Generic

Estimation Techniques

Devankur Thakur — Thu, 01 May 2008 12:36:20 GMT

Size and effort is all what matters eventually :-). Estimation of work is really a tricky job. Here are a few resources I think a good start point to gather estimation techniques:

Books and papers

o Brooks, F., The Mythical Man Month, Addison-Wesley
o COCOMO II Model Definition Manual, University of Southern California, 1991 (for more information visit \\.sunset.usc.edu/cse/)
o Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers Inc., Glossary of Software Engineering Terminology, IEEE Std 610.12-1990, The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers Inc.
o International Function Point Users Group: Function Point Counting Practices Manual, Release 4.1, Jan 1999
o Jones, C., A Short History of Function Points and Feature Points, Software Productivity Research Inc., Mimeo Version, 2.0, Feb 20, 1988
o Jones, C., Applied Software Measurement - Assuring Productivity and Quality, McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, 1991
o Jones, C., What are function points, Software Productivity Research Inc. (for more information visit \\.spr.com)
o MK II Function Point Analysis Counting Practices Manual, Version 1.3.1, United Kingdom Software Metrics Association, September 1998
o Pressman, R.S., Software Engineering – A Practitioner’s Approach, Fifth Edition, McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, 2001

Web sites

o A list of resources for software process metrics, including function points, is available at \\.rspa.com/spi/metrics-process.html.
o A resource for software engineering is the Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, \\.sei.cmu.edu.
o A variety of lists with software engineering resources is available at \\.rspa.com/spi.
o Information on COCOMO and COCOMO II is available at \\.sunset.usc.edu/cse/.
o Information on function points is available at \\.ifpug.org.
o The information on international standards and guidelines related to software from IEEE is available at \\.ieee.org.
o The guide to the Software Body of Knowledge is available at \\.swebok.org.

Joel Spolsky's writeups on Design

Devankur Thakur — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 09:24:00 GMT

Good readings:

Introduction to Great Design:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/printerFriendly/design/1stDraft/00.html
What is Design?
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/printerFriendly/design/1stDraft/01.html

Of names..

Devankur Thakur — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 10:56:00 GMT

I have been quite off of the blog scene here for a while. The product I was working on has been released, a time for a breather now and so, starting on a lighter vein, here are some interesting trivia about names : -):

ADOBE> This came from name of the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the house of founder John Warnock.

APPLE COMPUTERS> It was the favourite fruit of founder Steve Jobs. He was three months late in filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple Computers if the other colleagues didn't suggest a better name by 5 O'clock.

Compaq This name was formed by using COMp, for computer, and PAQ to denote a small integral object.

COREL The name was derived from the founder's name Dr. Michael Cowpland. It stands for COwpland Research Laboratory.

GOOGLE The name started as a joke boasting about the amount of information the search-engine would be able to search. It was originally named 'Googol', a word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. After founders - Stanford graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page presented their project to an angel investor; they received a cheque made out to 'Google'

HOTMAIL Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in 'mail' and finally settled for hotmail as it included the letters "html" - the programming language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective uppercasing.

Hewlett Packard >Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett. Intel Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company 'Moore Noyce' but that was already trademarked by a hotel chain so they had to settle for an acronym of INTegrated Electronics.

Lotus (Notes)> Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from 'The Lotus Position' or 'Padmasana'. Kapor used to be a teacher of Transcendental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Microsoft >Coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the '-' was removed later on.Motorola Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company started manufacturing radios for cars. The popular radio company at the time was called Victrola.
Sony It originated from the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound, and 'sonny' a slang used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster.

SUN>Founded by 4 Stanford University buddies, SUN is the acronym for Stanford University Network. Andreas Bechtolsheim built a microcomputer; Vinod Khosla recruited him and Scott McNealy to manufacture computers based on it, and Bill Joy to develop a UNIX-based OS for the computer.

Yahoo! >The word was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book 'Gulliver's Travels'. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and action and is barely human. Yahoo! Founders Jerry Yang and David Filo selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos.

