tzlee.com/blog

Author: Justin Lee

  • The Second Lecture

    So the second lecture was on Software Engineering. Big word and unfortunately means big problem. The class was introduced to Agile/Scrum which is a newer methodology compared to the old waterfall/spiral SDLC model that I was taught in school.

    I used Agile/Scrum about two years ago in my previous job and my experiences were much similar to the ex-students who presented. I worked with teams from about 2 to 6 in size. Honestly, not many teams can get past 10 pax because of $$$. I must say 80 is an awesome huge group!

    So here’s my observations:

    • The common effort multiplier is between 2.5 to 3 not because people are slow or bad at estimating, but because they did not consider time taken for communication and other context switching overheads. However as the team gets better and better at estimating their effort this multiplier can go down to about 2. Don’t forget, Project Manager doesn’t do the actual work but still gets paid. 🙂 So where does his effort go?
    • The biggest problem with estimating effort is with companies billing by the hour. I was constantly questioned for high estimates (thanks to my 3x multiplier) because it ballooned the cost of a project and I was pressurized to push it down, but guess what? It always overruns, i.e. the original high estimate was correct.
    • Agile works well with small projects too, just that you may not need to religiously hold the daily scrums, but the idea of having broken parts down into bite-sizes is the key to easing project management.

    Wei Man is right. Geeks are bad at estimating effort, but we have to know what it takes to do something so that we can manage ourselves. Time, energy and life are finite and therefore our efforts are finite as well. If you don’t learn the skill of estimating efforts I can 100% assure you that you’ll overrun your projects. This is from a personal experience from not getting paid and even almost being sued. 🙁

    ***

    On the documentation part, Prof. Ben is right. There’s a job market out there with people writing documentation. This type of job is called Technical Writing. If you’re good with language, maybe this is a job you can pursue. There’s not many of these companies around and their clients are usually huge (Aerospace, Military, etc.) so you get paid pretty decent. Not to late to change courses now.

  • Ayiah, Another $6 for Parking at NUS

    Ayiah, what to do. I was already one hour late for a meeting with my teammates, but as the saying goes better late than never so I decided to park nearer to COM1 so I have a lesser chance of being knocked over by the NUS shuttle bus or errant drivers while walking up from Yusoff Hall.

    OK, you know I’m lying. Truth is that I’m just fat, lazy and wanted to save 5 minutes of my time walking up a dreaded slope. So for that, I’ve paid my “fine” of $6.85.

    Prof. Ben told me learning is never easy. I didn’t know he meant my wallet!

    So meeting teammates was done over my “official lunchtime” and somehow every time I meet these folks, something interesting comes up. We ended up talking super enthusiastically about a potential gambling app but later found out that it was against Facebook’s policy.

    Damn, otherwise we’ll be the next millionaires by the end of this course. Another fat hope dream busted.

  • Taking it Easy

    Prof. Ben commented that I’m having fun in my previous post. Well, in fact, I really am! I enjoy chatting with my team mates and messing around with my assignment.

    Actually if I put myself into the shoes of a student, I might not have done all these. Reflecting on myself seven years ago as a Poly student, I was too snobbish and competitive. I guess most students are like this, especially when they/their parents paid a fortune for the fees. Of course there are some others who couldn’t care less since they felt they were “forced to study”.

    But I’ve learnt to lighten up a little. Let me share a short story.

    I spoke to a friend A of mine who told me about this guy B whom he met many years ago. B was a very popular figure at many events and A always wondered why. He started to observe B’s actions – B would dress in jeans and tees when others were all dressed up, he’d talk cock at seminars and chat about irrelevant topics at business/networking events. At first, A thought B was an idiot and didn’t take things seriously, but yet he was so popular. A later made friends with B and found out that B didn’t really care what people thought of him and just wanted take it easy and have fun. A saw some light and started to take things easy as well.

    Fast forward, A and B are currently successful businessmen.

    Unfortunately, I’m not like any of them yet, but I’m starting to take things a little easier. I realize that doing so gives me a broader view of things. When I was a student, behaving the way I did only narrowed my vision as I was all out to impress… god knows who, but back then I was hoping it would be girls.

    (Unfortunately, I got my equation all wrong and I found out that girls aren’t exactly attracted to snobbish geekguys.)

  • Aspiration 5: My Friends All Hate Me

    Just for laughs 😀

    http://apps.facebook.com/ajsdfasfj/aspiration5.php

    BTW, fb:wallpost tag is broken (it does not show up as it’s supposed to)

  • First Meetup for Facebook Assignment Costs $6! WT*!

    OK, so I went to NUS to meet with my FB Assignment group and parking my car outside COM1 costs me a whopping $6! This is serious daylight robbery. So where should I park? I’m not exactly familiar with NUS and am probably more suaku than the year 1s.

    I think my team has a good mix. We have a business guy, an electrical engineer, two partially geeky students (I didn’t make this up – they told me) and one kaypoh (busybody – that’s me). So “good” a mix maybe I’m getting a bit stressed out that we might be technically lacking. But don’t worry. I have faith in you guys. 😛

    As a consolation, let me say something. Ugly (probably) sells. Yes, the crappiest, ugliest of all things usually sells well. Don’t ask me why. Here’s my observations.

    • Google is ugly, but we use it over Yahoo or Bing.
    • Gmail is ugly as hell, but we rather use it over Hotmail. (Sidenote: I’ll give some credit to Yahoo mail here.)
    • Ebay ain’t the prettiest of all sites around, but heck it sells like mad.
    • Facebook is kinda ugly and doesn’t allow me to customize a hideous pink background like Friendster, but it is the most hit site on the Internet today (don’t ask me why I know, I’m not supposed to tell, but I am certain of this fact).
    • Most blogshops are ugly as hell. If you think they look nice, you need to see doctor. But the funny part? They sell too!

    So here’s my takeaway point. Ugly (probably) sells.

  • Teaming and Waving

    Looks like I’ve gotten my first team for the Facebook assignment and am still trying to figure out a team for the second Seminar assignment. Hopefully I can get that settled as well so I can get this off my back and concentrate on the actual work rather than kay-pohing about people’s lives.

    Meanwhile I’m poking around Google Wave. Actually not really very excited yet. I’m more confused than excited – I can’t seem to find a practical use for it at the moment. I will try to explore it more. It looks useful as an internal Wiki kind of thing. I won’t use it to replace my regular IM though. Problem here is, Wave is invite-only and I have limited invites so I cannot realize the full collaborative power of this tool yet. :S

    Short and sweet post. I need to get back to work. Sigh.