Elevator Pitch

Hello people!
While looking for information about elevator pitch in order to do a good job next thursday; I found this great web page. It is a summary of a whole book about this topic: Elevator Pitch 101.

In it an idea that I found quite interesting and that it changed what I though about what I had to prepare is:
One reason why so many people deliver completely ineffective elevator pitches is they don’t understand the purpose of an elevator pitch. They act like the purpose of an elevator pitch is to close the deal while in truth the purpose of an elevator pitch is to just interest The Audience in continuing to talk.
No more, and no less.

So now, that I know that important topic I can concentrate on what to tell following the rule of the 8 Cs:

1. Concise: Few words but to the point.
   
2. Clear:use non-technical expressions, acronyms... explain to a 3 years old (ok 5 is also valid, haha)
   
3. Compelling: explain the problem to solve, why is a problem and who are the final users
   
4. Credible: why we can solve the problem; merits, etc.
   
5. Conceptual: what the system is doing
   
6. Concrete: specific met goals and what has been done (very briefly)
   
7. Customized: addressed to the public
   
8. Consistent: don't create misunderstandings

So in those 2-3 minutes we have to convey all that infomation.. the question is how will we do it?

The answer on Thursday night.

Thanks and Cheers

Nieves

First draft of the DDD and group multitasking!!!

Hello everybody, we have hot news to explain to all of you.
As of today, we have delivered the first draft of the DDD and this document has a total of 153 pages, based on the granularity of the component. We almost freaked out when we realised it, so I hope when the customer reads it, he has a drink near him, haha.

Another important aspect is that this holidays break we have to do a lot of job, because we have to deliver the final version of the ADD on sunday, on saturday it's the turn of the third BPR and meanwhile we have to work on the selling, the elevator pitch and also begin planning the SVVP. So as you see lots of work.
Based on these problems, we have decided to multitask or better to delegate the work in mini-groups. Some people is going to do the BPR, some other take care of the final revision of the ADD, also others will think about the selling and some will begin planning the SVVP.

We don't know how it is going to be, but by monday; the BPR and the ADD are out of our hands, so the selling and the SVVP will be a group issue.

So wish us luck with the work.

Thank you all

Nieves

Oldie Joke and pic I have found in the Internet:

A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts: "Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?"

The man below says: "Yes you're in a hot air balloon, hovering 30 feet above this field."

"You must be a software developer," says the balloonist.

"I am," replies the man. "How did you know?"

"Well," says the balloonist, "everything you have told me is technically correct, but it's of no use to anyone."

The man below says, "You must work in business as a manager." "I do," replies the balloonist, "but how did you know?"

"Well," says the man, "you don't know where you are or where you are going, but you expect me to be able to help. You're in the same position you were before we met but now it's my fault."

And then the typical image that shows the process of SW Engineering.

New month, new deliverable!

Hello everyone, to celebrate the beginning of December, the christmas month, we have begun a new deliverable in our project. This time, it its the DDD or detailed design document. As we have the components and operations of the ADD more or less clear (waiting for a review). We have been able to separate the workload between the members of the team more or less equally.
WE are going to have 57 components in this new document; because we have decided to create a document for each operation in the interfaces of the ADD (basically we are using a great granularity with this component). This way the codification of the components should be easy and straigh forward, although I don't think the programmers would love us, anyway. LOL

Apart from the deliverable, we are thinking about a new milestone in our schedule. WE have to do a SELLING of our project instead of an audit. So we are thinking which things to explain and how to do it. Hope we reach and understanding and make a good impression.

Anyway, that's all for today.

Keep in contact.

Nieves

Changes in the ADD

Yesterday was a SW engineering full day for me. Making the changes, creating the data model, drawing the diagrams again, checking that everything was right; took me all day long until 2 a.m.
But the worst of all were the CAPTIONS, I hate the captions; because if you have to add something in the middle, you have to change all the captions below you.
I know that latex do it, but we are using a MWord 2003 template, so we can't use latex and it drives me crazy.

Anyway finally I ended the document, and all was dandy; but this morning I had to check it out again because some sorting in the structure and there you go again....

So now I have just sent it to the customer, and I really hope that he is happy with it, becuase changing a 80 pages document in only one day it's stressfull to say little.

A good point is that the other document, the briefing is already finished and reviewed; and the DDD has begun to be done.

So in summary...I just need some holidays; sadly I am not going to get them :-(


This is the life of a SW engineer (at least in the university, that I know). But from a real perspective, this link associated is quite funny; you should check it out.

