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Text Transcript of Show # 4 38 (Transcription services provided by PWOP Productions)

Pat Hynds on why projects fail

April 16, 2009 Our Sponsors

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Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell

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Original Music! Prizes! Check out w hat

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Transcription by PWOP Productions, http://www.pwop.com of 18


April 16, 2009

Geoff Maciolek: The opinions and viewpointsexpressed in .NET Rocks! are not necessarily thoseof its sponsors, or of Microsoft Corporation, i tspartners, or employees. .NET Rocks! is a productionof Franklins.NET, which is solely responsible for itscontent. Franklins.NET - Training Developers toWork Smarter.

[Music]

Lawrence Ryan: Hey, Rock heads! Come upwith your own fricking joke! It's time for another stellarepisode of .NET Rocks! the Internet audio talk showfor .NET developers, with Carl Franklin and RichardCampbell. This is Lawrence Ryan announcing show#438, with guest Pat Hynds , recorded live, Friday, April 10, 2009. .NET Rocks! is brought to you byFranklins.NET - Training Developers to Work Smarterand now offering SharePoint 2007 video training withSahil Malik on DVD, dnrTV style, order your copy now

at www.franklins.net. Support is also provided byTelerik, combining the best in Windows Forms andASP .NET controls with first class customer service, online at www.telerik.com , and by Data Dynamics,makers of ActiveReports.Net, simple, powerful andcost-effective reporting for Windows Forms andASP.NET web applications, online atwww.datadynamics.com. Support is also provided byCoDe Magazine, the leading independent magazinefor .NET d evelopers, online at www.code-

magazine.com. And now, the man who is lookingforward to the video version of Mondays, CarlFranklin.

Carl Franklin: Thank you very much and

welcome back to .NET Rocks! This is Carl Franklin.

Richard Campbell: And this is Richard Campbell.

Carl Franklin: And we 're sitting here acrossfrom each other at PWOP Studios in New London,Connecticut. Welcome to my town, Richard.

Richard Campbell: I'm so glad to be here andsitting across the booth from you. Normally we dothis totally blind. We sound like we're in the sameroom but we really aren't. Now we finally are.

Carl Franklin: We're not even compensatingfor the delay of the phone lines here, I mean this is

the speed of light we're talking.

Richard Campbell: Yeah, we're very spoiled, very,very spoiled.

Carl Franklin: Speed of electrons. Hey, youknow, I was sitting down at a bar last night and thisfriend of mine comes up to me who is aging a little bitand he says, he is looking at this piece of mail and Isaid what is that, and he goes, "You see, I don't know

what it is. Can you read this to me?" And I said, "Ah,this is an appointment for your vision and hearingtest." And he goes, "What?"

Richard Campbell: That's a ll you got, huh. I flyacross the continent, come and sit in a booth withyou, that's what you've got.

Carl Franklin: Come on, that's pretty good.All right, let's get on to Better Know a Framework.

[Music]

Richard Campbell: I love that tune up close, man.

Carl Franklin: What?

Richard Campbell: All right, what have you got?

Carl Franklin: Okay, so Better Know a

Framework is this little spot on the show where I shinea little flashlight on a dark hidden corner of the .NETframework somewhere because there are so manythings to know, and since people listen to us weekafter week -- by osmosis some of these things willsink in. It's not training, all I'm doing is calling yourattention to something that's there. So we've beentalking about the System.Windows.ControlsNamespace which is where all the WPF andSilverlight controls are; right?

Richard Campbell: Right.

Carl Franklin: So today we're going to talkabout the Calendar control. That's right. Did you

know that there is a WPF calendar?

Richard Campbell: I did not know. Tell me aboutit.

Carl Franklin: Well, of course there has to bea calendar. Well, that's all there is. It represents acontrol that enables it to be used at a selected date byusing a visual calendar display. It's the same kind ofthing that you'd expect to see, you know, like if you'reused to working with the ASP.NET counter, sameidea. There it is. Let me see what the remarks sayhere. A calendar control can be used on its own or asa drop down part of a date picker control. It displayseither the days of the month, the months of a year, or

the years of a decade depending on the value of thedisplay mode property. When displaying the days ofthe month you can select a date, a range of dates, ormultiple ranges of dates. These are just little thingsthat you get with the rich user experience of WPF andSilverlight instead of the clunky awkwardness ofASP.NET.






April 16, 2009

Carl Franklin: So there you go.

Richard Campbell: Awesome.

Carl Franklin: There's more stuff but...

Richard Campbell: I think it's enough to know thatthere is such a thing as a date control or a calendarcontrol in WPF built right in.

Carl Franklin: Yup. Built right in. So you gotan email for us, Richard.

Richard Campbell: I do indeed. Since it'sThursday, I can read a little of it and indulge an emailalthough I thought of this one particularly funny.

Carl Franklin: Okay.

Richard Campbell: "Dear Carl and Richard. I've

been promising myself I would email you guys andthank you for the great job you 're doing and how ithas revolutionize my business."

Carl Franklin: Oh, I saw this.

Richard Campbell: Y e s . "Just over three yearsago, I put everything on hold including my businessand programming career to do service for my churchas a missionary."

Carl Franklin: Good for you.

Richard Campbell: "It was something I reallywanted to do but it meant that I had limited access to

a PC and what I mean limited I mean I check myemail for an hour once a week for a period of twoyears."

Carl Franklin: Painful.

Richard Campbell: That's incredible. I can'timagine doing that.

Carl Franklin: I can't imagine.

Richard Campbell: This guy didn't have aBlackBerry.

Carl Franklin: No, he didn't.

Richard Campbell: I'm just trying to get my headaround that. "I won't lie to you, it was tough especiallysince just before I began the two-years stint I justfigured out how to solve a programming problem that Ihave been bashing my head on for years, and then Irun out of time to code it before I left."

Carl Franklin: Wow. You think he took abreak while he was bashing his head for years?

Richard Campbell: Yeah, his head was a littlesore.

Carl Franklin: Yeah, I'm just saying.

Richard Campbell: "Well, the two years finishedand I started to relearn stuff. Things were tickingalong slowly until about a month or so I discoveredyour site and I thought, hey, maybe I will listen to oneof these podcasts. Since then I've been hooked.After listening to a few shows, I came onto therealization that I have two years of technology tocatch up on and your show is the perfect medium fordoing this."

Carl Franklin: That's great.

Richard Campbell: "I recently started listening fromthe beginning of the archives and show 222 but soon

worked out that with two new shows every week it willtake me several months to get up to date so I revisedmy strategy and now listen to two new shows everyweek and I'm averaging a legacy show every day..."

Carl Franklin: That's what I can't imaginelistening to that much Carl and Richard.

Richard Campbell: Yeah, I don't think I could listento myself that much. "Right now it's show 260." Sohe still got 170 shows to go.

Carl Franklin: That man deserves a mug.

Richard Campbell: Absolutely. "Anyhow, a few

weeks ago I was listening to a legacy show whereCarl made a comment saying who doesn't use sourcecontrol nowadays?"

Carl Franklin: Yeah.

