Friday, August 15th, 2008
Project Management suites are, in my own words, absolutely essential for application development companies. They empower project teams to manage documentations, plan milestones, organize meetings and facilitate communications - and more importantly, involves our precious clients seamlessly so you don’t have to waste too much managing tedious, angsty, never-ending back & forth communications. I can now claim myself to be a real matter expert in this field because I have tried all of the above mentioned applications before settling for 1 for my purpose. I must say there is no 1 single perfect suite for my needs, as they certainly have different offerings and features. I certainly have my preferences though. While the above apps are not the only one, (there are others like 37signals’s basecamp which cost quite a tidy sum.. you try them and let me know how they fare), they are certainly free at least to a reasonable certain extent. Without further ado, there is the lowdown on them:
Codebeamer
This is the very 2nd project management tool I have ever used after Project-lifeline, a now defunct project management tool developed in house by SMU Students. Codebeamer, developed by Itland, does not come cheap for its commercial version. Its free version allow only up to 5 users, and with many functionalities disabled. When I contacted the salesperson to enquire about the cost, they give me the impression of being rather shady - they evaded a question I have regarding whether the free version had a certain feature (which he told me its only available on paid for version, but I later discovered myself that the free version had that feature), and quoted me quite an astronomical price - about USD$1,000 for about 100 users (though my company has obviously not grown that huge)
Service aside, Codebeamer has a subversion integration capability that allows administrators to set up SVN easily. Under documentations, ACL is nicely implemented. You can even plot sequence diagrams and other uml notations with text. CB has a very nice interface which is using to create your own wiki blog, and a nice integration workflow structure which allows linking of documents to everywhere else. Like Zoho, Codebeamer has a forum functionality and notification mechanism for new documents and forum post.
What I do not savor however is the lack of Calendar function. Codebeamer has a tasklist and milestone feature but for me that is insufficient. Codebeamer, which is being supported by JavaForge, may be well-liked by big software firms but for my purpose, I needed something that is easier to use and integrates well with word documents. One more thing; it looks horrible on Safari and Firefox 3.
Google Docs & Calendar
My pursuit of an integration tool with Calendar and Documents bring me towards exploring Google’s offering - Docs and Calendar. Now there is a huge problem 2 hrs into my experiment; Google Doc does not offer project management features at all. Instead of a many-users-to-1-portal-with-many-docs model, they use a many-users-to-many-docs model. Meaning, documents are being shared at a user level, instead of at a project level. Thus, it becomes difficult to manage these documentations. A solution would be everyone share a single Google account to log into the portal, but this opens a can of worm on audit trail issues. Without any doubt though, Google Doc is easily the best in the office suite in terms of usability.
On a separate issue, Google Calendar is just beautiful to bits. It is easy to move and drag events, and has a nice reminder feature (I heard if you are in States, you get SMS reminder service). Google Calendar allows users to share calendar and to publish their own. I will be looking closely at Google’s foray into project management aspects.
Dotproject
This is an open source project from the land of Mercedez (and CB). The best part of it? It is free, deployable on your own server (like Codebeamer), runs on PHP so you can just use some webhosting companies and has many plugin availables from the OS community. However, the userablity of Dotproject has a lot of room to improve; In an age where AJAX is so commonly used, Dotproject lags far behind in user interactivity.
gForge
To be honest, I only tried gForge, which is vastly similar to Codebeamer in its core features for a while before I give up. I cannot comment much except that it is free, and allows users to set up SVN and track bugs easily - just like Codebeamer. What stops me from proceeding further with it is in its lack of abilities to allow me to write documentations immediately without having the need to upload.
Zoho Projects
I love Zoho to bits. Ive told many friends about it, and even the forum moderators in Zoho. To me, Zoho projects is almost on the brink of perfection, except for some minor bugs and wishful features I really want; such as integration with Zoho Calendar (which is nice to drag and drop), and offline synchronisation of documents. Zoho projects is Google Docs in a project management suit. It has a wonderful multiple portals and projects management which allow users to change portals and projects easily. The calendar features is easy to use and Zoho Write (MS version of Ms word) and Zoho Sheet (MS version of excel) is very friendly (:
Another article about Zoho that gives you a better idea on the office applications:
http://www.twistermc.com/blog/2006/06/20/zoho-online-office-applications
I feel Zoho Projects has huge potential, with its killer low price and responsive replies response from its support. With its all round integration functionality, the value curve offering, imho, is a notch above others.
