Communication Problems

A colleague forwarded me the following article from FoxNews.com: FBI Urged to Scrap Computer Overhaul. As I read the article I was reminded of similar, albeit smaller in scale, situations that I've seen over the years. Although I'm not personally familiar with this project, I'll bet the problems result from poor communication. Issues like this happen when the vendor doesn't take the time to really understand what the customer is saying about requirements, but makes assumptions based on perceptions. Likewise, the customer doesn't take the time to understand what the vendor is saying about its system's capabilities. Both sides lose.

One of the missions for those of us in the Information Technology field is to remind our users of their responsibility to clearly communicate their needs. We have to help them do that. We also have to press the vendors about key parts of their solutions (customizations or otherwise) and take the time to learn what the systems really do before we implement them. One way to do this is to attend a training class prior to selecting a product. A training class is far more useful than a sales pitch.

Java Media Framework

I'm working with that Java Media Framework (JMF) this week. If I'm successful in building a streaming media server, I'll probably write an article on it. Or I may just provide the source code listing on this blog.

If you're reading this and have an interest in JMF, email me and let me know. Also, if there's a Java topic that you would like me to write about, let me know that too. I'm always looking for new topics. I'm developing an article now about network intrusion detection using Java.

IT Metrics

Like many, I'm looking for better IT metrics. Translation: I need a better way to communicate IT to my company. I'm playing with various financial ratios to see if they make sense as a measure of IT performance; ratios like ROA and IT asset turnover.

Expressing IT in financial ratio terms seems better to me than using some kind of IT productivity measurement. As you well know, IT productivity is a hard thing to measure. If you talk only in terms of requests handled, you leave out measures of complexity of task. If you talk in terms of hours worked, even if you slice the hours into separate tasks, you miss something. All to often, companies want to make IT into assembly line processes...something that just doesn't work.

Whatever. As I find measures that make sense, I'll let you know. You let me know if there are metrics you like to use to tell your story to your company

Thanks.

Upcoming Article on Creating Java Web Services

I've just completed an article on turning servlets into web services for the Borland Developer Network. Click here for a sneak peek at the code.

Java Confession

I have a confession to make about Java. As much as I like the language for its portability, features, etc., I hate Java Swing. I understand why Swing is the way it is. But, I don't have to like it. And I don't.

The problem is in order to maintain the "write once run anywhere" philosophy, Swing adds a layer of complexity not present in platform specific GUI development languages. I'm not saying I can't develop in Swing...I can and have on multiple platforms. I'm just saying I will do anything to avoid using it. Often I look for solutions that can be JSP/servlet based instead. While I think that Java is a cool feature rich language, I must confess that, at least to me, Swing is one of its least desirable features.