Richard Campbell: "And I was like what the heck issource control? Well, since I am the boss, I figuredmaybe it would be useful and I should check it outand after two days of using SVN I couldn't believe wenever used it before."


Richard Campbell: "Then last week, I was listening

to another legacy show where you were quoted onhow few companies do unit testing, and again I waslike what's that? Now I have checked the technologyout and I can't believe how useful it is and what anidiot I've been for not finding out about stuff like thisbefore and these are just two examples of many. Sobasically, in the space of literally weeks of your show,it has helped me remove several major headaches Iused to experience in our development cycle before I





April 16, 2009

went on hiatus and now I've increased my businessproductivity tenfold."

Carl Franklin: Wow.

Richard Campbell: "Thank you for your great work.Thank you, thank you, thank you. Kind regards, MarkPearl, and there's a P.S. Now I know I owe you guysalready, but if I was able to get some swag that Icould wear or use around the office, you would notonly make my week but also contribute to makingseveral other programmers that I worked withextremely jealous."

Carl Franklin: You know what, yeah, I thinkhe should have something to wear and something todrink coffee out of.

Richard Campbell: I totally agree.

Carl Franklin: Yeah, maybe two mugs, onefor him and one for his favorite employee.

Richard Campbell: Yeah, one that they can rotate.


Richard Campbell: Employee of the month can getto use the other .NET Rocks! mug.

Carl Franklin: And a T-shirt.

Richard Campbell: "I will send that information tothe gnomes at .NET Rocks! and we'll get that out toyour right away.

Carl Franklin: Absolutely.

Richard Campbell: Mark, thanks so much for yourgreat email, and if you've got questions, concerns,ideas, shows you'd like to see, criticisms, or you’d justlike us to talk less...

Carl Franklin: That's right.

Richard Campbell: Send us an email [email protected].

Carl Franklin: We'll read the flame if it's goodenough.

Richard Campbell: Absolutely.

Carl Franklin: If it makes us laugh, you've gotit.

Richard Campbell: Yeah, anything is possible.

Carl Franklin: Hey, do you remember show200?

Richard Campbell: Yes, I do remember show 200.It was the Quiz Show.


Richard Campbell: And all the previous hosts weretogether.

Carl Franklin: So we've done so many showsnow that the hundred marks seem to be meaning lessand less to us, but the hundredth show was like a funlook back. We had some fun with the people thatwere on it and we also looked back and listen to somebits from critical shows. Show 200 was a quiz show.In show 300, I interviewed you and show 400 was adismal failure. Don't listen to it.

Richard Campbell: Yeah, drunk in a bar inMontreal.

Carl Franklin: Drunk in a bar in Montreal.

Richard Campbell: You know, this year we getshow 500.

Carl Franklin: In show 500, we're actuallygoing to throw a party.

Richard Campbell: I think we need to throw aparty.

Carl Franklin: Yeah, we 're going to throw aparty. I think it will be in Las Vegas but I 'm not sure.Anyway, during show 200, we did this thing that

Richard and I called the 64 -bit Question. It's a .NETRocks! quiz show. Rory Blyth was here, Mark Dunwas here, Richard of course was here, Mark Millerwas here, and Geoff Maciolek was here and we all didthis quiz show. Well, we got that on video and we justreleased it so it's up on the .NET Rocks! website,check it out. It's in Silverlight but it's your standardDV format.

Richard Campbell: Well, I watched it all the waythrough because I'd totally forgotten about it. I meanit was a couple of years ago.

Carl Franklin: Yeah, it was a couple of yearsago.

Richard Campbell: Very funny.

Carl Franklin: That was 2006, October to beexact. And TechEd...

Richard Campbell: Indeed TechEd, the TechEdsweepstakes is on.





April 16, 2009

Carl Franklin: So what this is all about, ofcourse, is TechEd 2009 North America is going to beon May 11th to the 15th and Microsoft came to us andsaid how can we get the word out about TechEd andwe said, "Why, we will talk about it!" Of course we'regoing to not just talk about it, we're going to give awaya ticket which is what we like to do, right Richard?

Richard Campbell: Absolutely, that's what we liketo do.

Carl Franklin: Yeah, we like to send somelucky winner of our sweepstakes: a ticket, hotel, andairfare kind of just like the royal treatment.

Richard Campbell: All expenses are paid.

Carl Franklin: Except your bar tab and yourfood and all that stuff.

Richard Campbell: Because goodness knows ifthey're paying my bar tab, that would be the end ofthat show.

Carl Franklin: I was going to say the bigexpenses are paid but, you know, the bar tab isquestionable. So here is what you do. Go todotnetrocks.com, there's a nice green sticker over onthe right that says the TechEd 2009 sweepstakes,click on that and then you need to register with us.Once you register, every week, every Tuesday we'regoing to ask a question, a trivia question from aprevious show and if you're a listener, you know,you 've been listening to the shows you should haveno trouble answering the questions. Every week

we're going to pull a winner from the correct answersand we 're going to give that person a .NET Rocks!mug; then those weekly winners will be in the drawingon April 30 for the grand prize.

Richard Campbell: And the grand prize is that freeride to TechEd. You're going to see us, we 'll be allover TechEd this year.

Carl Franklin: Oh yeah, we might be doingthis 64-bit question live. I'm not sure about that.

Richard Campbell: Still unsure but we're definitelydoing Speaker Idol.

Carl Franklin: Definitely doing Speaker Idolwhich is a great contest in which presenters get fiveminutes to show their stuff, to do a presentation,impress the judges, and then we pick a winner.

Richard Campbell: By the way, I'm still recruitingcontestants for Speaker Idol. So if you're going toTechEd U.S...

Carl Franklin: And you're not a speaker.

Richard Campbell: And you've never spoken at aTechEd before.

Carl Franklin: Right.

Richard Campbell: Ever, but you'r e a nexperienced speaker, I want experienced speakers, I

just want guys who have not spoken at TechEd.


Richard Campbell: They could have done hands-

on labs, they could have been in the Ask the Experts,they could do any of those things but they haven't hadgot a break-out session because having a break-outsession at TechEd is the hard part.

Carl Franklin: What do they win if theybecome the person who impresses the judges?

Richard Campbell: If you win Speaker Idol, thatmeans you gave a five-minute presentation, you winyour hit, you go to the finals, you win the finals, youget the full right or you get to be a speaker at TechEdin 2010.

Carl Franklin: That is unbelievable becausethat's a coveted slot.

Richard Campbell: It 's incredibly hard to get andthat's really how Speaker Idol came about which isrecognition that it was so hard to become a speakerat TechEd, and so we had some great winners, SteveSmith was a winner, Keith Mayer won...

Carl Franklin: Rhonda Layfield.

Richard Campbell: Rhonda Layfield, the reallytalented speakers that have never been able to get tospeak at TechEd and came on the contest, won, andare now TechEd speakers.

Carl Franklin: I think Rhonda Layfield, isn'tshe like headlining or something? I mean, I went tothe TechEd website and you know how they havepictures of the people who are doing sessions andstuff and she was up there.

Richard Campbell: Absolutely, she was the winner

from last year; so…

Carl Franklin: Isn 't that great?