Thats all folks. Please leave me a comment if you disagree or if you like what you read (:
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008
Something very funny happened before Damon, my trusted sidekick, and myself headed to Swissotel for the iJam networking session (announcing launch of iMatch) yesterday. We happily walked towards Raffles City and go up to the ballroom in Swissotel. What followed was a series of confused hotel staffs not having a clue of any IDA event when we couldnt spot nor sniff a single clue of any IT geeks. It turned out we were at the wrong Swissotel (as Damon put it,”Oh there are more than 1 Swissotel!” and to which I replied,”*gasp*”). We were supposed to be at Swissotel, Merchant Court. Nice.
Ok so lets move on to discuss more serious “Series” - Series A, B, etc funding. These are terms use for different stage of fundings for startups by Venture Capitalists (sometimes jokingly nicked Vulture Capitalist - credit to my portfolio management professor, whose identity i shall not divulge :). First of all, I must say that it was a fruitful talk which was worth all the hassle Damon and I experienced prior to it. The panel boasts of a excellent concotion of local and international VCs and Technology experts - notable attendees: Ms Lauren Liang, Mr Pierre Hennes, Ms Ong Siu Leng. While they offer some pointers which many of us would have already known, they reinforce some beliefs in myself and offer new perspectives to what VCs want to see in young startups.
Some important takeaways buried deep in my head:
1) Early stage VCs look not just for a great idea. The assessment team plays an important part.
- How creative is the team?
- How is the synergy and energy of the team?
- The character of the team: Are they determined enough to walk the talk throughout? (without falling for the temptation of bigger money and job elsewhere?)
- Keith: An academia pointed out in a research that a trait of successful startups is that it has more than 1 founder, between 2 to 5, while 3 is the optimal number.
2) Localisation or Globalisation? The panel is quite divided on this. However, they all agree that it is important to focus on a segment of consumers on whatever choice you make. More importantly, get your first dollar in quickly, at least to assure your backers.
- Keith: Bear in mind Singaporeans being Singaporeans, we are a very unique breed of citizens compared to many others in the world (just hear our accent, our English, our love for durian, our loyalty to the ruling party :P). E.g. We can largely generalise consumer habits of Malaysians and Indonesians, or Taiwanese and Japanese, but what works in an already small Singapore market more often than not will not work for many other countries. Be prepared to customize radically when scaling abroad.
3) Be prepared to sacrifice, even if it means you being the CEO. When big brother wants to bring in someone more qualified and experienced to be the CEO, you should let go.
- Keith: Which is why, please hedge yourself with an MBA education (:
4) VCs require that the team has enough stakes nonetheless, so to ensure they remain motivated and responsible for their gains and losses.
5) Cold Calling the VCs may work, but networking would speed things up to establish a relationship between the VC and the Startup team. No one said it better than Mr Pierres when he said it is “like a life long marriage”. Relationships, or guan xi always work like a charm.
- Keith: I have to admit that I’ve never enjoyed networking, so I always go in with a mindset of making friends for learning, rather than other tangible benefit. It helps.
6) LIVE: One of the panelist said a rule of thumb of a successful product encompass the following attributes: Lively, Interactive, Visual, Experiential.
7) Me-Too Products - VCs generally do not require startups to be a from-scratch-innovation based company. Me-Too products can equally be, if not, more successful and astute investments for them.
8.) Are Singaporeans really that un-creative and un-innovative? Mr Douglas Abrams from Expara disagreed, and had seen his fair share of innovative local start-ups. Singapore, while not comparable to Silicon Valley at the moment in terms of the eco-system of funding, has good potential with our good infrastructure, supporting government schemes and growing amount of wealth (especially private) in Asia.
- Keith: I suppose the link to how growing wealth in Asia equates investing in Singapore startup is this: 1. Singapore being a financial hub for Asia 2. It is easier to manage startups in Singapore if the money comes to Singapore 3. Thus, with 1 and 2, go for local startups.
9) The question of IPO came up when a gentlemen asked what are the other exit points other than IPO and M&A? I didnt really get the answer other than a brief remark on convertible debt aka convertible bond (which I don’t think have to be these 2 exit points anyway), a panelist cautioned startups not to be overly confident and declare “I will be IPO-ing in 2 years”. No one can guarantee an IPO.
