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Commercial Software Development – my presentation for DDD8 now available for download

Thanks to everyone who voted me onto the DDD8 agenda. It’s always an honour to have a topic voted into a conference by an audience of fellow developers, especially when it is a non technical topic such as this.

I hope those who came enjoyed the session had a good time, and for them or those who were on one of the other tracks, or who couldn’t squeeze in; I’ve uploaded the presentation for you to download.  I created a more simple, and smaller, PowerPoint without all the fancy animations and video clips, which is available as a compressed ZIP file,

  http://www.tigernews.co.uk/blog-twickers/ddd8/commercialsoftwaredev.zip

I also printed the presentation with speaker notes (which contain most of the information I was talking about) using PDFCreator, which is available as an Adobe Acrobat PDF here,

  http://www.tigernews.co.uk/blog-twickers/ddd8/commercialsoftwaredev.pdf

Yet again, hats off to the DDD organisers for putting on a cracking event and surviving the speaker attrition that occurred at such late notice.  Thank you to SQLBits for sponsoring the free buses from Reading station, Microsoft and their team for providing a great venue and the excellent food (those breakfast rolls guys are a truly wonderful welcome).

Most importantly, thank you to all the attendees who spent a day of their own time coming to Reading, especially those who travel from all around the UK to be here.  Without the input from the community and the enthusiasm of the community, DDD would be JAC, Just Another Conference, and we wouldn’t want that would we?
 

UPDATE 2

The guys at DDD have been super quick at turning round the video of my presentation so if you didn't make the presentation and want to see me in action you can get it here,  http://vimeo.com/9216563

UPDATE 1

Forgive me for forgetting the exact titles of these books during the session, but as promised, here's a list of some books that touch on the software development process and general management that I have found useful in the past;

  Don't Just Roll The Dice, Neil Davidson - a free eBook from one of the founders of RedGate on how to price software

  Software Runaways (Lessons Learned from Massive Software Project Failures, Robert L Glass - the title says it all!

  The Mythical Man-month (Essays on Software Engineering), Frederick P. Brooks, Jr - managing software projects

  The Inmates Are Running the Asylum, Alan Cooper - a classic on software UX design, but check out chapter 3, 'Wasting Money'

 

Print | posted on Saturday, January 30, 2010 11:08 AM

Comments on this post

# re: Commercial Software Development – my presentation for DDD8 now available for download

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Hi Liam,

Just want to thank you for the talk you gave on the Saturday at #ddd8. It was extremely refreshing to see a talk with prime examples from real life environments.

Having just started by own small business and trying to be as entrepreneurial, you definitely gave me something to aspire to; Sharing my knowledge with others so they can learn from my experiences.

So, thanks! It was really great and being from such a young developer POV - you really gave me something to aim for.
Left by Kai Chan Vong on Jan 30, 2010 10:34 PM

# re: Commercial Software Development – my presentation for DDD8 now available for download

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Hi Liam,

Thanks again for the talk at DDD8, I'm almost in the same situation as you except I'm not self employed. See my SO question for more info http://stackoverflow.com/questions/43587/tips-for-a-lone-developer-not-a-lonely-developer.

I just wanted to ask how you manage with having to wear so many hats and work on so many different tasks?

Even if you cut-down the support calls, how do you cope with writing code 1 minute, preparing a quote/presentation the next and then answering the phone the one after?

Do you have any tips, is it a time-management thing or something else?

Cheers
Left by Matt Warren on Jan 31, 2010 10:16 PM

# re: Commercial Software Development – my presentation for DDD8 now available for download

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It was an excellent session. I can honestly say it was the only session where the waves of tiredness from the previous nights' partying were kept completely at bay. I stayed awake eagerly taking in all the information throughout. :)
Left by Colin Angus Mackay on Feb 01, 2010 4:40 AM

# re: Commercial Software Development – my presentation for DDD8 now available for download

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Colin,

And I thought you stayed awake for different reasons; firstly Ben Nunney was there to elbow you in the ribs if you started snoring, and secondly I clearly indicated early on that I'd have you thrown out of the presentation if you fell asleep on me.

Glad the real reason was that you actually enjoyed the content ;-)

Let's hope it gets voted in for DDD Scotland, and if anyone wants to help in that endeavour you can vote right here,

http://www.developerdeveloperdeveloper.com/scotland2010/Users/VoteForSessions.aspx
Left by Liam Westley on Feb 01, 2010 8:53 AM

# re: Commercial Software Development – my presentation for DDD8 now available for download

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Matt,

I wasn't ignoring your question about time management, I just wanted to blog a comprehensive guide to getting Trac up and running on Windows before I came out with the rather glib answer; Trac.

Of course, time management can be more complicated than a single Trac installation when you have multiple clients.

I use separate Trac installations for each client that provide an overview of planned work, but these are completely separate so there is no all clients 'summary' view available.

So if I have multiple projects delivering at the same time, I usually resort to a simple Excel spreadsheet. I create cells for days of the week over the next month or two, and map my Trac deadlines and workloads into the cells and use the 'what if' ability of Excel to juggle priorities between clients, the family, cooking and the garden.

Gets trickier in summer and autumn, as at that point I'd much rather be cooking an apple and blackberry pie to enjoy in the garden with the kids.

Hope that helps,

Thanks

Liam
Left by Liam Westley on Feb 08, 2010 1:59 AM

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