Richard Campbell: It 's awesome and it's a ton offun for us to just find these new folks.






April 16, 2009

Richard Campbell: So again send us an [email protected] if you'd like to participate inSpeaker Idol.

Carl Franklin: Absolutely. Okay, now it's timeto talk to Mr., Pat Hynds. Patrick Hynds was the firstguest on .NET Rocks! He was the first guest onMondays and he was the first guest on RunAs Radio.

Richard Campbell: Indeed.

Carl Franklin: And he 's been on our show.The last time you were on, Pat, I think was show 167which was a security update. Let me just read yourbio here, Pat, a little bit. Pat Hynds is a MicrosoftRegional Director, MCSD, MCSE+I, MCDBA,MCP+Site Builder and MCT -- and those are just likefive or six of his certifications. He has got somethinglike 75. How many have you got, Pat?

Pat Hynds: Only 55, but I stopped aboutseven years ago.

Carl Franklin: Good Lord. I gave it up. TheChief Technology Officer for CriticalSites. Named byMicrosoft as the Regional Director for Boston, he hasbeen recognized as a leader in the technology field.He is one of the few certified trainers in New Englandfor Site Server, an expert on Microsoft technology andexperienced with other technologies as well:Websphere, Sybase, Perl, Java, UNIX, Netware, C++,etc. Patrick previously taught freelance softwaredevelopment and Network Architecture. He has beena successful contractor who enjoyed masteringdifficult troubleshooting assignments. A graduate of

West Point and a Gulf War veteran, Patrick brings anuncommon level of dedication to his leadership role atCriticalSites. He has experience in addressingbusiness challenges with blended IT solutionsinvolving leading-edge database, web and hardwaresystems. In spite of the demands of his managementrole at CriticalSites, Patrick stays technical and in thetrenches acting as Project Manager and/ordeveloper/engineer on selected projects throughoutthe year. And might we also add to this bio that youare like Mr. Security.

Pat Hynds: I'm a security MVP now andthat is a dated, dated bio; and a bit long from what I

just heard.

Carl Franklin: Yeah. Pat, what do you wantus to say about you? You said, yeah, just use the biofrom last one, but that was...

Pat Hynds: A long time ago.

Carl Franklin: 2006, my friend.

Pat Hynds: Well, Site Server wassignificant.

Carl Franklin: Yeah, it was...

Pat Hynds: But actually it wasn't evensignificant then so I'm outdated but that's okay, it'smostly the same stuff.

Carl Franklin: So you're a security MVP?

Pat Hynds: Yes. Duane Laflotte and I bothwork at CriticalSites, we're developer security MVPs,we do a lot of security audits, helping companiesunderstand what the security threats are and we'realso branching out or I’m branching out now intohelping companies with business problems withprojects how to keep them from failing, that kind ofthing too.

Carl Franklin: Yeah and that's on everybody'smind right now, it's got to be. I've seen some storiesto the effect that the technology sector is actuallyweathering the financial storm here and holding fast.It's not falling apart like retail is falling apart, likemanufacturing seems to be. What's your take on thiswhole thing?

Pat Hynds: So my sources say that we'renot out of the woods yet. I speak at the Code Campsand I go to TechEd and the other events, but I keepmy ear on the ground pretty well. It sounds like therestill are going to be a few layoffs in the IT sector thatwe haven 't seen yet, where I think layoffs in othersectors have started to abate. I think IT organizations

in Silicon Valley and around are probably going totake one more stab at allowing the economy to beblamed for them trimming things a little bit.

Carl Franklin: It does seem to be it can ringan excuse, doesn't it?

Pat Hynds: It certainly is. Well, you canfollow Jack Welch's advice and just always fire thelowest 10% every year or you can let the economy bethe bad guy.

Richard Campbell: I also think that it’s not just thatthe people are exploiting this opportunity but that forthe past couple of years things have been going so

fast people took their eye off the bottom line. Theywere focusing on the top line, more sales, moremarkets, more products...


Richard Campbell: And so in a reflective momentwhen you're not so quite frantically trying to sell, you'llback a little at the bottom line and go, wow, we'redoing some dumb stuff.





April 16, 2009


Richard Campbell: Or there are just few peoplearound the office, you look at them and go, "What is ityou do?"

Carl Franklin: What are you doing exactly?

Richard Campbell: What is it you do? Why don'tyou go do it somewhere else?

Carl Franklin: You should learn to recognizethat look. If somebody gives you that look, you maywant to go home and rethink your life.

Pat Hynds: I wonder what the economywould look like if people actually didn't lose sight ofthese things and we should just keep working withoutblinders on. It seems like with the Dot Bomb we had

the same result.

Richard Campbell: And I also think it 's one of thereasons IT guys are so jumpy. It's that the last majordown term was an IT centric downturn and this timeit's not.

Pat Hynds: Right. Yeah, January,February, and March were not banner months for software companies. I have the advantage that mostof my customers I get to see how they 're doing sothere are not a lot of oversight into the market ingeneral. A lot of ISVs, a lot of banks, but in the ISVside of things what we're seeing is almost no sales inJanuary and February. You could call them like black

holes.


Pat Hynds: And then pent-up demand, ifyou had a product that actually had a business caseand someone actually could say, yeah, we can 't justforget about this, then...

Richard Campbell: Yes.

Pat Hynds: March was actually pretty goodbecause you had a whole quarter worth of pent-updemand and whatever was going to land landed inMarch.

Richard Campbell: It was almost like a panic.You 've waited too long, you've got to move quicklynow.

Pat Hynds: Right.

Richard Campbell: And so we had this sort ofsurge sale.

Pat Hynds: And people were gettingdiscounts because it's like buying a car now. So whatif I buy this software before the end of March? Well,in that case I'll give you a discount and tickets to thisand it was definitely a buyer's market even in thesoftware industry.



Pat Hynds: Consulting, not so much. It'shard to deeply, deeply discount consulting but we sawa little of that too.


Pat Hynds: Then when I went to April, andthings are picking up a little bit because there's a littlebit of an uptake in the economy, the DOW hasn't been

going down into the sewer, it'

s back over eight thousand again and even though a lot of people don'tpay attention to that it's worth a techie’s while towatch the DOW because it's about whether or for thedecision makers...

Richard Campbell: Sure.

Pat Hynds: The people who are spendingthe money they watch the DOW as if it's a heart ratemonitor.

Richard Campbell: And there is some merit to that.I mean not every business reflects that tightly on that.

Pat Hynds: Well, I taught MBA school sothat people that's making decisions on the moneythat's what they're doing and that 's who you have tokeep tabs on.

Richard Campbell: Absolutely and I think bigthings are starting to function, pieces of these areworking and people are trying to get work finally. Bitby bit there's some corporate reports coming out andthey're all not doom and gloom. You know, if you'renot in the auto sector or the finance sector, you'reprobably okay.

Pat Hynds: Right. Well, there's a hugeamount of money, there's a huge amount of pent up

money and the big thing is you have to be in a placethat's not whimsical.



Pat Hynds: You should be in a place thatactually adds a value. If you have an ROI, you'regoing to survive if you don 't do anything stupid.





