Ever find yourself getting emailed tasks and then noticing they get lost too easily in the daily pile of emails? Generally it doesn’t happen to the really important ones, or those that are tracked by some other task/project tracking mechanism. To avoid permanently feeling scatterbrained, I started trying to use the Tasks section of Outlook 2007 to track such otherwise un-tracked items on my To-Do list. I liked the categorization, and also the summary list that showed up next to my email reading pane. But recently I found a feature that makes it invaluable – Drag and Drop tasks!

Congratulations to the Axosoft team for the release of OnTime 2009 9.1 and especially for the IPhone client app on the Apple ITunes Store that was released few hours ago!

I downloaded the app from the App Store and it installed in seconds.  Running for the first time, I was presented with the set up screen where I had to specify the URL of where the WEB server installation for OnTime for us here at Falafel Software was installed.  I found really quickly that the server required SSL to use the Client from IPhone, which we do not require for our Web installation.

Spending less than a minute in the HELP of OnTime 9.1 directed me to the Web.Config file of the Web installation where the SSL feature for IPhone is turned on by default.  Change that line to false as shown below in your Web.Config file and you will be ready to go.

<add key="RequireIPhoneSSL" value="false" />

But to be secure I encourage everyone to run this IPhone app over SSL for security as passing username and passwords over the wire can be very easily sniffed without SSL.  It cost less than $30 per year and will take minutes to install the certificate on the server for this to work.

Congrats again Hamid and Team at Axosoft!

Lino Tadros (CEO) and John Waters (CTO) had the pleasure of presenting the new release of ActiveFocus 2008 Q3 this week in Denver Colorado at the PMI Conference.  The product received rave reviews for its elegance, ease of use and speed.  Stay tuned for the release of the product to the public in the next week.

I am very proud to announce that our CTO, John Waters was nominated for the Kerzner International Project Manager of the year Award.

The purpose of the Kerzner International Project Manager of the Year™ Award is to recognize a project manager who has exemplified superior performance and outstanding project management methods, skills, and techniques, and their important contributions in business, industry, government community or not-for-profit environments. The award, established in 2006 by IIL, is named in honor of Dr. Harold Kerzner, Professor of Systems Management at Baldwin-Wallace College. He is a globally recognized expert on project management, total quality management, and strategic planning and the author of the best-selling books about project management.

John has been an incredible asset to Falafel during the last 5 years and his leadership and Project Management ability have pushed the company to new heights and still growing.

Congratulations! John for the nomination and best of luck.  I don't know anyone more deserving of this award!

With projects, as with most other things in life, only one thing is certain, and that is change. This blog talks about how to cope with change using tools like Falafel Software's ActiveFocus.

Saw this article, The Myth of the Interchangeable Programmer. It runs along the lines of the famous Mythical Man Month book by Fred Books, this time applied to off shoring.

Bottom line is that you may find that one developer may be doing 60% of the work of the team, or three developers 80%, and the more people you add to the team, the more you slow down the people who are actually getting something done. The author thinks that from his own experience, a team of eight is the max. I agree. (obviously, for huge projects, you need several teams, but he elaborates on that too).

It is funny, because a client just told me our rate for a senior WPF engineer was way out of their range, and they were looking to outsource it off shore...good luck to them! This is difficult, leading edge technology, and the kind of area where one good senior architect can do something in a week that could take a team of less experienced people months to do.