10) This has to be the best advice all day: You will always need more money and time than you think. So plan carefully and do not overspend. The worst mistake that can occur to a startup is to hold multiple series for extra funding when they realised they do not have enough. A business should be focused on the product, and not funding at all times.
Please feel free to comment on any points (:
Sunday, July 20th, 2008
When releasing a product (especially innovative ones) in the IT domain, just how important is it to do it right the first time?
The experts are divided on this: Some would advocate the importance of showing others something that works and impresses, and emerge from your dark garage with a huge big impact that gets everybody’s jaw open - at the expense of time/effort and perhaps lost ground to competitors.
Others would tell you to build a community with a beta launch early, get their feedback and consistently improve. The latter situation helps you gain a first mover advantage, gain some sort of credibility as a company that delivers gradually, assures your VCs, but as you would have guessed, the wow effect would have been subsided. In terms of branding, your company is gauged accordingly to that buggy beta launch you have. In terms of marketing, you could miss out on the advantage of viral marketing (my reasoning is that if you potentially lose part of your community with a less than perfect application and miss out leveraging on their “word of mouth”)
I do not believe dude-my-solution-works-for-you-and-all exists. As usual, I listed down some guidelines that will help a startup determine its strategy, and end off with a possible solution startups can consider.
1) Can you foresee competitors that are already working on something similar?
If you do, you probably should release your application in iterations, even if it its less than perfect. First mover advantage has so much benefits that you simply can’t miss out in the fast moving IT world, and building a community with your beta can lock them into your application. Releasing early iterations also place pressure on competitors, forcing them to show their hands with less than perfect applications. You are better off than ignoring them and run the risk of competing with a even better application which the world saw earlier than yours.
2) Can you decide well enough what is good for the community? (Do you even know em?)
One of the best lesson I have learned in many years is from the trendsetting guru, Mr Steve Jobs, who quipped that focus groups are useless because most of the time, your customers does not know what they want. However, if you feel pretty inadequate in deciding what THEY want, you are better off releasing your early versions of your ugly application to them. Who knows, they may be more than happy with that! Also, if you are still unsure about your target market, an early release may help you decide. It is common in every business to evolve and adapt to the market pays you more.
3) Do you have enough engine and dolli?
The later you release, the less confidence your investors will show in your company, and so will you to your corporate bank statements. Slow release may also result in demotivated staffs who have been waiting to capitalize on their equity stakes. You run the risk of your best programmer quitting you for another company just because the work they do don’t seem to see daylight as the days dragged on with another of your “Oh I think it will be great to add this function!”. At the same time, releasing your application gives potential new talents a preview of what great idea you have, thus attracting them towards you.
In a nutshell, the 3 questions above in fact are point to the same rhetorical question: Just how important is your product coming in with a BIG BANG? (Kaboom and Cracklings)? If it is a matter of life and death (which is implied from your answers from above posers), and yet the disadvantages bother you all the time, you can consider what I call a ring-fence launch.
In a ring-fence launch, you ensure that competitors and general public are not able to access the application. Get only friends (preferably close ones) to see your application, as well as reiterate to them the importance of keeping to themselves. Explain to them your motive, and ensure that this is far from being the final product, and that their word-of-mouth help is critical to success when you eventually do the final launch. This is helpful because you do not want them to ignore your fiinal product due to boredom and lack of excitement.
Personally, I would chose to launch something that is 50% completed - with quite a different look to the final look and feel. I would even use a slightly diff name for this application in my url ,e.g. such as myproduct_beta such as as myproduct. This is to illustrate the key difference in both releases to the test community.
In my next post, I will discuss the different kind of beta launch and more strategies in doing so. Please feel free to comment on this post!
Saturday, July 19th, 2008
Before you gogoo “Not another Mac vs PC arguement”, I need to state upfront I am writing only to to glorify my choice. I’m truly grateful that I made the switch over to Mac 3 months ago - my x41 IBM was close to dying of slowdom then. Speaking of which, I had to admit I was stupid in installing Vista in Bootcamp, because there really is no use for it. (If you really want to run a windows environment, I suggest you use a simulator tool like VirtualBox).
Though I really miss the 1.2kg weight of that little machine x41, my heavy MBP made sure I had not carried the extra 1.5 kg everyday in vain because:
1) Expose is really fun for me to change windows, and I sometimes do it for fun. And I like going to desktop with a single quick movement.
