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The picture on the right is the timestamps of Comments on Green & White today. By the time I had saved this picture and loaded up my blog writer 5 more comments had flown in.

The Green & White community is getting better and better every day. We’ve been getting nearly 200 comments / week for the past few weeks consistently, and its amazing to read all the new authors and see people connect with people on interesting discussions. And these arent random opinions or comments… increasingly I’m learning a lot more from the thoughts and ideas and things shared by the people here compared to the blog posts themselves.

Thank you authors, commenters and participants for making Green & White the experience that it is.

As a small token of thanks, now I’ve integrated both G&W posts AND all of the comments directly into a twitter feed so that all of you can follow not just the latest blog posts, but much more importantly the latest comments from everyone in the community here.

The twitter feed to grab is http://twitter.com/greenwhite

You can follow the feed via email or even better SMS alerts on your cellphone - now you’ll never miss something important here.

A couple of day ago I was thinking, why aren’t there any books on IT issues by local authors. It can’t be that our techie guru’s aren’t all that good at writing. Afterall, quite a few of them now run blogs and the output is more than decent. So what exactly was holding them back? While I still dont have the answer to that issue, i did come across this wonderful gem of a book from Ansar Muhammad and Rahim Hasnani titled Large Software Projects: Risking Life and Limb on Jehanara’s blog.

The content of the book is extremely simple to read through and it is designed to be consumed quickly. Its written in three parts, with the first being a complete case study of a large software project for an Insurance company. The project chosen is fraught with all the problems we see on a day to day basis while managing projects such as impossible deadlines, scope creep, expectations management, high risks and so on. It describes the life of a project manager, Ahsan, as he navigates his way though the complex world of managing everything from his team, schedules, clients and his own management, trying to come out of an impossible project with his dignity intact.

Read the rest …

Haris and Zigron’s team made a very bold and risky move to create a "fun product" PingMyCompany.com, where people can leave anonymous good or bad comments about companies.

Very very risky - people abroad would welcome the idea and respond positively but local companies are likely to miss the joke and try to put some pressure on Zigron.

To be fair - there is likely to be a lot of libel; defamation concerns surrounding this site - right now atleast it seems to be just too easy to go out and pretend to be 50 people who hate a company.

But still - risky marketing also has a good chance of paying off — I have a feeling Zigron’s about to become the talk of the town, for one way or another.

Interesting move Haris! Let’s see how this plays out - whats your thoughts on it? Would you like to see your firm on this?

The growth of internet use and the availability of free information in Pakistan has resulted in the rise of entrepreneurial class. Starting up new businesses or researching on new business ideas can work like a dream on google. Business automation is one of the main worries of any new/old business concern and with this article I would be listing some free or open source softwares that would make your life easy. Read the rest …

Can I pick your brain for a few minutes? (Thanks)

First, a little bit of background.

A small software shop (let us call it ‘The Shop’) that I am helping out as a consultant has a four year old relationship with a strong and stable European client; a relationship that they are working hard to retain. In this economic phase of a high demand for experienced software professionals, The Shop’s relatively unknown name does not attract a lot of resources from the top tier, but it has still managed to create and retain a decent team with them for the last 3 years.

Now, the problem.

The trouble started two months ago, when one of The Shop’s lead developers left for greener pastures (read a larger firm paying a few thousand Rs.). He left on good terms with the shop’s management (and is freelancing for them now), but he also left a big hole in The Shop’s small structure that needed a quick replacement. Meanwhile, their client was requesting a further increase in team size to handle the ever-increasing workload.
This is when a Mr. K, a very experienced programmer and a former employee of The Shop, showed an interest in rejoining, as the pastures that he had left for earlier were drying up (read paycuts). The Shop was quite happy to have Mr. K back as he would have partially patched up the widening hole, and already possessed prior domain knowledge.

The above information is important as it shows that:

• The shop has a cool work environment, a place that people can comfortably come back to.
• The people running the shop are open-minded enough to welcome former employees back into their team instead of holding grudges.
• The grass on the other side usually looks greener than it is.

Anyway, The Shop was happy, the client was happy, and while the shop started scheduling interviews to hire support team members for Mr. K, the client sent one of their project managers from Europe to Pakistan, so that he may train and understand the team for better offshore coordination. The Shop’s CEO also went out of the way to attend Mr. K’s numerous phone calls, and agreed to most of his demands, so eventually, Mr. K signed a contract with the shop last week.

