₦airaland Forum

. . .and you only live twice.

What on earth will make a movie cost $250 million

Nearly every single frame on the movie Avatar was a CGI (Computer Generated Image). If you know what a frame is (and you know how many frames are in a movie on average), and you know the salary that CGI experts command (of which you will likely have several dozen working on the project) then you begin to see that the budget is in order.

Ghenghis:
A customer rep is just a poor man's version of the customer however it suffices. Its not really an issue if the rep knows enough about the customer's operations.

Wrong. The customer rep trumps the customer because he would have been in contact with multiple customers and therefore sees things from multiple perspectives. So he's basically a funnel. He will have a better understanding of the application and issues/challenges than any customer. A single customer will only see from his limited POV of course.

candylips:
what you have described is just an iterative version of waterfall.

A customer representative in your sales and marketing department can NEVER be a substitute for the real users of the system

As long as the software is not in PRODUCTION for us to constantly evaluate how the REAL users are using it and finding and fixing bugs, then it is not "Agile"

I think I will just respond by quoting from the Agile page on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development

Iterations are short time frames (timeboxes) that typically last from one to four weeks. Each iteration involves a team working through a full software development cycle, including planning, requirements analysis, design, coding, unit testing, and acceptance testing when a working product is demonstrated to stakeholders. This minimizes overall risk and allows the project to adapt to changes quickly. Stakeholders produce documentation as required. An iteration might not add enough functionality to warrant a market release, but the goal is to have an available release (with minimal bugs) at the end of each iteration.[9] Multiple iterations might be required to release a product or new features.

No matter what development disciplines are required, each agile team will contain a customer representative. This person is appointed by stakeholders to act on their behalf[10] and makes a personal commitment to being available for developers to answer mid-iteration problem-domain questions. At the end of each iteration, stakeholders and the customer representative review progress and re-evaluate priorities with a view to optimizing the return on investment (ROI) and ensuring alignment with customer needs and company goals.

One of the similarities of the agile and traditional methods, such as the waterfall model of software design, is to conduct the testing of the software as it is being developed. The unit testing is performed from the developer’s perspective and the acceptance testing is conducted from the customer’s perspective. The key difference is that in the agile method, the customer and developers are in close communication, whereas in the traditional method, the customer is initially represented by the requirement and design documents.

Jezuz. What is it that you don't understand here? OK I'll break it down to you.

Company XYZ sells a software package called DullSoft. XYZ has a Sales/Marketing Department and the department is headed by a seasoned seller who has spent donkey years on the field meeting clients and knows the software and client needs more than anybody else and as a matter of fact provided most of the requirements of the software.

In developing the next release of DullSoft, the team is using Agile. They release frequently and the head of the Sales/Marketing Department is a stakeholder and has access to the deploy site (a web app). This means this person is essentially a "customer" or using the term Agile knows him by, he is the Customer Representative. The software is not released till it has reached reasonable completion and that is when the end-users can have access. But the Sales/Marketing Department Head already has a few buddies in one of the end-user companies who were given access to this incomplete product. They are able to but access is restricted to just these select few who are no more than testers. Capishe?

Once again, customer == stakeholder is always true but customer == end-user is not always true. I'll leave it at that.

And it seems you assume Agile does not allow for design/modeling. You may be quite wrong there.

There really isn't anywhere it is explicitly written that only Waterfall delivers a product on completion. There is no contradiction here. A release is not final until there is reasonable completion. Any end users that have access before completion (even in Agile) are merely serving as testers and you should expect the application would not be made widely available to the full customer population.

I think the main confusion is the inability to distinguish between stakeholders and end-users. While an end-user is a stakeholder, the reverse is not always true.

A mock-up proto-type is fixed; it does not show work in progress; and a mock-up does not necessarily have to be real (meaning a lot of the functionality might be simulated). Not the case with Agile. For instance, a list of records can be implemented as an in-memory java.util.List in a mock-up (without any database connections), but in Agile you have an entity backed up by a database table. So a mock-up shows it CAN be done, but Agile viewing shows it HAS been done.

"The quick win" you mentioned is still essentially tied to work in progress because the stakeholders want to see that work is being done, and they want to know their hand earned cash investment is worthwhile.

csharpjava:
If an Agile methodology like XP is used for a core banking application, that will mean customers of the bank can deposit money into their account but they will have to wait another few months until the functionality to withdraw their money is released. Business critical applications like a core banking application will require a waterfall methodology which will require that all the functionalities that are needed to run a bank are complete before the application is release.

Not quite correct. An Agile release does not necessarily mean the application is ready for prime-time. It's merely a release that allows the stakeholders to view the work in progress, up until completion. That release is not meant for viewing or use by the end customers. I do not expect a software being developed using the Agile methodology to be made accessible to customers till the entire work is complete.

Ha ha. The sight that will please me the most is to see all carcasses of their cattle dot their desert land. The same cattle they had been killing over and grazing people's farmland. By the time they are no longer allowed to come south to graze, it will get very interesting for them.

Because they are possessed. Run! They are coming for you! They will take your soul and turn you into a zombie!