April 16, 2009

Richard Campbell: And I did get to sense thateven in technical field we took our eye off the ball ofare we actually providing value to our company. Wewere enjoying our technology, sort of exploring andindulgence even and now they're sort of turned backto that bottom line thing, how are you making thecompany better.

Pat Hynds: Yeah and that's the kind offeast and famine. We were in a feast environment,people thought they had the luxury of time and energyto focus on things like social networking, and socialnetworking I'm not bashing it, it's just that it's hard tomake a pitch that we need a Facebook page whenyou 're GM.

Carl Franklin: By the way, you know, I thinkit's kind of difficult for people in the United Statesanyway, and maybe around the world, to wrap their

minds around what actually happened in thisrecession, you know, with the different stimulus thatcaused this downturn and I've got to tell you one ofthe best explanations I've heard was on a show onNPR called "This American Life" and the name of theshow was "The Giant Pool of Money" a n d t heproducer of that show actually sat down andexplained things in a very, very easy to understandway, and I shrinksterized that at shrinkster.com/15yh,so you obviously like listening to the radio becauseyou 're listening to us so go check that out if you're notsure, but what he basically talk about was themortgage crisis. He talks about the giant pool ofmoney being the trillions and trillions of dollars allaround the world that people have to invest, and

companies have to invest, and it needs to gosomewhere all the time, it needs to be somewhere,people want more than their 2% that their savingsaccount gives them.

Pat Hynds: I don 't know. The last quarterdoesn't really bear that out.

Carl Franklin: Oh, that 's true. Well, youknow, they want more. So the mortgage companieswere creating funds, they're buying up mortgages andfrom banks because the banks are the ones that gavethem mortgages. These mortgage companies thattrade mortgages are the Wall Street firms. So theywould get as many as they could and then they would

sell that as a fund and they would sell shares of thatto other people and of course the return was greatbecause these are mortgages; th ose checks arecoming in all the time.

Pat Hynds: Yeah. You're talking aboutderivatives now.


Pat Hynds: That's where leverage comesin, that's where...

Carl Franklin: That's where leverage comesin; so basically this giant pool of money sunk trillionsof dollars into this mortgage, this sort of these fundsand they wanted more and there weren't enough realmortgages out there to provide the supply for theirdemand so they started laxing the rules on who couldget a mortgage. Oh, well, now you don't have to havea job, you just got to say you have a job, you know,they came up with all sorts of crazy types ofmortgages where you just had to -- they basicallywere encouraging people to lie.

Pat Hynds: You know, the pendulum hasswung so far and I was talking about with a mortgageguy yesterday, a guy who I have known for years withwhom I did my first “refi” with back probably 10 yearsago and he said that if you own a multi-family home

even if it was a duplex and you live on one side andyour parents live on the other, they're assessing, Ibelieve that's a one percent penalty on the loan.

Richard Campbell: Wow.

Pat Hynds: And if you take any cash out,it's at .75% penalty on the loan.

Carl Franklin: Wow, indeed.

Pat Hynds: So you 're basically trying tokeep people with, you know, who want cash out orwho they perceived as having investment properties,any multi-family is considered an investment property,

and condos are also getting penalized in this as well.So the pendulum has slid very far back the other way.

Carl Franklin: Yeah. Well, to wrap up thestory, what happens when people can't pay theirmortgages, and everybody is counting on that, notonly those funds go down and people lose theirmoney but the insurance, the mortgage insurance thatAIG provided, for example, these companies wouldgo and say, hey, I have a piece of this fund, can yougive me mortgage insurance on that. So thesemortgages were being insured multiple times if youthink about the slices of mortgages and those sharesof those funds that were insured with mortgageinsurance, and of course when that tanks all of those

people say, okay, I want my money, AIG is out ofmoney because they can't pay off all at once. Yeah,that's essentially what happens so all of theseinvestment money all around the world needs to find aplace to go. So there is still a lot of money out therelooking for a place to go.

Pat Hynds: But it 's all cautious money.





April 16, 2009

Carl Franklin: But they 're holding on to it,that's right.

Pat Hynds: And so the opportunity here,and if you guys don't mind I'd like to discuss a little bit,is if you can show that you 're a good bet, like themortgages as a technologist or as a project, you'regoing to get funded, you 're going to get the green lightto go forward and one of the things that a lot of peopledon't realize is we're still, the statistics I've seenrecently were still averaging around 50% of technicalprojects fail.


Pat Hynds: Now, if you look at thenumbers overseas, off-shor ing, becaus e of th echallenges of communication, and some peoplecertainly have different opinions on that, we can talkabout that, but those fail on average 60% of the time.

Carl Franklin: Wow.

Pat Hynds: But they 're cheap so somepeople were willing to try it twice.

Richard Campbell: I can 't believe we still can'tbuild software more reliably.

Pat Hynds: Well, Agile technology, theAgile methodologies like Scrum and those kinds ofthings do have a better track record, they 're about70% but still a third of the project has failed.

Richard Campbell: I would wonder if that improved

percentages have more to do with that methodologybeing newer and so the people who are embracing ittend to be more interested or dedicated to buildingsoftware successfully.

Carl Franklin: Maybe.

Pat Hynds: I think that's part of it but I alsothink that a big part of the Scrum and othermethodologies in Agile development usecommunication.


Carl Franklin: Well, they just work. You

know, Test Driven Development, these Agilemethodologies, continuous integration, they work,they produce results.

Pat Hynds: Well, they produce results buttherein lies the rub. About a third of all the projectsI've seen fail and I get a little bit of a uniqueperspective, you guys probably do as well becauseyou talk to so many people, but because I'm involvedin a production in a commercial software company,

NTP Software, and a consulting company specificallyon security, CriticalSites, I get to see the insights of alot of organizations and the insights of a lot of projectsand I also get called in quite often when things are introuble.


Richard Campbell: They wouldn't call you if theyweren't in trouble, right?

Pat Hynds: Well, they might call theso ftware company and I do some work witharchitectural design in large deployments therebecause I do have the networking site as well.


Pat Hynds: But when they're typicallycalling CriticalSites they're very paranoid, and they're

regular customers, when they're in deep trouble andthey need help.



Pat Hynds: So a lot of times the technologyisn't the problem most of the time, occasionally it is,sometimes somebody picks the wrong thing orsomeone will try to go with two cutting-edge notrealizing what they're getting in for. They'l l useestimates for Silverlight with a VB programmer as ifthey're writing VB code, that type of thing.


Pat Hynds: But most of it has to do withsetting expectations and making sure that everybodyunderstands what you're building.


Pat Hynds: I've seen back in the earlydays, back when the dotcom boom was in full swing,we had a customer, no names, who we were doingPDF integration for information that was under HIPAcompliance, that's all about I could say.


Pat Hynds: And because of the library wechose, what they chose, we gave them a choice ofthree libraries to choose from, we integrated the onethey picked based on features and functionality, weimplemented it and it triggered a security warning, adialogue, on the browser. I think it was IE 5.0 ormaybe 4.0, something like that.

Richard Campbell: But it was just a warning.





