Software Development: Key Functional Staff

“People may, but good data never misleads”

Let’s first see what I would want in a team member before going into analyzing one on the basis of data:

My Best Individual Team Member Is:

• Skilled
  • Fully understands SOLID principles
  • Loves their technology stack
  • Writes great code
  • Writes unit tests
  • Adheres to OOP
  • Understands patterns
  • CI/CD mindset and proficiency in tools for the same
• Understands quality as well as delivery
• Hardworking
• Positive
• Agile
• Loves ownership
• Understands client requirement
• Well managed
• Communicative
• Has team spirit

My Worst Individual Team Member Is:

• Mediocre developer:
  • Does not follow coding principles
  • Writes unintelligible/cryptic code
  • Does not comment their code
  • Hates the technology they are working in
  • Does not write tests (thinks, it’s tester’s job)
  • Waterfall development mindset
  • Does not understand quality
  • Overshoots  deadlines most of the time
• Poor communicator
• Does not want to change
• Runs away from ownership
• Not interested in anything
• Doesn’t respect team

A software development project team usually consists of senior and junior SDE (Software Development Engineer) and SDETs (Software Development Engineers In Testing). Engineers could also be grouped as per their focus area(s) – front end,back end, or full stack.

I would approach evaluation of individuals like so:

Data Driven Evaluation Of The Team

Passive Evaluation (for every individual)

1. Go through their resume. List down their experiences, skills, future goals. Also note if the experiences, skills, and individual’s future goals align with the projects’ and company’s related requirements.
2. Go through final project reports of all the completed projects by the individual in last 6-12 months and prepare following matrix:
   1.  Performance level – great, good, average, sub-par, bad
   2. Consistency of performance levels (70%+ is good)
   3. Change adaptability on the basis of diversity of projects undertaken
   4. Code quality consciousness
   5. TDD/BDD/AOP experience and comfort
   6. Positive/negative impact of individual’s contribution on budget and/or delivery of the project
3. Go through a sample of code (committed in repo, in production or ready for the same) and collect following data:
   1. Complexity of the feature (could simply be a number between 1-10)
   2. Quality of the code
   3. Test coverage
   4. Clarity of style and adherence to company/industry guidelines
   5. Comments/documentation
4. Considering information gathered in aforesaid sections, observe them in scrum meetings on the basis of following criteria:
   1. Ownership level
   2. Story-wise performance; code quality and velocity
   3. Expertise
   4. Communication
   5. Involvement
   6. CI/CD mindset level

Active Evaluation (For every individual)

1. Schedule individual meetings with top performers (could be just friendly/informal meeting to avoid any kind of fear of performance evaluation) and gather following information:
   1. SWOT
   2. Source of motivation
   3. Code quality standards at individual level
   4. What are their future goals – near and far
   5. Individual tools and techniques they use to perform well consistently
   6. Would they volunteer to mentor an under performing individual
2. Schedule individual meetings with worst performers (should be just a friendly/informal meeting to avoid fear) and try to understand following:
   1. SWOT
   2. Run thru the code and try to understand their level of realization about problem in their code?
   3. Have they been aptly communicated about their short comings?
   4. Reason of consistent sub par performance
   5. Understand if it is a work-individual fit problem – management style, technology match, etc.
   6. What do they think are the ways in which they could improve their performance in next X months?
   7. Would they be willing to be mentored by another member of the team?
   8. Suggest some training courses related to weaknesses and threats.

Individuals who have not been performing well should be given a fair chance to improve. Good performers should be encouraged to perform even better.

If someone keeps on performing at sub par level after giving sufficient time to improve, they should be asked to find some better fit out of the team/organization ASAP.

The matter of individual training wholly depends upon company policy. If company provides training resources and bears the expenses, under “fair chance to improve” policy individual should be provided training and reevaluated after designated period. If company does not have a policy of providing training individuals should be guided about how they could improve themselves in the required areas.

7zip Helper Batch File

7zip is an open source archive utility. 7zip has a nice GUI to create basic archive but you need to switch to command line if you want to include/exclude folders. It is boring to type same command repetitively if you have to take zipped backup periodically.

This tiny little batch file (backup.bat) creates password protected 7z archive of the specified folders in the folder where it resides. You don’t type your password in the batch file so you don’t give away the password. You can also specify names of the folder you want to exclude from the archive. As an example, by default, backup.bat archives folders named – Source & doc, and excludes bin,obj, and temp/test folders (see customization section below to know how to change).