2) Front Row shows me latest theatrical trailers - nice! & I can play with Apple Remote.
3) Audium and Growl notification are so pretty.
4) I can do 2 finger scrolling. Trust me on this one, it does not get better than this.
5) I can switch tabs while browsing with swiping using MultiClutch, and back/forward with rotating. MultiTouch is more useful than I originally thought.
6) Photoshop and Illustrator loads very very very quickly.
7) Girls notice me a little bit more in Starbucks (I think).
8.) I am encouraged to use Terminal to do my work. And talking about work, you can only develop iPhone applications on Mac because Apple says so. (SDK only works in MAC OS)
9) My Mac has crashed just once in the 3 months despite my rough approach in installing stuffs.
10) Overall productivity increase by about 10-20% for me, since I can multitask better now because of many reasons cited above.
Alot of people “thinks” others buy Mac to show that they are really cool, fashionable and even stupid. I have to agree partly - many individuals I know buy Mac because they are attracted to the interface and designs, but as a business owner, getting Mac for the whole IT department saves much trouble in IT issues such as virus outbreak or hdd crash. (My MBP auto defrags all the time). From another perspective, there are so many Mac OSX developers that you have a good chance of getting some applications you fancy in Windows already.
I have to do virtual meetings over the net and my partner and I work through iChat with remote desktop presentations as well - thus we do not have to invest in other software. Thus economically, Macbooks make alot of sense too.
If you disagree with any of my reasons, comment and let me know now!
Thursday, June 26th, 2008
Everyone has their own sets of rules on how they should live, behave and interact with the society. In a way, you can call these “principles” but for the sake of this post, I define “life rules” as something that help guide my actions and steer them towards common sense, and these rules are inherently logical - they also closely relate to social aspects and EQ. On the other hand, “principles” to me is a set of beliefs that may be difficult to explain and defend, and does not necessitate actions, e.g. “I will not allow myself to get a lift from a lady”.
So here goes some of the 3 most important life rules from my personal rulebook that I would thus like to share with you; These are rules that aren’t straightforward like “Thou shall not steal” (so important and obvious I need not share), and are commonly violated by many in their everyday life. That’s not to say I have not violated them any bit, but for sure I have not for the past few years and indefinitely the future.
Rule No. 1: Never capitalize on what others cannot choose
“That’s quite below the belt”. A certain friend J remarked to me on a dining table when I accidentally joked about another friend’s volume. These words have stayed with me for 4 years now, and it is probably the first and only time I have ever degraded anyone because of their sheer size. Regrettably, this is one of the most commonly committed mistakes people always do. They assume their friends often would not mind such jokes, and live their joy at others’ expenses. Such insensitivity, imho, has no place in this world because many of them do not choose how they look like.
A little off topic: My secondary 3 English teacher’s words still ring in my head too. “If they say you are fat, tell them you can run and slim down. but tell them they are ugly, and they need total reconstruction”.
Rule No. 2: Always give others the benefit of a doubt (and imagine all possibilities)
It is much easier to live knowing others are not malicious, and to imagine the different positive excuses that comes with a negative behavior from someone else. For e.g., Alice told you Jack told a crowd in a bar you are a selfish worker who always turns down request to help him. Immediately, anger steamed through your mind. You can, however, speculate the possibility that Jack was drunk and sprouted something he did not meant, or Jack meant to say you are too busy to help him in your work. Alice may even have exaggerated his words! There is always a chance the latter reasons are genuine - in the case they are and you choose the easier path of believing in Jack’s maliciousness, you effectively destroyed a relationship unnecessarily.
I am not preaching you to become a saint or be overly naive, but my point here is people often misinterpret words and behaviors. Giving the other party a benefit of a doubt also meant giving the relationship 1 more chance. When in doubt, do not just speculate negativity - confront him/her to clear the air.
Rule No. 3: Prioritize events and work that others have an important stake
In SMU where I received my degree education, school team projects come in waves. These projects are normally the determinant for the final grade of that module. Some teammates that I have worked with unfortunately led extremely interesting lives - full of co-cirriculum activities and working part time to support their travel trip in the summer for e.g. Needless to say, most of them took advantage of the fact it is a group project and therefore the project is taken care of by the group who of course need to do well anyway for their grades. . They thus traded away their credibility and reputation in exchange for more involvements elsewhere. Such exploitations are much detested and despised.
