Grant Holliday

As a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) you get invited to the global summit held once a year in Seattle. It’s an invitation-only four-day event which allows you to connect with other MVPs and engage with the product teams directly. Since everything is covered under a Non-Disclosure-Agreement (NDA), we’re able to see upcoming products and plans for the future.

The 2008 summit is on 14-17 April at the Washington State Trade and Convention Center and Microsoft headquarters in Redmond.

In addition to the summit, I’m also spending a few days afterwards staying with ex-Aussie Chuck, hanging out with Stovell and checking out what Seattle has to offer.

Here’s a list of things that I would like to do while I’m over there:

• Check more of the Microsoft campus of course.
• Pike Place Market - Checkout the fruit ‘n veg and the Fish Market is supposed to be fun to watch.
• Have a beer or two at the Redhook Brewery
• Take a ferry/cruise somewhere - Bainbridge Island? Argosy Cruise?
• Kerry Park - Get a photo of Seattle with Mt. Rainer in the background.
• Capitol Hill / Broadway - Restaurants, Clubs & coffeehouses.
• Do Noah Coad’s walking tour - Space Needle, Experience Music Project, Monorail, Westlake Center Mall, Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, The Bay Pavilion, Pioneer Square & Seattle Underground Tour.
• Future of Flight Aviation Center & Boeing Tour and/or the Museum of Flight
• Hiram M. Chittenden Locks & the fish ladder where salmon pass between fresh and salt water.

That should keep me busy

As Eddie has pointed out, the organisation that I work for has been ‘forced’ to let a number of my contractor colleagues go. The writing has been on the wall for a couple of weeks due to typical budget bureaucracy and projects not being approved and funded as soon as we’d hoped. I’ve seen this happen at other departments before with similar results.

The whole IT area was summoned to a 9AM muster and told that each of us fall into three groups:

1. You’ve already been spoken to and it’s likely (but not guaranteed) that your contract will be renewed at the end of its term (mostly June 30th), or
2. You haven’t been spoken to and your contract will not be renewed at the end of its term, or
3. Your agency will be contacted shortly and your contract will be terminated 2 weeks from now.

I’m in group #2. This is how it seems to be playing out on the ground at the moment:

• Group #1 will be hedging their bets looking for new work and may leave anyway if they don’t get renewed in a timely manner - or a better offer comes up,
• Group #2 will be looking for new work and may leave early, and
• Group #3 will at least have a head-start on the jobs market.

Although, as a contractor there is always a risk that you may not get renewed (you should expect that), it’s most disrupting to those who had their contracts ended early.

The worst thing about all this is that the development team that I’ve been supporting was just starting to jell and kick some goals. Some of the process & quality improvement initiatives that have happened in the last 3 months are:

• A move to a “Branch by Feature” source structure to provide isolation between teams and bug fixes,
• Quality gates & testing requirements before integrating back into Main,
• Upgrade to Team Foundation Server 2008 for significant version control performance improvements,
• Two-way synchronisation between HP/Mercury Quality Center Defects & TFS Work Items,
• Implementation & customisation of the MSF CMMI process template,
• Continuous integration with automatic unit tests & deployment to development environment, and
• Better communication & relationships between Business Analysts, Developers, Testers, Infrastructure & Project Management.

Unfortunately this is a triple-whammy for the organisation. Not only will they lose valuable corporate knowledge but it will tarnish the great reputation they have built up over the years. So when/if the funding does come through:

1. They’ve lost all the people who know the work & the business,
2. They can’t get anybody to come back, because they’ve moved on, and
3. New people may be reluctant to join.

And then it takes time to ramp up productivity and momentum again, while business complains that IT isn’t delivering in a timely manner and the cycle continues.

So “good luck” to those who are looking for work and “stay strong” to those who are hanging around.

One of the things I’ve become quite attuned to lately is avoiding what I call “Unwinnable Arguments”. These are arguments where neither side will ever win and it’s best to just avoid them. The reason they are unwinnable is because the supporters of either side each have their own values and beliefs which are deeply rooted in their own upbringings.

• C# vs VB.NET
• DotNetNuke vs. SharePoint
• Web Applications vs. Windows Applications
• Agile Methodologies vs. Waterfall Methodologies
• Internet Explorer vs. Firefox vs. Opera vs. Safari vs. Lynx
• Open Source vs. Proprietary
• Linux vs. Windows
• Lock-Modify-Unlock vs. Copy-Modify-Merge (version control)

And they’re not just confined to the technology world either.

• Fords vs. Holdens (cars)
• My Religion vs. Your Religion
• Australian Liberal Party vs. Australian Labor Party
• Public Education vs. Private Education
• University Educated vs. Not-University Educated

Be warned: Unless you have an infinite amount of time on your hands - don’t get involved!