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--Originally published at Blog de Célia

What’s the situation now?

Let’s start by a small resume of the situation. I’m afraid I will forget this part of the book if I’m not doing it (sorry to not trust my brain enough, if you’re not interested you can just skip this paragraph).

Our Mr. Tompkins woke up in a hotel room, in another country: Morovian. Mrs Hoolikan is here, and they talked about the job. First, he was sceptical to accept it but then after some discussions, he accepted it (money is sometimes the biggest argument in life decision, sad uh?). So, he will earn a lot of money and will work on the creation of software with great engineers. In the next chapter, he received a book that he will use as a personal journal (and that’s what we will use in our next paragraphs) he met a guy (Waldo Montifore) that will be his personal assistant. The guy looks super stressed and he is threatened by the NNL (the leader of Morovian) and he must work very hard on some project to achieve it on time if not, he could die (really a good CEO, NNL, isn’t?). To be sur to work for this country, Mr. T wants to meet THE leader to ask him some conditions (many employees etc.) to achieve his job goals. He is a tyrant and has a weird vision of managing people. They met, everything went well, NNL accepted every conditions.

The first lesson

He didn’t write himself de first lesson he learnt, Mrs Hoolikan did it for him.

“Four Essentials of Good Management

• Get the right people.
• Match them to the right job.
• Keep them motivated,
• Help their teams to jell and stay jelled

(All the rest is Administrativa)”

That was the lessons he learnt the Continue reading "Lessons that Mr. Tompkins learn"

--Originally published at Coder Bebop

I am starting to like the picture the author is painting in this story. We have a protagonist with experience, probably seeking redemption for a mistake he did in the past, an ambitious leader with an awkward past and even weirder plans for the future, and a prosperous country waiting to be exploited correctly.

I find Mr. T’s journal entries to be a smart exposition device. This way, the message and thoughts the author wishes to transmit are clearer. Instead of lazily writing them down for us to be bored by them, I begin to understand the direction this story is point to: one in which we are exposed to the lessons of a management book but tied up to first hand examples from a story. This way not only do we learn, but are greatly entertained and intrigued by this story, almost like a children’s book.

Until now, I have had very few dislikes (for lack of a better word) towards the story up to this point. Mainly the way the character interactions go, which involves the constant “Mmms” and “Uh-huhs” the characters do, or the fact that he seldom pauses to explain which character is saying what, so we must assume it directly through dialogue. This has forced me to go back a few lines before to understand what is going on. I hope this does not go on forever but here’s hoping.

--Originally published at Erick learning experience

After Lahksa kidnap Mr. Tompkins in this chapter finally we are told with what purpose Lahksa did that, if I were Tompkins I would be very scared of Lahksa because she even know the name of his cat, but to wake up in a suite can compensate that.

Some things that I consider in this chapter are first when Tompkins complain about dealing with impossible schedules, I consider this important because some times employees are given a lot of work in a short period of time and that makes them to burnout, in other words they finish their job very stressed out and without motivation what leads to one of the main topics of the chapter two of maintaining the team motivated.

Investment in people, other concept touched in this chapter was the big investment you have to put in people to develop a project and when Mr. Tompkins started to select key persons he mentions the importance of have all the staff in the same place, because you never get something done if people are all in different places, but that means a lot more money has to be spend to recruit people.

Chapter 4

In the chapter 4 at the beginning were mentioned again the Four Essentials of Good Management 1. Get the right people, match them to the right jobs, keep them motivated, help their teams to jell and stay jelled. And it was important to me because in my opinion is a good idea to write a Journal with all the important thing you have learn during the day.

One of the thing that call my attention in this chapter was when Mr. Tompkins starts talking with Mr. Mopoulka about the CD-ROM plant and how he was worried about everything, first he couldn’t start working in

--Originally published at Coder Bebop

I am wondering what’s next for Mr. T. I would suppose he is going to be a little bit of a goofy character, given that he talks about managing people, yet he let himself be managed by a complete stranger, even after hearing her talk about kidnapping and business espionage. He might have not been thinking clearly, given that he was just RESO’d and probably thinking what to do, but come on! Now I see why he was so desperate to learn the art of treating people. It leaves me wondering what would the woman have done if he had not accepted the Diet Dr. Pepper…

Then we have a classic flashback exposition in which we have our protagonist’s goals explained… sort of. Is it some sense of entitlement which makes him react the way he reacted with the seminar’s teacher? Will this kind of behaviour continue as the story progresses? My guess would be there is going to be a clash of egos between his employer(s) in the future, and he will have to take a hard decision in order to stay true to his motives (?). I might just be overthinking it but let’s be serious: a character who is shown to have some attitude either is bound to have it resurface or is simply a not so well developed character. Unless he is meant to have a change of heart or developement, which does not seem to be the case in my opinion, since we are talking about a character in his fourties with a formed mindset.