Reverse and Re-Engineering

Devankur Thakur — Tue, 29 Mar 2005 15:16:00 GMT

Reverse Engineering:
A method of recreating software system components for which the source code is missing, out of date, or is otherwise not in agreement with existing components. Disassemblers and decompilers are examples of Reverse Engineering Tools.www.users.qwest.net/~dssecor/y2k_glos.html

The process of analyzing an existing system to identify its components and their interrelationships, and to create representations of the system in another form or at a higher level of abstraction (Dictionary.com).
\\.rigi.csc.uvic.ca/Pages/description/glossary.html

Re-Engineering:
Reanalysis and radical redesign that is not bound by previous obsolete solutions. (Contrast TQM - incremental improvement) info.louisiana.edu/dept/glosr.html

Coined by management guru Michael Hammer, it's a quality improvement tool: start from scratch, question assumptions, and radically redesign what people do and how they work.www.trillium.org/glos_med.html

http://www.geekinterview.com/

Devankur Thakur — Mon, 14 Mar 2005 13:03:00 GMT

Another good work done by Vamseedhar . He has moved Interview Questions to a new dedicated site with comments option and no registration required and the url is http://www.geekinterview.com/.

Check this out.

http://www.itquestionbank.com/

Devankur Thakur — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 18:05:00 GMT

Vamseedhar has been doing a great job, first with http://www.exforsys.com/ and now, he has come up with http://www.itquestionbank.com/, its a site with different ebooks, tutorials, articles, code samples, ceritifcation questions etc. Good job done. Check out this site.

www.exforsys.com

Devankur Thakur — Wed, 09 Feb 2005 12:06:00 GMT

Check out this site, a good compilation of Tech Articles, Question Bank, Career Articles, Interview Notes etc.:
http://www.exforsys.com/

10 tech terms to watch in 2005

Devankur Thakur — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 17:49:00 GMT

Check this out -> TechTarget's 'Paul Gillin' offers top 10 trends to watch in 2005:
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci1042466,00.html

Joel Spolsky’s advice for Computer Science Students

Devankur Thakur — Mon, 03 Jan 2005 11:32:00 GMT

Check out Joel Spolsky’s (Fog Creek Software, Inc) advice for Computer Science Students: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CollegeAdvice.html

Here are Joel's Seven Pieces of Advice for Computer Science College Students:

Learn how to write before graduating.
Learn C before graduating.
Learn microeconomics before graduating.
Don't blow off non-CS classes just because they're boring.
Take programming-intensive courses.
Stop worrying about all the jobs going to India.
No matter what you do, get a good summer internship.

Top Five Career Mistakes

Devankur Thakur — Tue, 07 Dec 2004 16:41:00 GMT

By Trina Mukherjee in \\.rediff.com

Illustrations By Dominic Xavier

http://specials.rediff.com/getahead/2004/nov/29sld.htm

Here are the mistakes one can make while deciding about a suitable career.

1. Going by scores

This is the most common and biggest mistake one can make. "Many factors determine one's choice of career -- aptitude, personality, interests and skills -- apart from scoring high marks in one subject or the other. You cannot let your one-time marks decide your whole future.

2. Succumbing to parental/ peer pressure

Your best friend has decided to study engineering and you blindly follow suit without taking into account your interest or aptitude for such a technical stream. A wrong career move based on parental/ peer pressure may lead to disastrous results.

3. Lack of focus or back-up plans

You must have clarity of vision or a fixed goal when it comes to pursuing career plans.

"Planning -- be it for the future or a viable back-up plan -- is the key factor in planning your career in today's job market".

4. Resistance to change/ non-flexibility

Change is a constant factor in your career; you must be prepared for it. If you can sniff out the right opportunities and incentives within the prevailing conditions, you need not look beyond your immediate sector of specialization. Change need not be only lateral or only vertical. It can combine both, and more!

5. You need not work before you specialize

Gaining some work experience before enrolling in a specialized course might not be extremely popular in India, what with the current scramble to enroll in management, computer and other institutes catering to specialized streams. Mere theorizing does not really help you get there.