The truth about developers and estimating

I am always amazed when a developer can respond to a question like “How long will this take to develop ?” with a response of “I reckon 2 weeks”. 2 weeks ? why two weeks why not 68 hrs ? why not 68.3333 hours ? this estimating process can only lead to a poor outcome.

The second thing that surprises me is a developer who is willing to start a project on an hourly rate but would refuse to do the same job without a fixed price. If you cant estimate the job with enough confidence why start it ? It will only expose everyone to a cost overrun and frustration.

Of course these points are not really an issue for those small couple of hour jobs but for larger jobs where you would like to keep your sanity and your clients happy I believe a sensible solution to these issues are gold. So I am proposing the following two rules of project estimation:

Rule1:
Never provide an estimate without a confidence level and a step and price to become more confident if needed eg I believe that will take me 1 week and I am 50% confident but if you explain this part more thoroughly I will become more certain. I can sit with you and your staff for $x to make this happen.

They gives a price range for the job ahead, giving the customer the confidence that he can afford to pursue further it also gives him an understanding of how he can help improve the solution and of course make some money in the next step.

Rule 2:
Never start work until you are 95% confident, it will most likely end in frustration and a poor customer service experience.

Love to hear other views to my approach.

Getting Javascript Intellisense to work in Visual Studio 2008

I was very surprise about the amount of incorrect or rather half truth information that was floating around the web to geth javascript intellisense to work in Visual Studio 2008, so once I finally got it working then I just felt I needed to make a quick blog post that may help others in the future.

The main problem occurs when you are within a page that inherits from a master pages, and its that master page that references the javascript files you would like to have the intellisense to reference.

The first step and this is pretty easy to find around the web and thats make a reference comment within your javascript block to the javascript file ie

///<reference path="ext/adapter/ext/ext-base.js" />
///<reference path="ext/ext-all.js" />
///<reference path="ext/ext-all-debug.js" />

Now it still doesnt work and frustration will set in, the secret source to make it work ? hit Ctrl-Shift-J on each of the reference that you would like to start appearing in the javascript intellisense. So simple but so easy once you know how.

Of course you must also have VS2008 SP1 installed and this hotfix if your referencing a -vsdoc.js file as most blogs talk about.

Hope this helps some people out.

Example Content from Teched

A few people have approached me to give them the sample code that I demoed at teched, I finally found some spare time this weekend to zip things up and place them here on my blog.

DEV310 Make Some Magic! Shake, Flip and Flick Your Application for Windows Mobile 6.5!
Sensor Examples Code
More Sensor Examples

DEV370 Channelling your inner sexiness and other developer tricks for Windows Mobile
Example Alpha Blending (Includes free photo of Loke Uei Tan)

Hope it helps some people.

Disclaimer: All code provided as an example only and is only intended for use a learning tool.

We are coming for Dinner: Debug Days Next Week

As part of the windows mobile 6.5 Marketplace launch myself and some other windows mobile people are next week coming to visit you to make sure your apps are ready for marketplace.

Ok so we are supplying the pizza and the venue but we want to answer your questions and solve your problems.

These Debug Days will be held from 4.30pm till 9pm on;

* Monday August 10th – Microsoft Brisbane, Level 9 Waterfront Place, 1 Eagle St, Brisbane
* Tuesday August 11th – Microsoft Sydney, 1 Epping Road, North Ryde
* Wednesday August 12th – Microsoft Melbourne, Level 5, 4 Freshwater Place, Southbank

If you have a topic that you would like us to cover twitter myself at @jamesmcc and come along and we will cover it.

The full blurb about the event can be found here on the codemason site

Just been profiled on Codesmason Guild

It exciting to be help out the local Microsoft team with the release of windows mobile 6.5, I have been lucky enough to be profiled on the Codemason Guild site although I think looking at the others bios I need to get a wordsmith in the guild to write more words about me.

Today we also announced the debug days that will be in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne starting on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday next week respectively.

More information about that coming soon.

Office 2010 and VS2008

Ran into a problem that once I installed office 2010, my visual studio 2008 kept locking up when I was in the web page designer, searching the web I came across this blog post which gave the majority of the solution.

My differing situation was that I had removed office 2007 32bit to install office 2010 64 bit, so I didnt have the ability to restore, instead I had to delete it but once deleted everything works fine again

Windows Mobile 6.5 developer training – Jumpstart series

Today I am working with Don Kerr in preparing for the Jumpstart series of vidcasts that will occur through out July. If your into Windows Mobile development then this is a not to missed series for getting ready for Windows Mobile 6.5.

The first of the series kick off Friday, July 3, at 1pm this will be helping Australian developers get started developing for Windows Mobile 6.5 – and to get those apps in Marketplace (Windows Marketplace for Mobile – Open for Developer registration) to distribute/sell to the millions of Windows Mobile users globally.

These Live Meetings will run through July, all on a Friday starting at 1pm. So grab some lunch, your favourite beverage, and get ready to learn. The first starts Friday week, July 3 – click to register now.

July 3rd 1pm – Introduction to Windows Mobile 6.5 and Marketplace: the opportunity and the platform
This webcast introduces the new and upcoming features of Windows Mobile 6.5 and Windows Marketplace. It also outlines the incredible business opportunity for developers to reach millions of users globally via Windows Marketplace – and the processes required to do so.
Register now for Live Meeting session 1

July 17 1pm – Getting started developing for Windows Mobile 6.5: developer tools, technologies, debugging and testing
Learn how to get started developing for Windows Mobile 6.5, what can be done with the new technologies and how to use your existing skills to start coding apps for Windows Mobile 6.5 phones via Windows Marketplace.

July 30 1pm – Widgets: the new internet application
Get insight into the Widgets platform for Windows Mobile 6.5 and discover how to develop powerful Widgets that leverage today’s web experience in a new way.

 

Technorati Tags: Windows Mobile 6.5,Developer,Training,Marketplace

Its finally public: Windows Mobile 6.5 Developer Tool Kit

Microsoft has finally made the 6.5 developers kit public and can be downloaded here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=20686a1d-97a8-4f80-bc6a-ae010e085a6e

What you will notice is how quick the emulators are, the new gesture controls and widgets.

Come to Remix 09 in Sydney to see what we have been developing with the new 6.5 features

BLOW#9: Have you hugged your kids

One things all business owners need to do to succeed is to focus on the business and sometimes that can mean to much focus, there are other things more important then business so don’t forget to spend some time and hug your kids.

Those people around that you enjoy spending time with are the ones that help you recharge for the challenges that the business world throws at you.

BLOW #8: Learn from your mistakes

Like everything you do in life sometimes things never go as planned. Sometimes a disagreement occurs between you and your client, and majority of the times its because of a miscommunication.

The simple solution to this is like most things in business is to put yourself in the other persons shoes, have you signed up to a contract such as a mobile phone etc, only to be told something later that makes you think why wasnt I told that before I signed. The answer could be the person selling you the service assumed you understood something and thats an easy trap to fall into once your entrenched into a part of the industry.

When this occurs you are to blame as much as the client is from not asking the correct questions, so breakdown where the problems occurred make sure your contract clearly spells out the solution to the issue and make sure your sales work also highlights this to the client. I provide my clients a checklist I walk through with them, just helping me to make sure I have covered the necessary points. You may loose some customers because of this but your really only loosing customers that are going to be arguments at a later date.