--Originally published at Coder Bebop

In every business, no matter how promising or ground-breaking the idea is, it may not enough to have a good product. Two important factors that not everyone appreciates about doing business are: the presentation, how we sell the idea. The other one, which comes after getting into the market, is basically to not ruin it! Now that you had your kickstart, the worse thing that can happen is to mismanage it and go back to the beginning.

Who would have thought the software industry in the inside is a business like every other? You have finances and accounting department, HR, risk calculating, etc. On top of them all a group of rich/experienced folks giving the orders as they see fit. In the end, every job requiring large amounts of people needs to follow some guidelines to pull it off day after day. People need patience, support, motivation, a sense of belonging, and/or a goal.

When you put all the parts together in an enterprise, you create a mattress on which to land when things go wrong, if things go wrong at all. Having the right people in the right place makes an enormous difference in big companies. A good management will have gathered enough data over their history to include contingency plans for emergencies. For that and for many more reasons, we need people who consider every aspect of our company, either in relations with other businesses, in money-managing, etc. On top of it all: a healthy business will be integer in its product as in its management.

--Originally published at Blog de Célia

First, what is engineering economics?

According swebowiki « Software engineering economics is about making decisions related to software engineering in a business context.” It’s looking for the balance between cost and value of a product or a project.

You can’t separate the engineer from the business side. Business is essential to sell and promote a product but as well to make the company live and be profitable.

How?

It is important to have economics measures to be able to make good decision for the organization, you can take decision without having indication (at least good ones), it helps to avoid making mistake that can lead.

When engineers do not have any knowledge in the business field, they will not really (in general) have concerns about the business part (the profitable part).

Having the both: engineering and business knowledge is a real advantage.

Which indicators?

There are many departments that should be considerate while taking a decision. I choose to develop a bit the finance part, but they are all important (life cycle of the product, risk management etc.)

Finance has an essential place in an organization. It indicates how goes the financial health of the company.

The finance field include accounting (helps to be aware of the results of the organization activity), controlling (to reach the organization objectives and plans and to know exactly how much cost any process), the cash flow (it’s when money go out, how much go out? When money go in? and how much?).

This helps to the decision-making-process in a company. Also, it helps to determine how to maximize the total value which is the most important for a company.

Other elements must be under consideration: inflation, depreciation of the asset, the taxation, the time-value of money (money now doesn’t have the same Continue reading "Why you should never dissociate engineering and economics ?"

--Originally published at Erick learning experience

Economic engineering is knowledge that help a manager to be effective and make easier the decision making. Normally an engineer would say that the only thing he has to know is how to program or how to solve a problem specialized in their field, but that is not true.

When the engineer starts making decisions on how and what is necessary to solve the problem it involve money and knowing some basics of economics are needed to take decisions based on the benefits, inflation, risks and costs and with all that information decide if the project is viable or not.

Some concepts that I consider important are:

Initial cost: The cost that is expected to get the project started.

Maintenance cost: The cost that is needed to update the product.

Interest Rate: The rate received from an investment.

Finance: allocation, management, acquisition and investment of resources in other words risks, time, taxes,

Accounting: The ability of someone to know the results of their investment, like profit expected or looses.

Cash flow: the movement of money into or out the business or project, this concept is important to take decisions because without it the business can’t have a clear vision of how much money they have to spend and how much money they are receiving.

Inflation: The same things costs more than before.

Taxation: Money request by the government called income taxes, this is important to consider because it can lead to problems of thinking that a project can be very profitable but at the end it was not because the high income taxes that the business has to pay.

In my opinion all these concepts of economy are important to know as a engineer to make some decisions about a project and minimize risks and be more immerse with the Continue reading "Economic engineering"

--Originally published at cerros27

Este fue un tema que considero muy muy importante. Ya que después de 4 capítulos del libro por fin tocamos el tema del código en el mundo real. Ya que a lo largo de la carrera son pocas las veces que en verdad enfrentamos nuestro código a la vida real. A lo factores que pueden arruinar nuestro código por completo; eso sin importar lo bien que funcionara en el laboratorio de pruebas. Y la mejor arma que tenemos para hacer de nuestro código un código funcional son los casos de uso.

Los casos de uso nos permiten desarrollar todos los posibles factores que a los que nuestro código se puede enfrentar. Y una vez que identifiquemos cuales son las circunstancias posibles podemos empezar a “proteger” nuestro código para que sepan como responder ante las posibles variables y cambios del mundo real.