31 July 2008
Steve McConnell makes some good comments re-enforcing that your development methodology needs to be driven by your business goals.
“Whether agility or predictability is more important depends both on what a business’s customers are requesting and on how long-range the request is. Customers say, “I want this capability.” In an ideal world, the business will be able to say, “OK, here it is right away.” Being able to say “here it is right away” is what agility is all about.”
“But the lack of comprehensive requirements combined with an emphasis on “embracing change” just enabled the company to move more quickly in the wrong direction”
Finding the right blend of predictability and agility is important and requires good leadership and planning as opposed to just a good methodology and processes.
Leave a Comment » | 
Business, Software | 
Permalink
Posted by Andrew
30 July 2008
I signed up to Apple’s Mobile Me to get good synchronisation between my iPhone, MacBook and Outlook on my work PC. Its been interesting. I sync my iPhone with my MacBook, but also want to sync my contacts and calendar with my work PC. Perfect scenario for Mobile Me … right?
I think I’ve entered the same contact into my iPhone about three times now … I’m not sure where it goes, but Mobile Me keeps deleting it then syncing with all my devices and deleting it everywhere. Or maybe Outlook is deleting it – but the point is that deleting something seems to work perfectly across all devices, while adding something often leads to a conflict that I have to resolve. Same with calendar appointments – but I think that’s my fault (see below).
This is a problem that I’ve also discovered with Live Mesh. I sync my working folders and have had a feeling of confidence knowing that my files are in three locations. But, over the weekend I discovered how flawed this is when I moved a folder and Mesh deleted it then pushed this out to all of my devices. Mesh was even clever enough to put the folders in my recycle bin, but not the files themself – so the files are successfully deleted from all locations.
Back to Mobile Me – unfortunately it won’t sync with an Outlook calendar that’s stored in Exchange. For a while I’ve been running the Google calendar sync, which works well with Outlook, but Mobile Me won’t sync with Google Calendar either. No problems I thought, so I set up a sync between Google Calendar and iCal on my MacBook – which does sync with Mobile Me.
This is what I’ve ended up with:
Wow – that’s enterprise for you. Hopefully our infrastructure guy will install the Exchange-MobileMe plugin soon so I can sync directly between Exchange and MobileMe, but I’m still left with this feeling of doom that all I’ll achieve is that Mobile Me now has direct access to seemlessly delete stuff from my exchange calendar, iCal and my iPhone.
I’m not complaining – I’ll still have 90% of my appointments on my iPhone and that will be great. If you’re one of the 10% – I apologise in advance.
Cloud storage is great and synchronisation between devices is great too – but nothing beats Time Machine and my trusty external hard-drive.
17 Comments | Mac, Technology, iPhone | Permalink
Posted by Andrew
3 July 2008
An old quote from Steve Jobs, but good to remember amidst the constant stream of requests for more …
[Innovation] comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.
Leave a Comment » | Technology | Permalink
Posted by Andrew
