Keeping track of time

Posted on September 10, 2010 by Wes Johnson

Employees

As an employee most people don’t think that much about keeping track of their time.  If they get paid hourly, their boss keeps track of their time for them.  If they get paid on salary, they get paid a flat rate for all the work they do.  When they’re away from work the time flies by until they have to return to work.  Most people don’t really think about the total cost of their time.

Employee Work Related Time

  • workRelatedHours = commuteHours + hoursWorked
  • netWorkRelatedIncome = grossIncome – (taxes + monthlyCommutingExpenses)
  • workRelatedWages = netWorkRelatedIncome / workRelatedHours

How much is your work time worth?

Entrepreneurs

The entrepreneur is the boss.  The time they spend doing various activities reflects on their bottom line.  They have to balance their time between activities that generate revenue with activities that will produce or increase future revenue.  As an entrepreneur I need to understand how to capture my use of time and how to balance it more effectively.  To get started here are some questions that need to be answered.

How much time is spent?

  • Marketing the business?
  • Supporting existing clients?
  • Developing new clients?
  • Developing strategic alliances?
  • Working on future projects?
  • On each client (travel, on-site / off-site)?
  • Putting out preventable fires?
  • Planning for the future?
  • Evaluating the business plan?

What tools do you use or plan to use for tracking use of time?

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iPad Tool or Toy?

Posted on August 16, 2010 by Wes Johnson

In July 2010 I finally purchased an iPad 32GB+3G with the intent of developing applications on it.  At the time of purchase I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect.  I have heard many people describe it as a big iPhone or iPod Touch.  Others have described it as a toy and not a real computer.  During the time I have owned it, I have been doing field research.  I have been getting familiar with the user interface and user expectations for iPad applications.  After all, if you understand how your customers are using their iPads and the Applications they desire then you might be able to meet their needs.

Here’s why I think the iPad is a tool:

  • Event Scheduling via Calendar
  • Email – Stay connected while your mobile
  • Information – access to data via internet
  • Mobile library – yes, you can read books, but you can also read PDF files.
  • While mobile, you can stay in touch with electronic publications
  • Stay informed using the Video & Audio  Player (Educational Seminars, Conferences)
  • General Business Applications (Presentation, Word Processing, Spreadsheet, Video)
  • Vertical Business Applications (Customized or customizable for many specific businesses)

I have barely skimmed the surface of the many kinds of Applications available for the iPad.  Can the iPad be used for entertainment?  Yes it does and can provide hours of fun after business hours.  Does that make it a toy?  No it doesn’t.  I think it points out the versatility that the iPad has.

What do you think Tool or Toy?

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8 Steps to avoid feature creep

Posted on July 27, 2010 by Wes Johnson

Steps to avoid feature creep

  1. Create a list of features for the planned product version.
    • Some people call this a specification.
    • You know you can ship when the planned features are implemented and tested.
  2. Get product stakeholders approval on specified features before implementation begins.
    • The agreement on specified features helps everybody (developers, testers, sales, marketing, customers) know what the product is supposed to do when it’s done.
  3. Create a feature wish-list to collect suggested future features.
    • The key to avoiding feature creep is to prevent the features from sneaking into the existing product specification.

    4. Continue reading →

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CentOS an inexpensive alternative to RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux)

Posted on July 26, 2010 by Wes Johnson

If you need to practice on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution but don’t have the cash to play with an official Red Hat version, what are you going to do?  You’re going to look for an affordable (FREE) alternative solution.  The solution is CentOS, a distribution based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

CentOS stands for Community Enterprise Operating System.  To find a quick overview of CentOS, visit the wikipedia CentOS site.

The official CentOS website is http://www.centos.org. Continue reading →

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Barking up the wrong tree

Posted on July 9, 2010 by Wes Johnson

Sometimes we become so focused on the pursuit of a symptom of a problem that we don’t stop to ask if we are still focused on the real cause of the problem.  This happened to me recently.

During the iPhone development process you have a choice of debugging the iPhone App using the iPhone emulator or using the actual hardware.  The quickest way to test out your code is to build and debug using the emulator.

While developing an iPhone application for Podcast Stockton I used one of the iPhone Audio libraries. It never occurred to me that the emulator might not do everything the hardware does.  I was testing out the podcast playback and experienced some unacceptable behavior while using the emulator.  I spent the good part of an evening looking for the cause of the issue.  It wasn’t until after I had spent many looking over my code that I finally decided to do a sanity check.  I switched Xcode to debug using the hardware instead of the emulator;  that’s when I discovered I had been barking up the wrong tree.  The code that should have been working all along was working just fine.

When you run into an issue that should have been working, make sure to do a sanity check to see if it’s a symptom or a real issue.

In the future, when things seem a little off I plan to do a sanity check just to make sure I’m pursuing the cause and not the symptoms.

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