And...I'm Safe.

It's good to know that according to the big analyst firms, the key areas I'm focused on are going to continue to be the top spending areas in this down-turned economy.

InfoWorld reported in an article here, about the findings of several big IT analysis firms what are supposed to be the top 5 spending priorities for the next year. Not surprisingly, cloud computing and business optimization were up there.

When the economy isn't doing well, I often get the question about how my business is doing. The great thing about helping companies do business better is that tough times are great motivator in the way that years of plenty are not. Simply put, if they are making lots of money anyway, it's hard to get people to focus on the costs involved. When they aren't making money so easily, all of sudden they are very interested in what things cost.

You can apply this to your own life too. Are you in feast or famine? Should you be making hay while the sun shines, or playing frisbee? Having billable work is no excuse to put off training, writing, and exercise.

Software Is Like Wine

There is a myth and mystery about software development. It started back with War Games (remember Matthew Broderick, I love that guy!) and continued in the tradition of Hackers and so forth. The engineer creating software is painted as the loner, working in isolation, eating Hot Pockets and drinking Mountain Dew. And sometimes, more and more infrequently, there is an element of truth to this portrait of my brothers.

In reality, the best engineer is a very Social Activity. It requires participation and engagement from many sources, sharing information like wine at a fancy dinner party. Like good wine, there are many steps in the process to produce it, and it absorbs elements of the environment in which it exists.

As I find myself interviewing, training, and growing engineers, I often find myself struggling more for the environment they are growing in, then for the performance of the individual grapes. This tends to not always be obvious to everyone and appreciate how counter-intuitive it can be. We see engineers as isolated and independent. We even call them Individual Contributors. But in reality, they are much like the grapes going into the wine. Sure, they each are unique and add to the end product, but environment has much to do with how they harmonize to create something palatable.

To stretch this analogy even further, consider one step in making this wine (our software product).

When you make wine, you have to squish the grapes. Stomping the grapes can be done in many ways, but I think it could be argued that the most intriguing (read: fun!) way is roll up your pants, wash your feet, hop into the vat and jump around. In many social systems, getting people engaged in the activity of work by releasing the rules of decorum is considered not only an acceptable practice but encouraged. Stomping out the grapes is no exception.

Coming up, I'll explain how a good software methodology is like Stomping Grapes.