Here is a very interesting presentation I saw in London a few weeks ago at CMMI Made Practical Conference 2009:

Delivering on CMMI® with Agile Methods

In 2008, the SEI published a Technical Note, CMMI® and Agile: Why not embrace both! This new publication sought to explain why there was misunderstanding and distrust between both the CMMI® and Agile communities and how they could be reconciled. In 2009, the movement to consolidate agile methods with the CMMI® model is in full swing. This presentation will summarize the technical note and present an agile implementation of CMMI® based on the Microsoft MSF for CMMI® Process Improvement methodology developed by the presenter in 2005. The method uses W. Edwards Deming's Theory of Profound Knowledge and his 14 Points for Management to reconcile agile methods with the CMMI® model, and generates most of the evidence for a SCAMPI appraisal automatically with the development tools.

Speakers were:

David J. Anderson , David Anderson and Associates
Hillel Glazer , CEO Entinex Inc.

Where does innovation applies?

Innovations are not only technical, but they can be also marketing related for instance. I found that Professor Mohan Sawhney had the best approach for describing the areas where innovations can occur. He lists 4 main areas:

• Product Innovation - WHAT
• Customers Innovation - WHO
• Process Innovation - HOW
• Channel Innovation - WHERE
  

These 4 main innovation areas can be mapped to further sub-areas:

The way innovation is managed in some famous companies is then measured against these areas and sub-areas, in the paper Professor Sawhney wrote. He uses an "innovation Radar" for innovation measures.

Just as an illustration of this "Object of innovation" chapter, I would like to comment this quote from Steve Jobs, CEO from Apple:

"Pretty much, Apple and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart. We make it by innovation." Steve Jobs

Dell innovated and excelled primarily in the "Channels area". "Being Wal-Mart" is also innovation, but not technical innovation as usually understood. By the way, innovation at Apple is also not only technical innovation. Apple stores are also a mix of "Channels" and "Customer experience" innovations.

LinkedIn History 2006-2009 40 Millions users

java list management and filtering without any loop (for, while)

Just a Java exercize for the fun of it: do some list manipulation / filtering without using for/while statements:

1 Have a list of people belonging to various countries:
European people: [Eric from France, Martine from France, John from Great-Britain, Martha from Great-Britain, Carine from France, Gerd from Deutschland, Giuseppe from Italia, Martha from Deutschland]

2 Get the different countries:
European countries: [Gerd from Deutschland, Eric from France, John from Great-Britain, Giuseppe from Italia]

3 List the people that belong to each country:
People from: [France]: [Carine from France, Eric from France, Martine from France]
People from: [Deutschland]: [Gerd from Deutschland, Martha from Deutschland]
People from: [Great-Britain]: [John from Great-Britain, Martha from Great-Britain]
People from: [Italia]: [Giuseppe from Italia]

Never use for while statements to perform these tasks but make heavy use of the SortedSet type. Find code here.

The trick is to use a compare function that return 0 when the guy's/lady's country does not match the country we are listing inhabitants for.

Read also the same exercize done differently in Java and Haskell:

• one using lambdaj java library.
• using haskell functional language.

How do I answer to a job posting

Let's imagine I read a job posting with the following lines:

Experience:

• Requires BSCS/EE or equivalent and 8+ years of software development experience with 2+ years in a first level management role.
• Experienced in managing embedded software development teams and developing and maintaining a training concept for the group.
• Experienced in managing the entire software development life cycle including requirement gathering, architecture, design, implementation, testing and deployment of functionality.

After writing a motivation letter, I usually copy/paste above items and specifically answer them line by line. This is a way:

1. to help the recruiter "selling" my profile to its client.
2. to show my understanding of the post.
3. to show that the job specifically interests me and that I spent some time and energy answering it.

Experience:
• Requires BSCS/EE or equivalent and 8+ years of software development experience with 2+ years in a first level management role.

• 7 years as 1st level management role @ Logitech & Mariner Networks

• 13 years of embedded software

  • 8 years for businesses

    • 5 years network product @ IBM

    • 2 years network product @ Mariner Networks

    • 1 year elevator @ Schindler

  • 5 years in consumer electronics @ Logitech

• Experienced in managing embedded software development teams and developing and maintaining a training concept for the group

• 7 years as 1st level management role @ Logitech & Mariner Networks

• Regarding developing and maintaining training concepts:
  

• I organized some courses that were also adopted by the other firmware swiss development team

• Through the years, I progressively set setting additional embedded software goals every year.

• Experienced in managing the entire software development life cycle including requirement gathering, architecture, design, implementation, testing and deployment of functionality.

• requirement definitions interacting with marketing

  • 5 years @ Logitech

• architecture

  • 2 years @ Mariner Networks

• coding

  • 8 years @ IBM, Mariner Networks & Schindler

• test management

  • 7 years @ Logitech & Mariner Networks

• field support

  • @ Logitech & IBM

emurse.com

emurse.com is yet another resume posting site:

My Resume
Web	DOC	PDF
RTF	ODT	TXT

BUT here is what I especially appreciate about this site:

• displaying who has visited your profile
• how they did find you. For instance with Google using such and such keywords: <<Your "Main" Resume has just been viewed. Below are the details:
  
  What: "Main" Resume - Webpage
  When: Friday, March 06th, 2009 11:17:01 AM
  Where: Browns Mills, NJ, United States (estimated)
  Who: verizon.net
  From: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=cmmi+methodology+in+resume&btnG=Search
  >>
  

There are also some other pluses also offered by some other sites:

• resume downloadable in different formats.
• widget as above that you can post on your blog.

Drawback is that it seems to be mainly a US site and I am living in Europe...

LinkedIn History 2006 -2009

Place Garibaldi et les Ponchettes

Un peu de nostalgie...

Clément ROASSAL (1781-1850)

Nice, la place Victor (Garibaldi)Nice, vue des Ponchettes

The process of being laid off

Developing Java Agents for Lotus Notes under Eclipse

I started developing some java agent for Lotus Notes 8.5 .

The native Lotus Notes eclipse environment does not really meet my needs.

I usually use a regular eclipse environment to develop my java applications with all its nice help features.

I wanted to develop these Lotus Notes java agents under the same environment, but when calling Lotus specific java classes, I got some errors because eclipse could not reference the right jar.

I fixed the problem by just adding Notes.jar (that I found in LotusNotes program directory) as an external jar in the build path of my eclipse project.

Prezi: the next Powerpoint?

Looking for the next Powerpoint?

Have a look at Prezi an online program with some very interessant features such as more dynamicity, online editing...

Here is a real example from Lars Hilse.

bCisive: more focused than mindmapping

I've tried bCisive . I found it interesting, because it focuses more on decision making or researching than wild brainstorming. Though doing wild brainstorming is also useful sometimes...

All models are false but some models are useful

George E. P. Box said:"All models are false but some models are useful..."


My CMMI related white papers.

Begot by butcher...

Begot by butcher, but by bishop bred
How high his highness held his haughty head

Agile in 1 sentence

Here is a question on LinkedIn where people define Agile in one sentence:

What's the Elevator Pitch for Agile?

Let's say you got into an elevator with a senior executive and you had 30 seconds to sell Agile to them, what would you say?

Carolyn Sanders writes:"Agile delivery is about two things: you usually don't know what you want until you see something, so deliver something real as early as you can; and if you're going to fail, fail fast.

Agile in general is about being fundamentally honest with each other, about money, about technical delivery and quality, about requirements andtime - that's why it's so scary for some people."

Mark Hawkins writes:"Methodology that empowers a project team to collaboratively take ownership of their deliverables to ensure successful completion of the project."

Change awareness is the source of innovation

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" Harry M. Warner, Warner Bros Pictures, 1927

"The discipline of innovation", by Peter Drucker, lists several types of innovation divided in 2 groups: sources from inside companies or industry and external sources, such as incongruities, demographic changes or new knowledge. An example of a technological change triggering innovation was the arrival of mature sound film technology in years 1920s.

If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have asked for a faster horse. Henry Ford

Innovation comes from or is influenced by culture, resources, infrastructure or process.

