HL Arledge

Angry customers tell 3,000 friends

A teammate said to me yesterday—referring to my entry entitled It's the Customer's, Stupid!...

"That's not really your job is it? I mean, you're a software development manager. There's a whole department working with customers. Don't you have more important things to do?"

Of course, I responded as you might expect...

"Taking care of the customers is everyone's job."

And then, I told the real story.

Last Fall, Kevin came to me and said...

"It seems like your team is really self-managed now. You still have to turn the flywheel occasionally, but generally your team can tackle anything you throw at them..."

Since Kevin is my manager, I had a suspicion as to where this was going.

"...So, I'm thinking that maybe you have some bandwidth you're not using, and I could use your help with some things. I would like you to take over as Conference Coordinator for our annual training conference."

Kevin knows I love event planning, and he knew I would dive in head first.

I worked for months assisting cross-functional teams from all departments. My goal was for them to present as never before. I wanted customers to learn more than ever before, but I also wanted them to enjoy the event more than any conference prior.

And—to some extent—we met the goal. The teams shined, and customers did say repeatedly that the 2008 Decade Training Conference was the best ever.

However, I wasn't all that satisfied.

Joel provides tips for successful software demos

Now, that Joel-on-Software Spolsky is on the road promoting his FogBugz software, there are not as many words of wisdom coming from his camp these days. However, if you have software to demo, he does have some pointers for you.

"A common, but boring, way to design a demo is to start by stating the problem, and then explaining how your magical software solves that problem. Another boring way to design a demo is with PowerPoint slides and lots of bullet points. An incredibly boring way to design a demo is to talk about your company and how many employees you have and how many millions in revenue you make every year. Nobody cares."

Joel's article covers not only how to demo, but where to demo.

Afterall, what good is creating quality software in record time with a winning team—if no one ever sees it?

Who's afraid of Orange County?

Orange County Environmental Health is one of Decade Software's largest customers—if you weigh large as the number of users. They have been Envision users for many years. In fact, their insights helped shape Envision 3.4 into the solid product that it is today.

Lately, OC has been contemplating a move to EnvisionConnect, and this week, they invited Client Services Manager John Jensen and I down south for a pow-wow.

In the days preceding our trip, the mumbling among Decade staff echoed down the halls.

"I pity JJ and HL. Those Orange folk are tough to deal with."

"Yea, they're really pushy. If there's a feature they want, they won't stop complaining until they get it."

"...and they're tough on defects, too. If Nick Reyes finds something wrong, you'd think the world was coming to an end."

I laugh anytime I hear such chatter.

I've worked with Nick Reyes, Karen Newe, Jeff Warren, Pearl Boelter, Ron Margheim and the rest of the OC crew since they came onboard, and I appreciate the fact that Orange is one of the many clients that helped make our products as solid as they are today.

My friends have been assimilated, uh...I mean, Linked-In

Last month, I announced that I had started networking with other Scrum enthusiasts via the new business networking site, LinkedIn. Now, a short 30 days later, most of my friends and business associates have been assimilated as well.

Check out what I paid some of them to say about me there...

“When HL took leadership of Decade's .NET software development project (of which our product is an important component) there was new clarity, direction, and resulting progress. I personally appreciate HL's directness, commitment, and professionalism.” September 19, 2007

Ward Bell, V.P., IdeaBlade, Inc

“I've been a pal of HL's for several years. Every year or so we exchange emails on a technical topic or just to touch base. He's a real nice guy.” September 20, 2007

Danny Thorpe, Borland Software Corporation

“HL has incredible personality. He likes working with people and for people. HL possesses a good mix of technical and artistic capabilities that help him to lead the team towards reaching the goal. As a manager, he demonstrated a great deal of political maneuverability and at the same time the closeness to developers. As a result, the company received the great product completed in time and in accordance with specifications.” October 7, 2007

Leonid Bogdanov, Computer Programmer/Analyst

“HL is an excellent software engineer and development manager. He understands the technical and business aspects of developing software applications.” September 19, 2007

Ian Duffield, Consultant, Sierra Business Consultants

“Insightful and eager to learn are HL strengths, relevant in the always changing software development business.” September 19, 2007

Marco Cantu', Author

Be careful what you tell yourself

From the signs I hung on my office wall the day I moved in...

Positive attitudes lead to productive actions. Negative attitudes lead to unproductive actions. How are attitudes formed? 1.  You tell yourself something. 2.  Your state of mind becomes bias around that something. 3.  New actions stem directly from the biased state of mind. In other words... An attitude is a state of mind and a predisposition to actions based on what you tell yourself, so... Be careful what you tell yourself.

I've been thinking about these signs all week, after a conversation with Terri Williams at San Bernardino County. Her perspective on leadership and teamwork is very much like my own—guided by the words on these signs and supported by truth, trust, and transparency.

Following a recent visit with Terri's team, Geoff Marsh—from Sacramento County—described Terri this way, "She does things differently down there. She doesn't allow anyone on her team to have problems. They only have challenges."

I really like that!

What do you know of Dependency Injection?

For fellow geeks reading this blog, I invite you to join some friends of Decade—Ward Bell of IdeaBlade and Jeff Doolittle of SJV Technology Group—for a webinar on dependency injection. In the one-hour presentation, these guys promise to demonstrate how dependency injection can be both useful and easy to understand by reducing the amount and complexity of source code.

Check it out...