Epic Mendix 4 Release

May the 4th be with you came and went, and though it seemed to be a fitting date for the announcement of the next version of the Mendix modeler, it came today none the sooner and promises to be yet another smashing release.

We were provisioned with a courtesy copy of the beta, and it is absolutely packed with features. It hallmarks an array of productivity enhancements and new technology, including the ability to develop mobile-based web forms. Its one of the major highlights of the new release but in no way overshadows the countless other tweaks, enhancements and new features included with the new modeler. We find the new additions very welcome and timely, since we’re already benefitting by it in a big way.

It’s epic feature discovery and has the same kind of excitement that accompanies a new release of a Star Wars episode; for those who are fans. We won’t be covering everything in a single post, its too much to cover, so we will attempt to uncover some, if not all of the new features, in the weeks to come.

Grab some popcorn and enjoy our little fan “film introduction” we made for the Beta and go grab the Modeler and see what you can find out!

Mendix Spring 2012 Release

Today was a lot like when the Apple Online Store is down and the famous yellow “We’ll be Back Soon” sticky gets some web-time. It was a morning of click refresh until at last the site was back up.

After snapping out of the hypnotic effect that the new Mendix website had on us, we managed to log in and notice a huge overhaul of pretty much everything. The Public Facing website’s change is welcome. It looks inspiring and takes the game up a notch. Its not just a pretty face though; there are a lot of substantial changes inside too.

It boasts a unified platform, integrating Sprintr™ and the cloud portal into 1 unified experience. The forum still seems to be a separate entity though, but all the other portal bits and pieces are being fused together. The first thing that caught my eye after I logged in was an IM chat widget in the right bottom corner of the portal and an improvement to the layout. It feels more like an app now and looking for “the old stuff” is feels a bit like finding easter eggs.

Most importantly is the new platform. Mendix 4 has a lot of new offerings which we’ll introduce a bit later today.

Here are some of the highlights in the new release:

• Mobile for the Enterprise
• One Platform for All
• Social Productivity
• Enterprise Integration
• App Mash-up
• Improved Performance
• Non-persisting entities
• Overall enhancements, tweaks and improvements

Click here to view the official release notes.

Spring is in the air (if you live in the northern hemisphere anyway)

This morning I tried to acquire a Mendix license for a project we are working on, when curiously enough the website had this message displayed. I wonder whats in store?

I know I’ll be refreshing my page the whole day, or I’ll just use that monitoring tool I wrote in Mendix to email me when they go live, or see if Mendix emails an announcement before that.

Project Management and the development environment

There is exactly one universal rule about all development environments, that they are all different.

In my previous incarnations I worked in a medium sized development group split into smaller teams per project, often consisiting of one developer and one analyst/tester. Working as the development management team, we investigated what methodologies we could use within the environment. After examinations of project management, agile methodologies, various other literature and the preferred management, team personalities and development styles, we ended on a project orientated, agile method. This was obviously not a formal style and will start many hearts palpatating with the risks and inconsistencies this fr-agile approach takes, but lets not go into the details of this now.

This approach worked with its own hiccups, projects were delivered and of course there was always debate on improving delivery, issues. But what this did lead me to was the world of PMI project management.

From that starting point I then got to experience some more tantalizing environments ranging from very formal waterfall to very formal scrum environments to single man teams and throw numbers at the problem development environments. And slowly my framework, as everyones does, grew.

Now where is this all going? Well, debate within an environment is always good particularly when people are open to it. One thing I have always found when discussing development methodologies though is much fear and loathing of project plans, the dreaded GANTT chart and in turn project management. Furthermore for development teams it brings back often scarring memories of waterfall.

Personally I believe the first plan of any project should be burnt just after it has been saved and only looked at when reminiscing about the past. Although not important to the actual workers involved in a project, it is a valuable tool in visualising the work which is to be performed across a company not just a single development team and in communication with the management and greater business unit.

Now this is where the biggest dangers come in, in many cases an initial single project plan is presented to management and presented as a series of static milestones, often as a static pdf. Which is ofcourse how the management interprets it and this then gets filtered through the entire company and down to the development and other teams to implement with disregard to changes. Now this is where real project management is meant to step in. A project plan, schedule or GANTT chart should be an evolving document as scope, time, cost and risks change, and should never be provided without the details of the variance which can be expected. But importantly it is the project managers responsibility to ensure the management team understands the pan and variances.

Now in the scrum environment it is very important to know where the responsiblities of the project manager fit in with the product owner, scrum master and development team. In many environments the project manager often becomes the scrum master, however, this causes a major conflict of interest as the project manager is on the line to deliver the project and can start manipulating the team based on pressure of the project to deliver rather than faciliate delivery. The project manager as a product owner doesn’t work  as the project manager cares only for the product in the terms of the project. As such any other projects or company requirements will be removed for the sake of the project. This is often no problem in a new product or single project product, but where the product services a larger company audience this will cause conflicts of interest.

This then leads many down the lines of saying a project manager doesn’t belong at all. However, these projects are not oten limited to a single product development but include multiple team coordination, budgetting, preparing a physical operations environment (call centres, marketting, retailing) as well as other legal and reporting requirements. These responsiblities are very different to the product owner as they are of limited time and scope.

With the above concerns I would say that a project manager still belongs in the environment, working very closely with the product manager and only interacting with the development team with the product managers involvement. This allows the product manager to maintain their product and team while the project manager can do their job on the project. Of course this all relies on the close relationship of these two people.

And with that here are some interesting articles for food for thought:

http://www.goodproductmanager.com/2007/09/24/product-management-vs-project-management/