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Thoughts on scope creep
Posted By: Michael Knox
I've never been one to be completely satisfied with anything, even after it is considered done. I'm one of those developers who constantly works on a project, always coming up with new enhancements and "features". That was one of the reasons that I created ProjectTracker to begin with; to prevent myself from doing that.
Well, ProjectTracker has been officially out for a month, and I have forced everyone to do updates since then. Some have been the result of problems that we found, and others have just been enhancements that I see the need to implement. Most of these visiions come to me about 2am. It is getting to the point that everyone dreads the morning meetings because they know that I have added another ten things to the list.
But in the end, my little contribution to scope creep is a good thing, if managed properly. For instance, ProjectTracker has its fair share of datagrids. Datagrids are a great thing in ASP.Net, but they tend to cause postbacks everywhere and they have this weird little quirk that they don't exist until you populate them. That can cause a performance problem if you have grids with large amounts of data. My latest jones is the elimination of postbacks whenever it is possible.
So the next release of ProjectTracker, scheduled for November 20th, will remove a bunch of postbacks. I am also somewhat dissatisfied with the performance of the calendar control that we use, so that is going away. And I think that we will start using Free TextBox on many of the forms.
Until next time
11/14/2005 5:08:27 AM
ProjectTracker has been released
Posted By: Michael Knox
ProjectTracker has been officially released. The marketing campaign will start on Monday morning. Everyone has worked VERY hard on this project.
Here's to a successful product!
Now everyone stay by the phone for the support calls!
10/15/2005 10:58:36 PM
ProjectTracker enters final testing
Posted By: Michael Knox
ProjectTracker is now in its final testing phase. There are a few enhancements that we want to put into the final version and a few more tweaks to the system. Everyone has been working very hard on this project, especially the testers.
Once all the these changes have been made, we will finish the documentation.
There are some things that we changed at the last moment. We chose to focus on Internet Explorer for this release. Since most organizations use IE as their standard browser, that should not be a problem for most users. The primary reason for this is that many of the pages open a browser dialog box, which is supported only by IE. A future version will likely allow other browsers. For the record, we did explore other options, but in the end, we chose this solution to keep consistency in the program.
We will probably pull some different task types as well. The plan is to have tasks for configurations and for rollouts, but we need to work further on the process. There will likely be enhancements to the system on a regular basis. Using as ASP model makes this more possible.
9/10/2005 4:32:43 PM
Welcome, James Weinberger
Posted By: Michael Knox
James Weinberger joins DataRunner today. In the middle of the week. James is truly an impressive individual. He is wise beyond his years and is much younger than he looks. He finished both high school and college a year early.
My wife, Nancy met him while catering a party and was impressed not only by his intelligence, but also by how much he and I are alike. She jokes that he accomplishes was I try. A not-so-vague reference to the fact that he rides his bike almost daily, while I ride mine far less often.
He is also an avid runner and has competed in a triathlon. My dream is to complete a duathlon. I would do a triathlon, but I can't swim very well.
6/15/2005 2:54:36 AM
Welcome, Robert Kohlmann
Posted By: Michael Knox
Robert Kohlmann starts on Monday. Bob will work at a client site and in his spare time, will help Rajan and Carolyn with the release of ProjectTracker. Bob was one of our beta testers while he was in college and impressed enough that we decided we needed him working with us full time.
5/28/2005 10:38:47 AM
Welcome Carolyn Holt
Posted By: Michael Knox
Carolyn Holt officially started today. She has been assisting for the last week or so while I was in the hospital for some minor heart surgery. I worked with Carol several times over the years and her expertise with managing projects and supporting software is absolutely incredible.
Carolyn will take an active role in helping us get ProjectTracker released.
5/2/2005 8:04:21 PM
ProjectTracker goes into beta testing
Posted By: Michael Knox
With Rajan's incredible help, ProjectTracker has officially gone into beta testing. We have been using it internally for the last two weeks, working out last minute kinks. Tomorrow it goes to out to a number of developers who will put it through the paces.
We expect to have a nice list of things to put into future versions. Some good things, some not so good.
But without a doubt, the atmosphere around here is incredible!
4/3/2005 8:36:56 AM
Welcome aboard, Rajan
Posted By: Michael Knox
Today we officially welcome aboard Rajan Subramanian. I met Rajan late last year in a hotel. I was visiting some friends from out of town, he was on a business trip. We bonded almost immediately. As it turned out, Rajan was looking to leave the east coast, and I was looking to bring another person on board. It was about time, after working more than sixty hours a week for far too long.
So last month, Rajan managed to talk his wife Sunny into moving to Texas. It did not take too much to convince someone living in upstate New York in winter to move to Texas. I don't think either one of them knows what to expect when summer comes, but they will probably survive.
Rajan's first responsibility will be to assist in the completion of ProjectTracker.
2/14/2005 10:14:23 AM
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