Usage

Copy backup.bat file in the folder which has the subfolders you want to archive. Navigate to the folder in explorer and open command prompt in the same folder (shift+right click > Open command prompt here…) . Type backup.bat at the command prompt and follow the instructions. Pay attention to instructions which appear on your screen.

Requirements

7zip (http://www.7-zip.org/)
Powershell (Windows7 up, all versions have powershell by default)
7zip executable path in global path variable

Customize

Following is the default 7zip command in the batch file –

7z.exe a -t7z yyyymmddhhmm_filename.7z Docs source -mhe=on -p%password% -xr!bin -xr!obj -x!temp/test

“Docs Source” specify the two folders – docs and source, to archive. You can add/change folders to include here. “-xr!bin -xr!obj -x!temp/test” specify 3 folders to exclude from archive – bin, obj, and temp/test. “r” switch in obj and bin denotes that bin and obj folder could be anywhere in the folder structure.

Prototype Android Apps in Microsoft SketchFlow

(If you are a C# | XAML dev and prototype cross-platform apps, Xamarin anyone, these template projects can make your job very easy!)

This is third post in the series of SketchFlow template projects for prototyping apps for mobile devices. Last two posts were for Windows Phone & iPhone 6.

Pull this and various platform template SketchFlow projects from GitHub.

This post introduces Android Lollipop template project for SketchFlow. For this first Android template I chose LG G3 phone skeleton as base and added Lollipop home screen for more in-time feel in prototype. As and when I get time I will add more Android devices which can be easily swapped in the prototype in seconds.

For a quick demo of Android Lollipop prototype template project, have a look at this video:

Some screenshots of the project in action:

Talk About Your App

Sharp Snippets

As an app developer you are supposed to reach out to your prospective users as much as you can to let them know about your app. Social networks – FB, Twitter, Reddit, etc. are some great tools to spread the word. I also think creating a small video about your app and publishing it to YouTube is an effective way to let your users quickly get to know about your app. These are some fantastic posts to talk more about how to promote your apps:
Making A Love Connection? Build Relationships To Promote Your Apps
The Simplest Things People Don’t Do To Market Their Apps (But should)

In this post I will share some points about creating video.

The simplest and very effective way of creating a video is capture the physical phone screen while you are using it. That’s it. You can upload it as it is with your…

View original post 621 more words

App Mock Up

Sharp Snippets

You are toying with an idea of creating a new app. If you are not replicating functionality of some other app, you would go through the process of visualizing your idea in the form of app UI. You don’t want to jump into code at this time but want to feel how information in the app will be placed and how it will look inside the screen boundaries. This process is a pre-cursor to UX development or full-fledged wire-frame creation. This process of visualizing the idea takes some time before you are confident about how you want to take your app forward and jump into some sort of coding. Paper+pen or whiteboard+marker are good way to work through fluid ideas and layout information. This is not the phase when you are working on UX or designing UI, but just laying out ideas in rough screens. I personally like drawing and…

View original post 465 more words

C# | .NET : Smart Duration Class

[Originally posted on 11 October 13]

Sometimes you need to have start and end dates, validate whether these dates define valid duration, or determine overlapping duration/timespan in two given duration(s)? I wrote an MVVM ready, equitable, duration class which does all the above and a little more. :-). I call this class TimeDuration. Let’s go through the code of the class.

TimeDuration implements two interfaces,  IEquatable and INotifyPropertyChanged. In later parts we will see the implementation of methods for IEquatable, let’s see INotifyPropertyChanged implementation first.  It has System.ComponentModel and a PropertyChangedEventHandler type public event PropertyChanged. It has a private method onPropertyChanged with a return type void. The complete INotifyPropertyChanged implementation looks like this:

using System;
using System.ComponentModel;

namespace Demo.DateExtentions
{
    public class TimeDuration : IEquatable, INotifyPropertyChanged
    {
        public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;
        private void onPropertyChanged(string name)
        {
            if (PropertyChanged != null)
            {
                PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(name));
            }
        }
    }
}

The class encapsulate two basic information elements – start time and end time. To expose this information class has two public DateTime type properties; Start and End. To notify views when the basic information changes in VM the class calls onPropertyChanged method from inside settters of both these properties. The implementation code looks like this:

        DateTime start;
        DateTime end;
        public DateTime Start
        {
            get { return start; }
            set
            {
                if (start != value)
                {
                    start = value;
                    onPropertyChanged("Start");
                }
            }
        }
        public DateTime End
        {
            get { return end; }
            set
            {
                if (end != value)
                {
                    end = value;
                    onPropertyChanged("End");
                }
            }
        }

The class initializes DateTime structured in the constructor so that object based on this class is ready for use on initialization. Constructor looks like so:

        public TimeDuration()
        {
            start = new DateTime();
            end = new DateTime();
        }

(Fields could have been initialized at the time of defining the field and not have the constructor at all.)
Duration represents a time span, so TimeDuration class has a TimeSpan type public property named Duration. This property returns the difference of start and end times. Code is like this:

        public TimeSpan Duration { get { return end - start; } }

This part makes the class a smart duration class. TimeDuration is capable of telling intersecting duration/timespan between two given durations. Following figure illustrates intersecting durations:

In the figure above AB, CD, EF, and GH represent durations. Class returns information regarding CB in the context of AB and CD, where starting part of CD overlaps with end part of AB. The method returns overlap duration if one duration completely falls inside of another duration, as in AB and EF, where EF completely lies inside AB. The third scenario is where tail part of one duration overlaps with head part of another duration as in AB and GH where overlap is occurring at AH. Following is the code to return appropriate type, TimeSpan or TimeDuration, after checking the intersection.

        public TimeSpan IntersectingSpan(TimeDuration other)
        {
            return getIntersection(other).Duration;
        }
        public TimeDuration IntersectingDuration(TimeDuration other)
        {
            return getIntersection(other);
        }
        private TimeDuration getIntersection(TimeDuration other)
        {
            if (this.Equals(other)) return this;
            DateTime iStart = this.Start < other.Start ? other.Start : this.Start;
            DateTime iEnd = this.End < other.End ? this.End : other.End;
            return iStart < iEnd ? new TimeDuration(iStart, iEnd) : new TimeDuration();
        }

IEquatable interface implementation:

        public bool Equals(TimeDuration compareWith)
        {
            return CompareWith.Start == this.Start && CompareWith.End == this.End;
        }
        public override int GetHashCode()
        {
            return _start.GetHashCode() ^ _end.GetHashCode();
        }

The entire SmartDuration class:

/*
 * Disclaimer
 * Unless otherwise noted, code snippets in this repository are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
 * Please do not forget to credit if you choose to use code in any which way.  You can credit in any way you please as below:
        By Sanjay (https://sharpsnippets.wordpress.com/)
        By Sanjay (http://www.twitter.com/SanjayAtPilcrow)
 * Blog post about following code: http://wp.me/p2iWZr-4T
 * General Notes
 *      - This is working code, but not production code.
 *      - Code follows universal C# code convention but might not follow your company's internal convention.
 *      - Code is more of POC and thus does not have full exception handling and parameter checking.
 *      - If you choose to use the code in production, do re-code to make it production ready as per your org's engineering policy.
*/
using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace POCs.Sanjay.SharpSnippets.Dates
{
    public class TimeDuration : IEquatable, INotifyPropertyChanged
    {
        DateTime start;
        DateTime end;
        public DateTime Start
        {
            get { return start; }
            set
            {
                if (start != value)
                {
                    start = value;
                    onPropertyChanged("Start");
                }
            }
        }
        public DateTime End
        {
            get { return end; }
            set
            {
                if (end != value)
                {
                    end = value;
                    onPropertyChanged("End");
                }
            }
        }
        public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;
        public TimeDuration()
        {
            start = new DateTime();
            end = new DateTime();
        }
        public TimeDuration(DateTime start, DateTime end)
        {
            start = start;
            end = end;
        }
        public bool IsValidDuration
        {
            get { return _start <= _end; }
        }
        public TimeSpan Duration { get { return end - start; } }
        public TimeSpan IntersectingSpan(TimeDuration other)
        {
            return getIntersection(other).Duration;
        }
        public TimeDuration IntersectingDuration(TimeDuration other)
        {
            return getIntersection(other);
        }
        private TimeDuration getIntersection(TimeDuration other)
        {
            if (this.Equals(other)) return this;
            DateTime iStart = this.Start < other.Start ? other.Start : this.Start;
            DateTime iEnd = this.End < other.End ? this.End : other.End;
            return iStart < iEnd ? new TimeDuration(iStart, iEnd) : new TimeDuration();
        }

