SaaS 2.0

Software-as-a-Service provides answer to get speed on deployment, usability and payment process. It increase quality of service allowing user to pay as they go. But it is limited in other respects; it would not be able to deliver on the business process which the company really needed, it couldn’t be easily integrated with the existent infra-structure, it hasn’t liability on performance and security which enterprise customers demanded and finally they only have reporting system and not robots analytics to drive those systems.

Adam May claims that Oracle CRM products transcends Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) 1.0 to SaaS 2.0 in this video.

Amazon Web Services

Other day I was hiring a dedicated server. In doubt about whether choose between windows 2003 standard or web server. I’ve chosen the standard one. It has message queuing system and I needed it so much. Then stumbled at Amazon Web Services – Then I felt myself stupid. They provide Queuing services and worse – at very cheap price.

That comes as lesson… nowadays we can just architect solutions without take into account the new approach of services in the cloud. Amazon Web Services is just a sample which provides a lots of interesting services like Storage (very cheap), scalable mysql server (not that cheap but considerable if you’re really doing business) and many others.

I know there are other service providers which in my point view still needs clarify what services they provide and what cost is going to be at end. I’ve seen some services about cloud computing which always appear to be more expensive than it should. They also miss details which makes me unable to calculate exactly what I going to need.
How I would know how much processor cycles my application is going to need in month? Still not comfortable these days, hope it get better!

Automated Software Design Research Group

Lean software development demands too much automation. Of course, the idea is to make more with less and have higher quality until delivering software functionalities most important for the business. This path is hard, really hard. You’ll probably have to rethink all your gained knowledge and start developed a solid wisdom through research. Constantly looking new ways to do what you do today and improve what you think you need not.

Not every IT company will really benefit of Lean Thinking. Such style demand too much research and intellectual work which results will came along the way. You need to keep traces so to really understand the intangible results. This is expense, and you may give up in the very beginning.

I believe that the worse thing still the daily operation activities along low budget and unprepared managerial staff. People are too involved with day-to-day problems and stop everything aiming rethink their work in such advanced way can be a laborious process that can simply never happen!

Any way… I would like to present the Automated Software Design Research Group. This group explores new ways to develop software. They have a lot of academic papers (Dissertations and Theses) which can simply be applied to your life. Even if you not in Lean or Agile environment.
See ya..

Agile TechDay 2009

I was happy to be among those nice experienced agile guys! That was the second event in Rio about Agile methodologies. These one was special not just because I was invited to give a talk at the end but because the people who talked was really involved with scrum. For my surprise, rather than just agile ways in IT the principals of the Accenda Group gave a talk about Scrum in the marketing industry. They are trying to incise scrum at heart of marketing industry by doing what they call Agile Marketing. Nice approach but also a lot of people to convince!
So.. we are in InfoQ, have some pics.

Toyota side effects

On Jun 18, 2008, Reuters published an article exposing the Toyota’s human rights abuses and aggression to the worker’s rights.
The main subjects are:

• Trafficking of foreign guest workers, mostly from China and Vietnam to Japan
• Assembly line workers in Japan are low-wage temps who have few rights and earn less than 60% of what full time workers do

The auto industry has affected us so far through the Lean Thinking, Scrum and so on. In software industry, many ones are talking about Lean Thinking and how amazing we can be if we learn from other industries.

We are pround of Toyota’s managerial style which facilitate communication, avoid time-waste, spread knowledge across multifunctional teams and rush things to be completed. Now, our software projects has a good style to actually produce good results to our customers. Thus I hope the Toyota style side effect, exposed by Reuters doesn’t happen to us too. I’m really willing for the market get mature to see how this new organising will set.

u-hu-hu-hu-hu….

Read more: Toyota Linked to Human Trafficking and Sweatshop Abuses