeah, absolutely. I'm also thinking how brief that description can be. That's three paragraphs. Pat Hynds: You know, it also allows them to mark it to me and say look at what I've done, look at all these great things. It lets them complain to me and say I can't get Joe to go and do what he promised to do; he hasn't got my domain ready for my testing. Richard Campbell: Right.

Pat Hynds: They will pause it, you know what, I think we should do that a little differently, and that's why it's a better solution and so we do code reviews where a developer will review another developer's code. I'll be honest with you, that's one of the things that we'll let off the plate more often than anything else. Richard Campbell: Right.

Pat Hynds: And it lets me see the turbulence in their life. If somebody is on a critical mission task and they keep getting bothered by the same individual to do things they didn't plan on getting done and I see on that other person who is doing the interrupting that their status report shows work being done by someone else, it helps me identify problems, helps me identify the stuff that youd normally have to be in the building to know.

Pat Hynds: And we'll also not be above having an architect look over the code of a project to make sure that the people following the right framework, the right methodology. Carl Franklin: You really have to not be beholden to your ideas to be a good developer, and we've said this time and time again. You really have to slay that dragon, that ego. Pat Hynds: Yeah.

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Carl Franklin: You got to get used to people coming up with better ideas or improving your ideas . Pat Hynds: Well, not just that. There's another side of this and this more from the RunAs Radio side so Richard might relate to this very well. Richard Campbell: Sure.

Pat Hynds: So the problem with what we do is we give guidance to all techies, developers and network people. You get five minutes to guess. Richard Campbell: Yeah.

Pat Hynds: Developers come up with the pride of accomplishment in solving a logic problem and making an elegant solution. Richard Campbell: Right.

Pat Hynds: Network techies, plumbers, database guys and I say that with the greatest of fun, that's I'm a network guy myself, a closet network guy. They want to walk in the door, draw back their cape and point to the registry saying that we'll solve the problem that the company has been dealing with for two days that no one else could figure out. Richard Campbell: Right. want to

Pat Hynds: You get five minutes and I know that we said never guess, but we give five minutes to strategize and try things and you must document everything you try so that you can undo it. After that, you're back to scientific method, you're eliminating possibilities and you need to get to the point where you've proven you haven't introduced any new problems and if we have to, I mean if you're going to sit on something for a day, we're eventually going to get a vendor in. I call Microsoft sooner rather than later because $150 support call to PSS is much cheaper than two days of senior resource who is asking the most senior resource how to solve the problem. Richard Campbell: Right.

Pat Hynds: And also not getting work done and not getting things developed and not getting things delivered. Richard Campbell: And impairing the most senior resource in the process. Pat Hynds: Right.

Pat Hynds: And then they disappear and play a game of Halo.

Richard Campbell: Yeah, and I know I'm doing an awesome job as an IT guy when my phone doesn't ring all day. Pat Hynds: Right. But it will anyway because the people who run it, the people who use your network are so ingenious at finding ways to mess it up. Have you seen the TV show The IT Crowd? Richard Campbell: Pat Hynds: Yes. Oh my God, I love that show.

Richard Campbell: There's a terrible ripple there. You're not only not doing your work, you're impairing other people's work. Pat Hynds: Next time you're on a meeting, sit back and look around and think about the hourly rates of everyone in the meeting and then you'll come up with a basic how much is this meeting costing per hour. Richard Campbell: Right.

Richard Campbell: It's an English show. BBC is so weird, they did three shows the first season, or six shows in the first season and six shows in the second season. They're brilliant. Carl Franklin: Richard Campbell: Pat Hynds: I didn't see them You'll have to download them. You have to watch them.

Pat Hynds: And I've been in meetings that were literally $20,000 an hour meetings because they had so many people of such high rank in the bank or some other organizations sitting around and most of them weren't engaged in all of the conversation. Richard Campbell: Of course not.

Richard Campbell: This is a show where the guy answers the phone "Tech Support, have you restarted it?" Carl Franklin: That's awesome.

Pat Hynds: So problems are the same way. I'm not going to incur $4,000 worth of downtime for a problem that PSS can give me a patch for tomorrow. Richard Campbell: Right.

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Pat Hynds: things.

S o i t 's still those kinds of

Richard Campbell: Well, and also there's that ability to look outside, why are we writing this, has this been done before, is there an appliance I could do this, like all of those I will always take a fix cost over variable cost when I can. Pat Hynds: Amen, but that goes against the cowboy attitudes that are mostly in entrenched in the people especially off the keys. Richard Campbell: Right.

talked about a guy who -- we described him as the cow who gave twice as much milk and kicked over one of the cans so in the end we have the same amount of milk as any other cow but also a big mess on the floor. Pat Hynds: one. Richard Campbell: I like that one, that's a good Yeah.

Carl Franklin: I'm sure people enjoy being categorized like that. Richard Campbell: Listen here, Betsy.