[quote="kayci_d77"]When has NL become a place to bash pastors and Churches SEUN Becareful before your source of income crumble.[/quote]Can you please use the ant brain you have in your wide skull to explain how the POOR members of your church became poor? Was it as a result of bashing pastors too? Or maybe you want us to believe nobody in your church is poor. Or how the members of your church whose income CRUMBLED such as those working for Oceanic and Intercontinental. Or do you want us to believe no member of your church got laid off? You ARE a MOR0N. Say it loud and be proud.

LOL. No wonder we have ghost electricity and ghost projects in the power sector.

[quote="ekt_bear"]Hitler as a leader really was good up until he pursued warfare in the rest of Europe and genocide. The German economy performed much better under him than the previous 20 years or so.

Remember, he made Time magazine Man of the Year.[/quote]LOL. And after all these years you still have not figured why the German economy "performed" so well? Please watch more documentaries. The plain reason was that the wealth of Jews were being stripped off them. They were forced to forfeit their hard-earned wealth and this was "invested" directly in the economy.

He got the Time Magazine Man of the Year award because the entire world was unaware of what was going on till sh!*t hit the fan.

A handshake.

Check the "Dramatic Arts" department in Obafemi Awolowo University here:

http://www.oauife.edu.ng/academics/departments/

What's wrong with all these people with negative feedback?

In my opinion, since her major is "Dance", I can imagine she will get good experience in the courses that involve cultural dance of which I am sure she will benefit from Obafemi Awolowo University.

OP, why do you need such a girl back? She's better off gone for good. Forget her. If she comes back, her next provocation might cause you to commit murder. Get another girl with a brain.

Touch not his anointed!

[quote author=Eze-ndi-igbo link=topic=885708.msg10329409#msg10329409 date=1330896952]It is unfortunate how the guyz on top rewards themselves heavily, play with depositors money, almost kill employees whose customers have credit issues not even up to N10m,[/quote]Exactly. Only the guys at the top can approve a loan of this magnitude.

stagger:
This is the same Emeka Offor and Chrome Consortium that Obasanjo awarded the Turn Around Maintenance contracts to some few years back.

This is why I laugh at all these clannish baboons; there is no tribalism amongst the corrupt.

violent:
Please tell me this didn't happen! 

I just checked and surprise, surprise, it's the same Spring Bank!

http://www.nigeriamusicmovement.com/nigerian-bank-nigeria-intercontinental-bank-plc-atiku-abubakars-piggy-bank

http://65.163.15.201/news/public/newsinfo.php?nid=8608

This is a funny quote:

“Atiku was issuing out cheques even without putting a corresponding amount in the account. Because of his personality and the office he held, we continued to honour his cheques,”

tunnytox:
Offor, a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party

This explains everything. The banks will usually grant "big men" in politics loans even without collateral with the understanding that they get huge monetary deposits looted from the government coffers.

Which bank was it that opened an account in Atiku's name and even with zero balance, he kept on writing checks and these checks were honored each time even as the account went into negative in the region of hundreds of millions?

Serves the banks right.

What? You said something? I probably never read it cos I have no clue what you are talking about.

Maybe you should spend the rest of your NYSC year learning how to write business proposals first.

The methodology does not determine a programmer's tasks; the designation "Programmer" in itself has its meaning. Even in a small company, if a "Programmer" is responsible for application design, something is wrong somewhere. Even in a moderately sized team of say 8-10 members, you should have Programmers, Developers, Senior Developers, Architects, Testers and Customer Reps. There is a clear boundary and separation of responsibilities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model_Integration

I remember my last company was CMMI Level 3 certified. CMMI was the biggest buzz word about 6 years ago.

LOL. I just decided to answer in the manner of the usual psycho b!tch.

What did she do to the man? She must have done something to him.

delomos:
Some of the precise argument against PP, how many times are teams working from scratch?

I have worked on about 12 projects in my career and out of which 10 were full SDLC projects. Even the other 2 were simply not full SDLC because I joined after inception. Several were upgrades meaning redevelopment using a new and better design while mostly jettisoning the previous design and code. So I can state based on my experience that a lot of projects are "from scratch".

delomos:
I want to be sure I understand this clearly, the pair reviews a code the driver is typing (without making suggestions)?

I believe I made that point clear enough, but let me do it again.

Programmers (who form the pair of driver and observer in the PP) are NOT responsible for design. Once again, their responsibility is simply to code the designs handed to them which are usually well represented using UML. The responsibility of design falls on the Senior Developers/Architects and to whom design flaws are escalated if any are found in the coding phase. So I don't see how either of the pair can critic the other on design when all they are doing is code implementation and code review.

delomos:
#3. I have no problem with PP, though I don't see the need for a developer sitting over another's shoulder and probing design/algorithm choices (a recipe for fist fights ).

I missed this earlier but I had to backtrack to make a comment. If this is also from your experience with PP, then I can say the teams you've worked on definitely did not properly implement the Agile/XP methodology. So apart from switching pairs on a milestone cycle, you may have gotten things pretty wrong.

Developers should not be probing design and algorithm choices in the Coding cycle! They should simply be coding according to the agreed design arrived at in the Design Cycle. At this point, I expect all the developers have are a bunch of UML diagrams (class, sequence etc). All the driver does is code these, while the observer reviews the code as he (the driver) works to ensure it fits with the design and in so doing might notice design flaws requiring design changes. But neither of them can unilaterally change the design/algorithm; this has to be reported/escalated at the stand-up meeting and then the design will be changed if necessary.