April 16, 2009

Pat Hynds: It was just a warning, it 's just alittle thing and the C.E.O. saw the demo, it was likeour third demo, we're just about to finish the projectand he flipped, we absolutely lost it because he saidthis is unacceptable and we said, well, if the browserhas this setting set, which is not a default setting, butif they set that setting that warning goes away. It wasunacceptable. So we had to negotiate our way out ofthe project near the end...


Pat Hynds: In order to save it and we didn'tsave it. I still consider it a failed project even thoughthey didn't sue us and we lost some money but not aton, but there's nothing wrong with the technology,everything worked. The customer's expectation wasthat we would fix Internet Explorer and we couldn't.


Carl Franklin: Right, yeah.

Pat Hynds: Well, we really could. What weactually did was we wrote a hack that allowed a scriptto change the setting on the browser but we werevery clear in warning them that this was somethingthat customers might not appreciate. That aside,that's really where a lot of things go out in flames.Perception is so much more important sometimesthan the actual result. Most people can't judge aproject as successful other than by appearances anddelivery date.

Carl Franklin: Well, you know, and I thinkwhat you're touching on here is just because thesoftware works and it's bug free doesn't mean thatproject is going to succeed.

Pat Hynds: Exactly.

Carl Franklin: That just means that the lastmile is covered in other words.

Pat Hynds: Right.


Pat Hynds: I have four rules that I live by

now and everyone of them has produced many scarswhen I veered from it and they're kind of convenientlyrank by the one word rule or two-word rule or three-

word rule and the four-word rule, and if you don't mindI'll go through them real quick.

Carl Franklin: Sure.

Pat Hynds: The one word rule and themost important thing is status. If you're not paranoidearly, you're going to be unhappy later.


Pat Hynds: You ’ve got to check statusconstantly, you got to verify things, what doesn 't getcheck doesn't get done. The second rule is neverguess, never assume.

Carl Franklin: Because when you assume...

Pat Hynds: Go for it, go for it.

Carl Franklin: You make an ass out of youand me.

Pat Hynds: And it's so true because whenyou assume, you're breaking the third rule as well,

which is don't be wishful -- an d I know do n’ t’s acontraction -- do n 't ta lk to me about that, but you

know, in a vernacular don't is one word so don't bewishful. If it's not done when the coding is done -- letme say it again. A project is not done until after thecoding is done and lots of other things happen.


Pat Hynds: So if you think the customerwill appreciate the fact that you're done coding, butthey're not going to be able to use it for another threemonths because you screwed up the QA plan, they'renot going to be.

Richard Campbell: I think the word done is just anevil word because done for a developer and done fora business owner are totally different things!


Pat Hynds: Well, there has to be noequivocation. If I ask you if something is done, theanswer is either no and this is why, or yes with noother words.

Carl Franklin: Yes, buts.

Richard Campbell: No yes, buts.

Pat Hynds: No. There's no such thing asyes but. Wishful is really the thing that kills mostpeople and most projects. Status is something thateverybody does. They just don't do it as well as theyshould and they don't do it early.






April 16, 2009

Pat Hynds: Most people get deep down instatus late in the project when it 's much harder to fixthings.

Richard Campbell: Yeah, status tends to be badnews.

Pat Hynds: Right. Well, not in ourorganization. We've got a system now whereeverybody that works in all the companies I 'massociated with where “no status no check.”

Richard Campbell: Interesting, yeah, amazing howmotivated people are.

Pat Hynds: Well, you don't get paid if youdon't put in a status and if you don't put in a statusthen we assume you were not working so we cancharge you vacation or we can just call it jobabandonment. It doesn't come down to that because

we look people in the eyes and say I will fire you, nomatter how brilliant you are, no matter how importantyou are, if you don't send me the status regularly.


Pat Hynds: The never guess thing i s ,

you ’ve just got to say show me. If you have anopinion and no proof, I'll pick my opinion over youropinion at any day. So we just kind of torture peopleover their guesses and say, okay, show me that, tomake sure that they're not guessing. Don't be wishfulis all about if you haven't confirmed it with thecustomer, and the customer could be me, thenconfirm with them, it's not true, you have no basis of

really believing that the customer understands thatthis is going to work this way unless you’ve shown itto them and explain it to them and demo it. Then thelast rule is probably, I won't say it's the most importantbut it 's the one that starts the seeds of destructionwhich is no spec, no estimate.

Carl Franklin: I love it.

Richard Campbell: Yeah.

Pat Hynds: I will work for you TNM fromnow on until the end of time and happily rewrite,recode, rework...

Carl Franklin: TNM, define that.

Pat Hynds: Time and materials.

Richard Campbell: Just bill them by the hour.

Pat Hynds: It means you hire a landscaperand they come in and they do the work, and if they work for 50 hours because you told them to dig up thesame tree five times and move it, you pay for it.

Richard Campbell: Yup.

Pat Hynds: Fixed bid. I want a house.Okay. You're never going to build a house on TNMbut if you do your builder will love you because you 'llnever be done and it will cost you billions of dollars.


Pat Hynds: But a lot of people want a fixedbid price when they give a TNM spec.


Pat Hynds: I'll give you an example. I havea client that we dealt with a couple of years ago.Good client, but we had to educate them. Theywalked us through their existing application and toldus what they didn't like about it and then expected a

fixed bid proposal for the new system and I said okay,so I understand what you want but here 's an analogy.If I walk you through my house and I comment that Idon't like the size of this bathroom, I don't like thistype of countertop, I think this floor is creaky, I don'tlike the overall Feng Shui of the building, can youactually go and build me a house that will make mehappy without an architectural diagram, without aspecification what materials would make me happy?


Pat Hynds: All you know is what I'mannoyed by. You don't know the exact specificationof the thing that would make me happy.


Pat Hynds: So you can't fixed bid it and ifyou do we're both going to be unhappy at the end of itbecause you're going to underestimate; and I'm goingto overestimate and our expectations will never meet.

Richard Campbell: The reality is going to hit youeventually...

Carl Franklin: That's right.

Richard Campbell: But you're never actually goingto be happy.

Pat Hynds: Well, it's usually when the courtorder comes.

Richard Campbell: Nice.

Pat Hynds: But if we as a group,developers, engineers, architects, can rein in thatfailure rate, okay, if we can rein it in so that we fail 5%





April 16, 2009

of the time, think about the productivity boost to thecountry and to the world.


Pat Hynds: If we can get it down to whereproject failure is a rarity instead of almost a certaintyin some cases.

Carl Franklin: This portion of .NET Rocks isbrought to you by our good friends at Telerik whobring you this message. One of the drawbacks ofusing third party tools is that you have to deal withnumerous vendors so say goodbye to consistingquality in service level. Fortunately, that's not alwaysthe case. Our friends at Telerik, for example, are trueone-stop shop for .NET. They recently rolled out theirQ1 release which is just packed with good stuff. Startwith Silverlight, an incredible grid, chart, editor, andeverything else, a whole suite. A 3D chart, yes, 3D in

Silverlight is coming soon as well. The traditionallystrong ASP.NET AJAX we got even cooler. Newcontrols, Visual Studio extensions for quick projectkick-starts, new examples and scans, you name it,and how about web testing. Yup, Telerik is nowoffering a powerful solution for automated testing ofmodern AJAX applications. It's called WebUI TestStudio and is developed in partnership with ArtOfTest.Then comes reporting, WPF, Win Forms, but I'mrunning out of time so just go to www.telerik.com, andbe amazed. And hey, don't forget to thank them forsupporting .NET Rocks!