Two days after Mr. K signed the contract, the CEO told me that he had just gotten a one-liner email from Mr. K telling him that he won’t be joining The Shop after all. No apologies, no explanations and no mention of the penalties for such an action that are included as a standard in the contract. The CEO also heard from the grapevine that Mr. K has opted to join another firm.

Despite being an outsider for the most part, I was boggled by Mr. K’s arrogant and unprofessional behavior. Ignoring it this time was not an option as such behavior is not anomalous anymore - I have seen this happen more than once in the last few years. The Shop’s CEO also wants to do something about this incident instead of letting it go, and I personally think he is right because a) Mr. K signed a contract, and is legally obliged to fulfill it, or pay the penalty, and b) This action reflects very badly upon the Pakistani software industry as a whole - the project manager has arrived and is asking ‘Where is the guy that I have to train? The one who is joining from tomorrow.’

So my questions to you are:

1. Has such a thing ever happened to you?
2. If you were the shop’s CEO, what would you have done?

I am hoping that the discussion in the comments will help us in formulating an SOP/checklist that would be helpful to all shops that face a similar situation in the future.

So there wasnt a lot of creativity behind the ads I raved about last week after all, I guess.

Anyone see the resemblance in the two ads below?

Zong still gets points for the reasons I mentioned - making it a more transparent, heart-to-heart communication example - but I just wish they’d tried to be original with the visuals of it… just have a guy stand in front of a screen and say the stuff for 5 mins - nothing fancy required!

Prior coverage from Karachi Metroblogs and TM

Ahmed Siddiqui writes about some of the trends he’s witnessed in the software industry regarding HR. Here’s what he had to say:

• In most of the organizations the hierarchy is:
  • CTO/Dept. Head >> PM >>TL >> SSE >> SE
• Most of the Resource Managers (Team Leads) are planning to become Project Manager
• Senior technical positions like Architect, are not available for technical people
• Senior Software Developers are planning to become Team Leads to get raise in benefits instead of focusing on scarce senior technical positions
• Most of the resources have working experience of small-size offshore projects, they don’t have the experience and expertise of Enterprise Solutions
• Most of the fresh graduates prefer better salary on career growth & learning
• After initial 2 years, having some quick job-switches, some of them realize that if they could learn, they could earn more. Then they change their mind to prefer learning over adhoc monitory benefits
• It’s becoming general perception among software industry that to become a project manager is the shortest path to get fat salaries
• Computer Science Graduates are preferring to get admission in MBA instead of MS
• In MS(Computer Science), Project Management is becoming a buzzword
• It seems that in few years, we will have greater number of Managers and lesser number of technical resources, at least in software development

Agree or disagree? Let us know!

Apple just launched their first store in Pakistan in Lahore in a partnership with Raffles Computers. The store is called "iRaffles". The US Ambassador to Pakistan inaugrated the "Apple Computers store" last week.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog and Dailytimes have scant details.

They’re not correct in saying that this is the first unofficial Apple store to open in Pakistan - there are many dozens of authorized apple resellers that have sprouted up everywhere in the country and usually have the latest gadget within 3 days of a macworld or other launch event.

Still - does anyone have details or pictures or their experience to share? If so - fire away in the comments.

Thanks Mudassir for the tip!

CNN is fast becoming an exciting news channel to watch - not only are they now beginning to give very focused coverage and many interesting topics from climate change to autism, but they’re also getting very high tech.

I’m late in noting this but I just noticed how well they’ve put to use Jeff Han’s Perspective Pixel multi-touch display during their election coverage. Not only is this fun to watch but gives a much much clearer picture on political activities in the states. The anchors are able to get a lot more information through to the audience in limited time, which boosts business performance for media companies.

Here’s a video I was able to find of their multi-touch display in action. Check it out.

When you talk about how best to run a software business, we tend to hear one line again and again.

“Build a product! There’s no future in custom development anymore!”

I, myself, have been guilty of recommending this course of action to quite a few people. Lately however, it got me thinking. Why is it that custom development is considered to be a track to failure, while product development is ruling the roost? Aren’t there quite a few product companies which are closing up as well, infact, even more quickly than custom development companies? A product is a risk. If you cannot find a large enough market for it, it doesn’t even justify its costs (ROI). Sometimes, you start out building a product with all the right market knowledge and even interested buyers, but by the time the first beta of the product rolls out, the market seems to have changed and your prospective leads have dried up. So many things can go wrong in the product area as well. So why?

The answer, it seems to me, comes from who you are targeting!

Read the rest …