Without change there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable. William Pollard

Basically, change and awareness to change occurence in various areas (market, technical, culture) is the source of innovation. Changes in those areas that you are not aware of, are useless.

The things we fear most in organizations: fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances are the primary sources of creativity. Margaret J. Wheatley

The Chinese word weiji (危機 translated as "crisis") is often said to be composed of the characters for "danger" and "opportunity".

The goal is to take advantage before others of these opportunities and to build innovation above.

I consider high-speed data transmission an invention that became a major innovation. It changed the way we all communicate. Dean Kamen

My innovation involved taking an idea from the telecommunications and banking industries, and applying that idea to transportation business. Frederick W. Smith

Some innovations trigger an endless chain of subsequent innovations. That is what is usually called "humanity's progress".

Dinosaurs demise on LinkedIn: fullfillment of the prophecy

With the new Linkedin search page you get the final step of what I prophetized 2 years ago following the exact steps:

• 1st step: cutting visibility from 4 to 3 levels (summer 2005).
• 2nd step: limit mega-networkers activity (winter 2006).
• 3rd step : enforce the no email policy (summer 2008).
• 4th step: take off the “sort by number” search option (december 2008).

Read it at:
http://eric-mariacher.blogspot.com/search/label/dinosaurs%20demise or
http://eric-mariacher.blogspot.com/2006/06/dinosaurs-demise-on-linkedin-dont-read.html

Marc Freedman is not going to earn any money any more :(

Complainte de Mandrin

Nous étions vingt ou trente
Brigands dans une bande,
Tous habillés de blanc
A la mode des, vous m'entendez?
Tous habillés de blanc
A la mode des marchands.

La première volerie
Que je fis dans ma vie,
C'est d'avoir goupillé
La bourse d'un, vous m'entendez?
C'est d'avoir goupillé
La bourse d'un curé.

J'entrai dedans sa chambre,
Mon Dieu, qu'elle était grande,
J'y trouvai mille écus,
Je mis la main, vous m'entendez?
J'y trouvai mille écus,
Je mis la main dessus.

J'entrai dedans une autre
Mon Dieu, qu'elle était haute,
De robes et de manteaux
J'en chargeai trois, vous m'entendez?
De robes et de manteaux
J'en chargeai trois chariots.

Je les portai pour vendre
A la foire en Hollande
J'les vendis bon marché
Ils n'm'avaient rien, vous m'entendez?
J'les vendis bon marché
Ils m'avaient rien coûté.

Ces messieurs de Grenoble
Avec leurs longues robes
Et leurs bonnets carrés
M'eurent bientôt, vous m'entendez?
Et leurs bonnets carrés
M'eurent bientôt jugé.

Ils m'ont jugé à pendre,
Que c'est dur à entendre
A pendre et étrangler
Sur la place du, vous m'entendez?
A pendre et étrangler
Sur la place du marché.

Monté sur la potence
Je regardai la France
Je vis mes compagnons
A l'ombre d'un, vous m'entendez?
Je vis mes compagnons
A l'ombre d'un buisson.

Compagnons de misère
Allez dire à ma mère
Qu'elle ne m'reverra plus
J' suis un enfant, vous m'entendez?
Qu'elle ne m'reverra plus
J'suis un enfant perdu.

What are generally the top priorities you would address during first months in a new job?

This is a question asked on LinkedIn: In a new job, what are generally the top 5 priorities you would really address during the first month and then the two following months ?

One of the answer was:

First month:

- Know who is who in what places. DON'T judge
- Know the systems you have to work with
- Know your job and who is your client, internal or external
- ORGANIZE yourself
- LISTEN to people, NO MATTER WHAT

2 next months:

- Get involved in projects that will help you know you job
- Know the daily routine of your direct report
- Get in better touch with the clients
- Know what the problems are and what you are really facing
- AND NEVER TURN YOUR BACK ON A PROBLEM. It won't go away

May you be successful.

Agile Maturity Model

Here are 2 interessant articles I found talking about Agile Maturity Model:

• The Agile Maturity Model
• An "Agile Maturity Model?"