Communication is so key; and I remember getting acall one day from this project that I was working on

and hey, what's up? And the guy said it doesn't work.And I said, well, can you be a little more explicit? Hesaid it doesn't fucking work.

Pat Hynds: That's pretty explicit.

Richard Campbell: Thanks for the input.

Carl Franklin: Yeah, thanks. That'sawesome. Hey, I'll get right on that.

Pat Hynds: Yeah. Well, how about if youmake it work, how 's that?


Pat Hynds: The other thing -- I mean,estimation is a tough thing. It's always possible tomis - estimate but one of the things you do is you tellpeople not only what you're going to do but whatyou 're not going to do.


Pat Hynds: So in other words, if I give youa spec I'm going to give you everything this documentsays and nothing more. In other words, if it's notshown or described in detail in this document, it willnot be done. That puts great focus on the personreading the spec.


Pat Hynds: And you need to be fair withthem and say you have to understand that this isexactly what I'm building and when we're done thenthis is going to cost you X thousand dollars and if youexpected something else to be in there, it won't be.

Richard Campbell: Yeah, just expect it won't bethere, and if you're going to add it later it 's going tocost more.

Pat Hynds: Right and you have to be very

explicit about CYA. It sounds bad but you have todestroy any hope they have that you're thinking theway that they're thinking...


Pat Hynds: By it being explicit. I mean, inweb projects we state explicitly what resolutions wewill support and none others.



Pat Hynds: What browser versions we will

support and no others, what back-end databaseversions and libraries we will support and no others,that kind of thing.

Richard Campbell: Yeah and the challenge isactually getting specific enough that you cover all thedetails.

Pat Hynds: I find for everything you sayyou 're going to do, you have to define one or twothings you're not going to do.

Richard Campbell: Right, in fact you end up withmore things you're not going to do than what you aregoing to do.

Pat Hynds: Right but I also find that if youset expectations early, you get to a much better resultbut a lot of people are afraid to set thoseexpectations, they're afraid they will lose the deal.


Pat Hynds: And the deal can be workingfor your boss, it could be that they will pick a different





April 16, 2009

developer to work on this new feature, this newcapability but you don't want to -- so there's alwayssomeone out there who is willing to bid less to do abad job.


Pat Hynds: Cheap.

Carl Franklin: Isn 't that awesome?

Pat Hynds: Yeah. You know, it just seemsto be the truth and I can't tell you how many times I'vesaid, oh, that project is going to cost you $80,000 forthat first phase, and they say ridiculous, they go off,they spend $30,000 twice.

Carl Franklin: For nothing.


Pat Hynds: And they get nothing out of it.


Pat Hynds: And then they have an axe togrind with someone overseas and they've got a localbuddy who they don't speak to anymore and they 'regodchild is their kid. You know, the road to hell ispaid with good intentions.


Pat Hynds: And unfortunately, the road toheaven for developers is paid with specifications.


Carl Franklin: And Bob can do it in Access.

Richard Campbell: Yeah, this weekend.

Pat Hynds: Well, go for it.

Richard Campbell: You let me know how thatworks for you.

Pat Hynds: Yeah. Unfortunately, allwidgets are not created exactly alike. What suitedwell for one technology isn't suitable for another and

we definitely have a hammer and nail mentality. If I'ma Rich Internet Application developer, I tend to seeRich Internet Applications everywhere.



Pat Hynds: If I 'm a web developer, I tend tosee ASP.NET applications everywhere. So that's the

problem. I think as a client, you need to first identifywhich technologies actually make sense and bringvalue, and then go the experts in those technologies.

Richard Campbell: Absolutely. Hey, you do a lotof offshore work. I know you do development here inthe U.S. but...

Pat Hynds: As part of CriticalSites, I run ateam of about 30 people over in Egypt running out inCairo mostly. Actually we have somebody up inAlexandria but they were down back in Cairo now.

Richard Campbell: With 30 people, you're notdabbling in offshore development.

Pat Hynds: I'm not.

Richard Campbell: That's a lot of work.

Pat Hynds: I'm actually willing to give awaysome of the hard one secret here if you guys want meto.


Pat Hynds: I've also got experience withIndian offshoring but not through a team that we ownor a team that we hired, so not employees of ours.The people in Cairo are actually employees.

Richard Campbell: Okay.

Pat Hynds: An d I' ve also got very goodexperience in dealing with the consultancy over in

Egypt named DashSoft. So you got to pick yourbattles well. You have to pick the right people whichis true everywhere, but the secret to offshoring are allthe rules I just gave you. So it's the same secrets ashere but a bit more so. So status, you have to set upa status system with people regularly and status isvery specific to not only the task but to the persondoing it. So I'll give you an example. You’ve had kidswork in your yard probably. There are some kids youtell them what to do, you'll leave them at 8:00 in themorning and by 5:00 they're done, they've doneeverything, they figured out problems, they pulledstumps you didn't know needed to be pulled, andthey're just a machine.


Pat Hynds: And there are other kids whereif you don't sit there and tell them which leaf to rake,they will get it wrong.


Pat Hynds: So developers, they fall in thesame kind of granularity.





April 16, 2009


Pat Hynds: I t d o e s n 't matter whetherthey're here in U.S. or somewhere else, and that isthere are some developers who I can tell I want asystem like this and they go and a month later they 'restill on target.


Pat Hynds: As long as I haven't changedmy mind.

Richard Campbell: And arguably thought throughthe problem more than you have and have foundopportunities you didn't know about.

Pat Hynds: Exactly and I have checkedresources and they can justify alternatives and they

can talk about all sorts of things. Those are incrediblyrare people, most of them run their own companies,most of them have probably been guests on yourshow and they're just so rare.

Richard Campbell: Those are rare gems whetherthey're here or there, it doesn 't really matter.

Pat Hynds: And in any industry.

Richard Campbell: Yeah, yeah.

Pat Hynds: You can 't treat everybody thatway though.

Richard Campbell: No, not at all.

Pat Hynds: So someone has to really,really, really earn the right. They don't get the benefitof the doubt that they're a one month resource. Infact, I've only met a couple of one month resources inmy entire life because they almost have to be in thesame mindset as you to get it.


Pat Hynds: Or they're going to be checkingback with you more often than you check back withthem. What's much more likely is you get developerswho fall into the one hour, four-hour, eight-hour,

couple of days, full week to a month. So the majorityof developers, you can give them a task and in a dayor two they'll need guidance to make sure that they'reon the right track.

Richard Campbell: It sounds like most of myexperience talking to you, talking to Stephen Forteand others, it's a daily scrum, every day you're talkingto these guys, but you're talking to some of them -- you talk to them twice a day?

Pat Hynds: We don 't. We found that ifyou 're a four-hour person, you can't work for us.