Reputation and Credibility are for life. Trust me, they come back to haunt you.
That’s all folks. You may choose to agree or disagree with these rules - leave me a comment on your views!
Monday, June 9th, 2008
Saw this email from a friend and thought its funny enough to be shared!
A man checked into a hotel. There was a computer in his room. So he decided to send an E-MAIL to his wife. However he accidentally typed the wrong e-mail address and without realising his error, he sent the message.
Meanwhile, somewhere a widow had just returned home from her husband’s funeral. The widow decided to check her mail, expecting message from her relatives and friends.; After reading the first message she fainted.
The widow’s son rushed into the room, found his mother on the floor, and saw the computer screen which read:
To: My loving wife
Subject: I’ve just reached
Date: 13th oct 2006
I know you are surprised to hear from me. They have computers here now, and you are allowed to sent e-mails to your loved ones.
I’ve just reached and have been checked in. I see that everything has been prepared for your arrival tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing you.
Hope your journey is as uneventful as mine was;
Yours lovingly,
Lonely Hubby
Monday, February 25th, 2008
It’s easy as ABC to create a video for your users how they can perhaps do their own maintenance on their websites, or to pitch to a VC how cool your IT Application is. By creating a desktop capturing video, you create a big wow effect.
Try out CamStudio , a free utility to execute exactly this.
CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs)
For Linux users however, take a look here http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/02/05/194332.php. The author recommends use of xvidcap. As you might have already known, I have always been a fan of open source, so this post follows my belief closely (:
Monday, January 28th, 2008
Are the following scenarios familiar to you?
- Feeling angsty with a colleague, you immediately replied a rude email with equally hostile wordings
- A private joke that was supposed to be .. private until the “To” includes the butt of the joke
- Reply all conveniently and include the whole school community, and conveniently making yourself look stupid
- Emailing to your wife love letters that are well-too-loving-for-any-eyes that was NOT supposed to be for your wife.
I did discuss about email etiquettes and a way to handle this. I now actively advocate that one should try deferring emails by 1 minute. Of course, you can set to 5 minutes delay if you want. 1 minute is a “just nice” reaction time buffer for me to realise any mistakes, or any further details I would like to further add on to the email, and the bare minimum delay I can tolerate for sending emails.
One way you can do this in Outlook using the Rules and Alert method, like in the following.
Another method I formerly employ is in activating “Spell Check Before Sending”, though it really is “Are you sure you wanna send this”. This provides a brute force reminder, and again, if you use Outlook, you can change it under Tools->Options->Spelling in the following manner, and check the 2nd box.
There you go, 1 way to go back in time, and another way to ensure you live on in your time. (: Of course, a last ditch resort is to revoke that email, by going to the “Sent” folder, then under your toolbar choose “Action->Recall message”. However, this is normally an ineffective measure as the recipients often are able to still access the message content.
Saturday, January 26th, 2008
A supersized big apology for neglecting this space for 2 months! There is some good explanation I can offer though: Firstly, I was away for a Business Study Mission in Cambodia and Thailand for a good 2 weeks in December. I would later provide a link to some takeaways from this trip in the form of a journal (later entry), but meanwhile, I have to say being in Asia and especially South East Asia, you got to visit Ang Kor Wat in Siem Reap, Cambodia.
Here’s why (:
Now, it is easy to see why I will come back to Ang Kor City really soon. For some reasons, we only spent 1 day in this place, and about 2 days in total in Siem Reap. And I learnt a new local lingo – “Boom Boom”.
If you plan to go here soon, please do let me know just in case I could join u!
It was also my first visit to Bangkok (I know la… sua ku), Honestly, clubbing doesnt feel the same anymore in Singapore now, after visiting Slim @ RCA. Other than that, nothing really eventful, nor do I have any useful information for you, except don’t eat too much squids on the roadside or you will kena rashes like me!
Now, the second reason to my hibernation mode is my evaluation of a new desktop tool. For some reason, I hated Wordpress’s web interface. I could have messed up some settings and thus posting in that WYSIWYG interface is a painful process. I tried W.Bloggar (which interestingly enough sounds like a virus name), which though was’nt too bad, it just was’nt good enough for me. So here I am, typing this using BlogJet, one of the premium tools in the market. So far it has been good. Again, I will use another blog entry for this trial post, so do keep coming back for more updates.
It feels good to be back here though, little red dot (:
