QuickTip: Working with Microsoft Project (.mpp) files on Ubuntu

Recently I had to work with a Microsoft Project Plan (.mpp) that was sent across by one of our partner vendors for communicating their plan. I hunted a bit for the best way to open and review this mpp file on my Ubuntu 8.04. Then I found OpenProj.

It can import and show mpp files pretty easily and can export them in M$ project 2003 XML format. I have not tried reading the exporting file on a M$ windoze system, but I guess it should be fine.

Base64 : Converting Binary Data to ASCII Text

The origin of Base64 may have many stories like it was invented to transfer 8-bit data over systems which could not handle 8 bits.

The uses of Base64 have prevalently been in transferring images as email attachments, transferring non English characters over the internet, converting Binary data to text etc.

My particular need for Base64 came into picture when we were processing a SOAP response. The SOAP response was processed and put into a Map. Now we were required to store this Map into a database CLOB field. Had it been a BLOB I would have pushed the Map in. This is when my friend and fellow colleague Pankaj Misra suggested Base64 encoding to me.

What is Base64?

People – Building a Great Software Company – Part II

In part-I we looked at the essential components of building a great software company. In this part we would look at the people factor, which in my view is the most important factor for success.

One important quote from the Good to Great [G2G] book is that “Executives who ignited transformations from good to great did not first figure out where to drive the bus, then get the people to take it there. Instead, they first got the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off) and then figured out where to drive it.”

This shows the importance people have in any company and more so in the software industry because it is a people driven. People drive the ideas, innovations, processes etc etc.

So what kind of people should a software company look at and what should be the process?

Building a Great Software Company – Part I

Over the past couple of weeks I have been reading “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t. Well, it is an amazing book and Jim Collins does a lot of research to find out what makes a company go fro good to great. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to take his company from one level to the next or to potential job seekers who are looking for their kind of employers.

This book got me thinking into the direction on what would it take to make a software company really great. My thoughts are specifically targeted towards the small and medium software companies because there I see a lot of scope for putting the thoughts into action.

Is This “The Way” to Spread Agile Awareness?

Last weekend I attended the Poppendieck’s workshop in Delhi organized by ASCI. Well, to tell the truth, I came back grossly disappointed. Oops, don’t get me wrong, the workshop was good, hmm, it could have been better. But I was disappointed not because of the workshop but because of the state of Agile Awareness and the way we are trying to bring about awareness.

Someone would argue that we are doing workshops, conferences, hands on sessions about Agile then isn’t this “The Way’ to spread awareness? My answer is not quite! So is there another way, may be! but this not the way.

Question > But why isn’t this the right way, we have luminaries from the world coming over and talk to us, we have enthusiastic learners, good questions are asked, good value streams are created, people network, enjoy the lunch/tea/coffee and go back content with what they have heard.

Better Software: Setting Up the Development Environment

This is first, in series of posts on how to write Better Software. The series would try to touch upon stories which would result in development of better software.

This post is about having a minimalistic development environment setup to do effective software development. As you can see in the picture we need 5 entities to begin with.