Richard Campbell: Okay, right.

Pat Hynds: So they're there. I've met onehour people.

Richard Campbell: Wow.

Pat Hynds: And when someone is learninga new task, a new technology, I might check on themhourly for the first couple of days just to make surethey have all of the things they need...

Carl Franklin: Make sure they're not churning.

Pat Hynds: I d i d n 't explain somethingbadly, that kind of thing.


Pat Hynds: It 's not micromanaging; i t 'scoaching.


Pat Hynds: After that, I can check on themtwice a day if it's an important task and I 'm not willingto waste half a day to make sure they, you know,again that I haven't oversimplified things, that kind ofthing. But if someone can't do a day's work withoutmy intervention and stay on target, they can 't work for me.

Carl Franklin: Pat, do you do projectmanagement as well? I mean project management isa huge piece of this puzzle.

Pat Hynds: I do. I pick my projects verycarefully. Usually I try to get on the ones that I thinkare either in the greatest danger or have the biggestpotential.

Carl Franklin: Do you have any secrets toshare about good project management styles?

Pat Hynds: Yeah. We do have quite a bit.You know my buddy, Bruce Backa.

Carl Franklin: Sure.

Pat Hynds: He is the C.E.O and founder ofNTP Software and that's the software company I'massociated with. Bruce has got a lot of experienceand I 've been able to mine a lot from him and we 'vealso built up a lot of experience together working onCriticalSites, and what I found is a format for statusreporting that he actually came up with that's very





April 16, 2009

usefu l which is what did you do today. So this isassuming the status is for the end of the day. Whatdid you do today, what did you get done? I don't needdetails, I need to know I worked on the emailmessaging projects for etc, and I got this library testedand checked in. What did you do that you didn't planon doing? In other words what happened thatsomebody walked in your office and said, “we got hitby a virus, I need you to go and check this.”


Pat Hynds: And what did you plan to dobut you didn't get it done and why?

Richard Campbell: And funny that order of thingsis pretty much how you would explain it in the firstplace.

Pat Hynds: Right. So that's the first part of

it. Then the next part of it is what do you plan to doover the next time period tomorrow, next week,whatever. What do you need from others and whatare your problems?


Pat Hynds: That's my status. If I get thatfrom everyone and I read it, I can ignore half of thembecause half of them are doing what they're supposedto do. I can intercede to ensure that people get whatthey need and I can corral anyone who is on thewrong track.


Pat Hynds: So I can be at TechEd and stillmanage a project.

Richard Campbell: Yeah, absolutely. I'm alsothinking how brief that description can be. That'sthree paragraphs.

Pat Hynds: You know, it also allows themto mark it to me and say look at what I've done, lookat all these great things. It lets them complain to meand say I can't get Joe to go and do what he promisedto do; he hasn't got my domain ready for my testing.


Pat Hynds: And it lets me see theturbulence in their life. If somebody is on a criticalmission task and they keep getting bothered by thesame individual to do things they didn't plan on gettingdone and I see on that other person who is doing theinterrupting that their status report shows work beingdone by someone else, it helps me identify problems,helps me identify the stuff that you ’d normally have tobe in the building to know.

Richard Campbell: And I think the thing is we 'redealing with offshoring, it's you're not in the building.

Pat Hynds: Right.

Richard Campbell: So all those things that youpick up from wandering around you've got alternativesfor.

Pat Hynds: Exactly. I'm glad you'vementioned alternatives because one of the other keyindicators of a really good developer and somebodywho is going to save you is someone who actuallyconsiders alternatives, and this is a direct quote fromBruce: "Most developers or technical people are sothrilled that they've come up with any solution to aproblem they have that they go and implement it."

Carl Franklin: Yeah, that's true just because

there's one solution doesn't mean it'

s the only one.


Pat Hynds: Well, actually it turns out thatlet's say there's five different ways to do something.What's the odds that the one you came up with first isthe best?

Richard Campbell: Yeah, almost zero.

Pat Hynds: It 's 20%, it 's one in five. Soyou should think about alternatives and you shouldwar game and this is where extreme programmingcomes in where you have two developers in the same

keyboard because they will bring up alternatives.


Pat Hynds: They will pause it, you knowwhat, I think we should do that a little differently, andthat's why it's a better solution and so we do codereviews where a developer will review anotherdeveloper's code. I'll be honest with you, that's one ofthe things that we'll let off the plate more often thananything else.


Pat Hynds: And we 'll also not be above

having an architect look over the code of a project tomake sure that the people following the rightframework, the right methodology.

Carl Franklin: You really have to not bebeholden to your ideas to be a good developer, andwe've said this time and time again. You really haveto slay that dragon, that ego.

Pat Hynds: Yeah.





April 16, 2009

Carl Franklin: You got to get used to peoplecoming up with better ideas or improving your ideas .

Pat Hynds: Well, not just that. There'sanother side of this and this more from the RunAsRadio side so Richard might relate to this very well.


Pat Hynds: Developers come up with thepride of accomplishment in solving a logic problemand making an elegant solution.


Pat Hynds: Netw ork tec hies, plumb ers,database guys and I say that with the greatest of fun,that's I'm a network guy myself, a closet network guy.

They want to walk in the door, draw back their capeand point to the registry saying that we 'll solve theproblem that the company has been dealing with fortwo days that no one else could figure out.


Pat Hynds: And then they want todisappear and play a game of Halo.

Richard Campbell: Yeah, and I know I'm doing anawesome job as an IT guy when my phone doesn'tring all day.

Pat Hynds: Right. But it will anyway

because the people who run it, the people who useyour network are so ingenious at finding ways tomess it up. Have you seen the TV show The ITCrowd?


Pat Hynds: Oh my God, I love that show.

Richard Campbell: It's an English show. BBC isso weird, they did three shows the first season, or sixshows in the first season and six shows in the secondseason. They're brilliant.

Carl Franklin: I didn't see them

Richard Campbell: You 'll have to download them.

Pat Hynds: You have to watch them.

Richard Campbell: This is a show where the guyanswers the phone "Tech Support, have you restartedit?"

Carl Franklin: That's awesome.

Pat Hynds: So the problem with what wedo is we give guidance to all techies, developers andnetwork people. You get five minutes to guess.


Pat Hynds: You get five minutes and Iknow that we said never guess, but we give fiveminutes to strategize and try things and you mustdocument everything you try so that you can undo it.After that, you're back to scientific method, you'reeliminating possibilities and you need to get to thepoint where you've proven you haven't introduced anynew problems and if we have to, I mean if you'regoing to sit on something for a day, we 're eventuallygoing to get a vendor in. I call Microsoft sooner ratherthan later because $150 support call to PSS is muchcheaper than two days of senior resource who isasking the most senior resource how to solve the

problem.


Pat Hynds: And also not getting work doneand not getting things developed and not gettingthings delivered.

Richard Campbell: And impairing the most seniorresource in the process.

Pat Hynds: Right.

Richard Campbell: There's a terrible ripple there.You 're not only not doing your work, you 're impairing

other people's work.