        #region Equatable
        public bool Equals(TimeDuration compareWith)
        {
            return CompareWith.Start == this.Start && CompareWith.End == this.End;
        }
        public override int GetHashCode()
        {
            return _start.GetHashCode() ^ _end.GetHashCode();
        }
        #endregion //Equatable

        #region notify property changed
        private void onPropertyChanged(string name)
        {
            if (PropertyChanged != null)
            {
                PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(name));
            }
        }
        #endregion

    }
}

Find code on my GitHub repository.

 

iPhone 6 Project For App Prototyping in Microsoft SketchFlow

I have updated Microsoft Blend SketchFlow project for latest iPhone 6 frame. Download projects from GitHub. As earlier the project has built in iPhone 6 frame, animated keyboard image, iPhone 6 home screen, and clickable home button.

My earlier posts have detailed information about other Sketchflow projects and video tutorial of how to use them.

SketchFlow is a powerful prototyping tool. In last post I shared Windows Phone SketchFlow template project. Here I am sharing iPhone skeleton project for SketchFlow. Both these projects are similar in functionality with different phone frames. Android projects are on their way. Read more…

Cortana in Microsoft Office 16 and in Smartwatch (Vine Videos)

“Cortana in Office” Vine videos are below in the post.

I heard some new features are coming to Office 16. One of them will supposedly be some assistant similar to Clippy. I suggest, let’s not bother Clippy any more, just say – “Cortana, will you assist Office users on Windows 9”. She gladly will. After all, Cortana is a Personal Digital Assistant. Following are some scenarios I envisioned with MS Office:

• “Cortana, create a table with 5 rows and 10 columns”.
• “Cortana, in cell A5, find the average of values in cells A1 to A4.
• “Cortana, find a 200 word excerpt from Shakespeare’s Macbeth and insert in the document.”

So I virtually (yes) put Cortana in Office 16 in these Vine videos (feels real with sound, so enable sound):

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And here is Cortana helping with Formula. (enable sound, disable the first one :D)

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How about Cortana reminding on a smartwatch!? (And if you are interested this is my smart timekeeping app for your Windows Phone, free and no adverts)

I like Cortana. If you do too, you might like my other futuristic Cortana integration fact-ions.

Cortana, find me the nearest top-rated coffee shop?

App Marketing: Perspective Marketing Image Template (PSD)

Recently I created an XCF template for app marketing and wrote a post about how to use it.

Nokia Lumia 1520 is a gorgeous phone. So is your Windows Phone app’s hub in panorama. And you do know that a well developed app is just the half way. Getting the app to its audience is the second half. I created this layered GIMP image to easily sandwich a panorama hub between the layers and showcase your app with your own shining colors. You need to do following to create your app’s panorama with this template: Read more…

Some people wanted the template in PSD format. So, here you are.

Hope you find it useful.

ASO Tool: Cover Your Keywords

Download KeywordsSearch.xlsx from GitHub.

ASO stands for App Store Optimization (like SEO; Search Engine Optimization). Know more here. To improve the chances of search engines or app stores (Windows Phone Store, Google Play, iTunes – Apple iPhone and iPAD Store) finding your app, your app needs a good description (apart from the keywords provided by the store) which includes as many related words. To achieve this, you would typically first decide your app related keywords and use them in app description. This is easier said than done. To help, I created this small tool in Microsoft Excel, which you can use to list down the keywords with value of importance, type description, and see the coverage of keywords you have used in your description. Download KeywordsSearch.xlsx from GitHub.

How to use?

1. Decide keywords and type them according to their value in the respective columns. High value keywords are those which are a must for app’s discoverability. Medium value keywords are important and low value ones are good to have.
2. Type app’s description in this cell. Try to include as many keywords as possible in your text. As and when you want to see which of the keywords you have used in your description, either exit out of the cell by pressing Tab or press ctrl + Enter. You will notice that the words you have used in the text have now green background, and those which are still not used remain with red background. Keep typing and try to turn as many words as possible, green.
3. The coverage section will show what percent of High, Medium, and Low value keywords you have used in the text you have typed.
4. Legend section talks about meaning of color and formatting of text in keyword list.