Pat Hynds: Those are the people who take great pride in the technology, who write their own stuff on this side, that kind of thing. Richard Campbell: Yeah. They'd want to write it themselves and, you know, that whole mentality comes from I'm the smartest guy in the room. Pat Hynds: Right. Have you read Joel on Software, Joel Spolsky's Smart and Gets Things Done book? Carl Franklin: though. No. I heard it was great

Pat Hynds: So what do you guys look for in a spec? I mean, can you look at specification and decide whether or not it's hopeless or not? Carl Franklin: Just completeness, you know. Thoroughness that when you have questions, when you read a spec and you have a question that is obviously going to impact the time, if I can't think of anything that has been left out, its just got to be complete. You know, obviously some things are going to be left out but they should be trivial. Pat Hynds: So I have a scale of four levels, or five levels actually, the first level is scary, of specification and if you don't mind -- do you mind if I share that with you? Carl Franklin: No. Please.

Pat Hynds: It's an awesome book. Joel from Imagine It! recommended it to me and it's really a good book because he talks about the fact that ego is a problem and there's arrogance to value factor... Richard Campbell: Right.

Pat Hynds: And you have to make sure that you're always are in balance, and one of the things we're finding in this economy is the ratio that's acceptable has dropped way down. Richard Campbell: Yes. The number of companies that I've talked to where they have done layoffs, and they didn't just layoff by seniority where the last person hired is the first person to go. They made a spreadsheet and there was a salary and there is sort of a productivity factor, and you just hit on it. It's an arrogance factor. People call it, you know, how easy is he to get along with though, it's really an arrogance factor. Pat Hynds: Richard Campbell: Pat Hynds: It's the PIA factor. Yeah. The pain in the ass factor.

Pat Hynds: So the first level is someone comes to you and says I have an idea, and in that case you should either run or verify that they have a very healthy bank account. Richard Campbell: Right.

Richard Campbell: There was a time when Stephen Forte and I were doing evaluations. We

Pat Hynds: Because there is no way to spec I have an idea, there's no way to fixed bid I have an idea. You can work on it and you can get it done but it's going to be a circular development, not a waterfall because you don't know what you're going to do until it's done. So that's something that I see a lot. You know, entrepreneurs will come up and say, "Hey, I have an idea. I want to just build this thing. It will put Google out of business but I haven't written anything down yet." So the next level is a high level requirements document and it reads like a wish list, there are no details and there are a lot of unanswered questions. This is the brief email paragraph that says, "I want to build a system that does this and it sells five products a day," and it's good to tell you what they're hoping to get but it doesn't tell you anything about what an acceptable solution would be; and there is a detail requirement document which would actually be

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enough detail on what they're willing to accept and not accept that lets a techie or an architect go off and write a functional and technical specification. Usually when you torture somebody they can get you to that point but if they're not technical they don't have the ability to go to the next level. Richard Campbell: that much detail. Right, to actually get down to

Carl Franklin: It was. Is there anything else that we missed that you want to cover? We're just about out of time. Pat Hynds: No. I'm just happy to talk to you guys again. I've been out of the community for probably over a year now. I'm back. I'm speaking at user groups and Code Camps and I'm starting to blog again and trying to actually add to the conversation and I appreciate the time you guys have taken to have me on the show and hopefully we can talk about less dry topics. I think it's an interesting topic but it's a little bit of a heavy topic. Carl Franklin: Well, it's always good talking to you, Pat, and you always bring a variety of perspectives on a problem so it's always great... Pat Hynds: Carl Franklin: you next time... Richard Campbell: [Music] Carl Franklin: .NET Rocks! is recorded and produced by PWOP Productions, p r o v i d i n g professional audio, audio mastering, v i d e o , post production, and podcasting services, online at www.pwop.com. .NET Rocks! is a production of Franklins.NET, training developers to work smarter and offering custom onsite classes in Microsoft development technology with expert developers, online at www.franklins.net. For more .NET Rocks! episodes and to subscribe to the podcast feeds, go to our website at www.dotnetrocks.com. Thanks. Thank you again and we'll see

Pat Hynds: And the next two documents are really where they probably meet the road and I usually like to combine them. It's a functional spec which is like it's a mock up of the UI, used cases, and could allow a fixed bid project with a lot of assumptions, and then there's a technical spec which is the blueprint for the application, there's n o unanswered technical questions, and would actually allow fix big project. Typically, the functional spec with the technical spec completed allows you to say yeah, this would take us X weeks and it would cost you this much money based on that number of weeks. That's really the gambit, and occasionally I meet somebody who actually works regularly on fully spec projects based on those definitions and I also noticed that the success ratio on those is much higher. Richard Campbell: Yeah, there's dedication in the specification. Spending time to getting it done right ends projects sooner when they need to be ended, but more so immediately it causes the conversation that sets people's expectations reasonably. Pat Hynds: Exactly.

On .NET Rocks!

Carl Franklin: Pat, do you speak about this topic, Software Project Failure, and do have any white papers or resources people can pass out? Pat Hynds: I just did start a session on this exact topic and the title of the session that I gave at a Code Camp in New Hampshire and Code Camp in Boston last month is How to Prevent Project Failure, and then I have another session on How to Write Specifications for Survival and Profit but there was a little bit too much overlap so I really can't present both sessions in the same event because there's just too much overlap in them, but I blog them, Ive started to blog again, I blog three times last week and I'm going to blog this week, I posted the slides up on my blog at www.patrickhynds.com and Hynds is spelled H-Y-ND-S. Carl Franklin: In hindsight, that should be pretty good. No, no, I won't start the puns. Pat Hynds: That's very punny.

Transcription by PWOP Productions, http://www.pwop.com

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