Pat Hynds: Next time you're on a meeting,sit back and look around and think about the hourlyrates of everyone in the meeting and then you 'll comeup with a basic how much is this meeting costing perhour.


Pat Hynds: And I've been in meetings thatwere literally $20,000 an hour meetings because theyhad so many people of such high rank in the bank orsome other organizations sitting around and most ofthem weren't engaged in all of the conversation.

Richard Campbell: Of course not.

Pat Hynds: So problems are the sameway. I'm not going to incur $4,000 worth of downtimefor a problem that PSS can give me a patch fortomorrow.






April 16, 2009

Pat Hynds: S o i t 's still those kinds ofthings.

Richard Campbell: Well, and also there's thatability to look outside, why are we writing this, has thisbeen done before, is there an appliance I could dothis, like all of those I will always take a fix cost overvariable cost when I can.

Pat Hynds: Amen, but that goes againstthe cowboy attitudes that are mostly in entrenched inthe people especially off the keys.


Pat Hynds: Those are the people who takegreat pride in the technology, who write their own stuffon this side, that kind of thing.

Richard Campbell: Yeah. They'd want to write it

themselves and, you know, that whole mentalitycomes from I'm the smartest guy in the room.

Pat Hynds: Right. Have you read Joel onSoftware, Joel Spolsky's Smart and Gets ThingsDone book?

Carl Franklin: No. I heard it was greatthough.

Pat Hynds: It's an awesome book. Joelfrom Imagine It! recommended it to me and it's reallya good book because he talks about the fact that egois a problem and there's arrogance to value factor...


Pat Hynds: And you have to make surethat you're always are in balance, and one of thethings we're finding in this economy is the ratio that'sacceptable has dropped way down.

Richard Campbell: Yes. The number of companiesthat I've talked to where they have done layoffs, andthey didn 't just layoff by seniority where the lastperson hired is the first person to go. They made aspreadsheet and there was a salary and there is sortof a productivity factor, and you just hit on it. It's anarrogance factor. People call it, you know, how easyis he to get along with though, it's really an arrogance

factor.

Pat Hynds: It's the PIA factor.


Pat Hynds: The pain in the ass factor.

Richard Campbell: There was a time whenStephen Forte and I were doing evaluations. We

talked about a guy who -- we described him as thecow who gave twice as much milk and kicked overone of the cans so in the end we have the sameamount of milk as any other cow but also a big messon the floor.

Pat Hynds: I like that one, that's a goodone.


Carl Franklin: I'm sure people enjoy beingcategorized like that.

Richard Campbell: Listen here, Betsy.

Pat Hynds: So what do you guys look for ina spec? I mean, can you look at specification anddecide whether or not it's hopeless or not?

Carl Franklin: Just completeness, you know.Thoroughness that when you have questions, whenyou read a spec and you have a question that isobviously going to impact the time, if I can't think ofanything that has been left out, it’s just got to becomplete. You know, obviously some things aregoing to be left out but they should be trivial.

Pat Hynds: So I have a scale of four levels,or five levels actually, the first level is scary, ofspecification and if you don't mind -- do you mind if Ishare that with you?

Carl Franklin: No. Please.

Pat Hynds: So the first level is someonecomes to you and says I have an idea, and in thatcase you should either run or verify that they have avery healthy bank account.


Pat Hynds: Because there is no way tospec I have an idea, there 's no way to fixed bid I havean idea. You can work on it and you can get it donebut it 's going to be a circular development, not awaterfall because you don't know what you're going todo until it's done. So that's something that I see a lot.You know, entrepreneurs will come up and say, "Hey,I have an idea. I want to just build this thing. It will

pu t Goog le out of business but I haven't writtenanything down yet." So the next level is a high levelrequirements document and it reads like a wish list,there are no details and there are a lot of unansweredquestions. This is the brief email paragraph that says, "I want to build a system that does this and it sells fiveproducts a day," and it's good to tell you what they'rehoping to get but it doesn't tell you anything aboutwhat an acceptable solution would be; and there is adetail requirement document which would actually be





April 16, 2009

enough detail on what they're willing to accept and notaccept that lets a techie or an architect go off andwrite a functional and technical specification. Usuallywhen you torture somebody they can get you to thatpoint but if they're not technical they don't have theability to go to the next level.

Richard Campbell: Right, to actually get down tothat much detail.

Pat Hynds: And the next two documentsare really where they probably meet the road and Iusually like to combine them. It's a functional specwhich is like it's a mock up of the UI, used cases, andcould allow a fixed bid project with a lot ofassumptions, and then there's a technical spec whichis the blueprint for the application, there's n ounanswered technical questions, and would actuallyallow fix big project. Typically, the functional specwith the technical spec completed allows you to say

yeah, this would take us X weeks and it would costyou this much money based on that number of weeks.That's really the gambit, and occasionally I meetsomebody who actually works regularly on fully specprojects based on those definitions and I also noticedthat the success ratio on those is much higher.

Richard Campbell: Yeah, there's dedication in thespecification. Spending time to getting it done rightends projects sooner when they need to be ended,but more so immediately it causes the conversationthat sets people's expectations reasonably.

Pat Hynds: Exactly.

Carl Franklin: Pat, do you speak about thistopic, Software Project Failure, and do have any whitepapers or resources people can pass out?

Pat Hynds: I just did start a session on thisexact topic and the title of the session that I gave at aCode Camp in New Hampshire and Code Camp inBoston last month is How to Prevent Project Failure , and then I have another session on How to WriteSpecifications for Survival and Profit but there was alittle bit too much overlap so I really can 't present bothsessions in the same event because there's just toomuch overlap in them, but I blog them, I’ve started toblog again, I blog three times last week and I'm goingto blog this week, I posted the slides up on my blog at

www.patrickhynds.com and Hynds is spelled H-Y-N-D-S.

Carl Franklin: In hindsight, that should bepretty good. No, no, I won't start the puns.

Pat Hynds: That's very “punny.”

Carl Franklin: It was. Is there anything elsethat we missed that you want to cover? We're justabout out of time.

Pat Hynds: No. I'm just happy to talk toyou guys again. I've been out of the community forprobably over a year now. I'm back. I'm speaking atuser groups and Code Camps and I'm starting to blogagain and trying to actually add to the conversationand I appreciate the time you guys have taken tohave me on the show and hopefully we can talk aboutless dry topics. I think it's an interesting topic but it's alittle bit of a heavy topic.

Carl Franklin: Well, it's always good talking toyou, Pat, and you always bring a variety ofperspectives on a problem so it's always great...

Pat Hynds: Thanks.

Carl Franklin: Thank you again and we'll seeyou next time...

Richard Campbell: On .NET Rocks!

[Music]

Carl Franklin: .NET Rocks! is recorded andproduced by PWOP Productions, provid ingprofessional audio, audio mastering, video , postproduction, and podcasting services, online atwww.pwop.com. .NET Rocks! is a production ofFranklins.NET, training developers to work smarterand offering custom onsite classes in Microsoftdevelopment technology with expert developers,

online at www.franklins.net. For more .NET Rocks!episodes and to subscribe to the podcast feeds, go toour website at www.dotnetrocks.com.

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