Nieves

ADD Review Results

Hello everyone! This evening we had a fast review of our ADD, and we are not very happy with it, because we have to make a lot of changes, it's true that most of all it's changing the structure and renaming the things, but adding that to creating a data model is going to take time (and mostly we don't have much free time left).

Anyway, tomorrow we have a meeting to make most of the changes and delegate the different tasks of the DDD. Hence, we are a little bit stressed with the workload. Besides that, tomorrow is also the team deadline to deliver the briefing work of each member, so we can review before sending it on thursday to the customer.

Apart from that, everything keeps as planned; and we still think that we are doing a good job; so we can be happy with that. And this is a fundamental aspect in the job life of everyone, if you are happy, you work better.

So be happy, my friends LOL

Nieves

Second Stage of Final Deliveries

We have sent the final versions of the URD and SRD to the customer, as with the SPO, CPD, SCMP and SQAP; he must tell us if they have been approved or not.

If they pass, then we are following our schedule and we should not have many problems with keeping a day or so ahead schedule, otherwise I think we are going to be in a huge problem; because the design stage depends on the analysis and if the first one fails, a 'snow-ball' is going to follow with the rest of the work.

Another interesting topic, is that the customer asked 'very nicely' if we could write a briefing on the project, that means how the project is going; with a due date of this week; so obviously our plans have changed and they will appear in the next BPR document.
But I think we have divide the work nicely, becuase it's important all the POVs of the members, so we have decide to explain the project to the customer from each perspective. We will have to wait for his opinion regarding this matter.

Keep checking for updates.

Nieves

Cheer up bloggers!!!

This is a post addressed to the authors of the blog http://agc6.blogspot.com/:

• Mario
• Angel
• Paco
• Jose
  
• Diego
• Fran
• Manu

Cheer up, your work was well done, and as asked by one of your members, this is our attemp to cheer you up.

Have a great time and the good thing is that now you have a little bit more time.

Bye

Architecture Discussion

Hey I know today I am posting a lot of things, but now I have the time. Also this post is about yesterday.

As the application is a web one, we though that a C/S architecture was the best option, and based on what we learned last year we though that our design was a 3-Tier architecture, but yesterday we learnt that it is not a 3-Tier but a 2-Tier. Also, that although the client is part of the architecture, we don't have to refer the client as a component of the architecture because the client is only viewing the code the server is sending.
So the presentation layer is inside the server and it generates the html code for the client.

After that discussion, we have to make changes on the ADD, basically taking out the client component as explained, and other things.

Thinking, we also discussed not to begin the DDD after we have at least a more or less stable version of the ADD with one review, because if we have to make lots of changes in the ADD then the work already done in the DDD would be lost or it could be inconsistent with the changes on the ADD.

So that's what yesterday was about.

We will post our new issues in another moment.

Nieves

Modifications and problems with the analysis!!

Hello, sorry for the delay in the posting, but we've been very busy making changes. We already had the reviews of the URD and SRD and we realized that we had to make a lot of changes because otherwise our architecture was going to be almost impossible to do.
With the URD we didn't have that many problems, but with the URD, most of the performance constraints had to be changed or modified because we couldn't test them and aso it is almost impossible to implement something to check them.
As those two documents affect all the design process, then we had to plan an urgent get together to fix the problems taking into account the trade-offs of the changes and how to overcome them.

Finally we reached an agreement between the parts in how to change the purpose of some requirements and centre the functionality in important aspects and not adding new ones that the delicious does not have.

So with one week of work we have been able to change the analysis stage and create new and better (based on our point of view) deliverables.

Keep in contact

Nieves

We have passed to second phase!!

Hello, we are very happy to know that we have passed to second phase in the blog competition. We really though that we had failed based on the survey, but miracles exists.

We will open a new survey for the second stage of the competition, the final decision will be on 31st of December, so either way we pass or not we will post a message wishing happy new year to everyone, lol.

We will try to improve and keep posting the evolution of the project.

Many thanks to those who vote on us, we will have to invite you to something (good thing we don't know who vote for us, haha).

And finally, for the groups that have not passed: you made a great job, you can comment on our blog if you want.

Bye

Nieves

Opinions!!
Hello people, we have seen that people is voting in our poll. But currently, people is voting that we are not going to pass to second phase.
So we want to know aspects in which we can improve. Thus, not only vote but give us hints to live up to your expectations.

Thanks