State of the profession

Dick M asks if we (Office developers) are a dying breed. At least I think he’s asking - he could be telling us our profession is wilting away. Whatever, I agree. Completely.

Office developer, Excel developer, business developer, these mean pretty much the same thing to me, its a person nearer the business than a traditional IS department dev. They probably use a range of tools/platforms, they mainly target desktop rather than server, Excel usually features as at least part of the interface (or calc engine), source data may be from a server database, but working data is likely to be in jet. Glue code may be VB6 or .net but most likely VBA. The best differentiators (from mainstream devs) are around business acumen rather than technical tool choice.

Anyway Dick mentions a few items, here are my thoughts:

Value for work - Bad and getting worse, its getting so only City institutions understand the value of Excel, which is bizarre considering their normal sheep like tendencies. ( I suppose they are flocking round each other).

Respect - Bad and getting worse, for years I was embarrassed to admit I did a lot of work in Excel, as ‘real devs don’t touch Excel - hobbyists only’. Then as Eusprig gathered momentum I got a bit more confident, but I think that quality/error movement has stalled a little now. So back to claiming to be a mainstream dev for me I reckon.

Continuity - Bad and getting worse, I used to coach client staff in what I was doing in Excel/Access/VBA etc. These days they turn their noses up, happy to pick up some SQL or C# but no Excel/VBA thank you. I just don’t see many people rushing into our technologies.

Conclusion - yeah we’re proper fooked. Unless MS are going to wake up to their most valuable asset - MS Office on an MS Windows desktop. By wake up I mean the hand in pocket wake up, not the cheap soundbite one thats been (pointlessly) running (well walking) for as long as I can remember.

I don’t think us devs will be the losers we’ll just move to techs where the opportunities are better. The real losers will be MS as customers move to other platforms that have an apparently better cost/benefit story, but only because they are unaware of much of the benefit of the MS Office platform. [Ignoring for the time being the cost/no benefit fubar known as the 2007 UI shuffle]

The other losers of course will be businesses far and wide that have to wait for their IS departments to implement their grossly over engineered, over priced, over due, big iron monsters, just in time to realise the business requirement has moved on.

The winners are of course the IS departments who gain control, power and loads of low pressure work. If you know you will release straight into retirement (rather than production) there are lots of unpleasant things you can forgo, like testing, and documentation for example.

Is this how you see things?

or are you seeing different trends?

How do you think things will pan out in 3-5 years?

Do you have an escape plan?

Please comment here or on Dicks post

cheers

Simon

I think they mean us

Guerilla IT

How to love your superusers!

The article is a bit more related to sys admin type stuff, and thinly veiled sales pitches, rather than deep and dirty Office dev. But I like the principle - instead of IS battling against the power users, support them and encourage them - same effort, much better outcome for everyone.

Of course, back in the real world there is the small matter of something called FEAR…

I have worked at the odd place that worked this way and supported and encouraged those users pushing the limits. But most places are some way off I reckon.

Anyone else worked somewhere where IS encouraged them, or are we all brow beaten into submission daily?

cheers

Simon

Slack

[Not the Yorkshire meaning!]

Dick over on DDOE has recently done a post on investment analysis. His basic premise being that ‘lean’ companies may make better preforming investments.

In his excellent book ‘Slack’, Tom DeMarco almost goes the opposite way.

TDMs view is that these lean companies that have stripped the middle management layer back to the bone have made a huge blunder. His view is that this much maligned middle tier is where all the creativity happens, where great new ways of working are invented, where new products or services are imagined. Having a little slack in the business gives people the space to create.

Its a compelling argument, and the book is well worth the couple of hours it takes to read.

I certainly think it holds true in SW dev (for me at least!) - when I’m under massive pressure I just do what I know works, when I have a bit of time I try and find a better way.

Do you think the middle management layer in orgs is/was important? or just a bunch of fat cats with mid level company cars (and cheap suits)?

And do you think that less pressure or more pressure results in the best quality work?

Have you read Slack? what did you think?

Cheers

Simon

Browser wars

Did the browser wars kill VB?

I’m only asking as years ago (say 1999) it was fine to build intranets using VB script on the client, because you could assume they would be using IE.

I don’t hear so much of that now, it used to be ‘VB everywhere’, now it seems to be Javascript most places and C# where possible.

I’m wondering if the reduction in love for the VB family coincided with IE haemorrhaging market share to Firefox? (Ff marketshare is almost 30% in Europe, and gaining, fast).

Maybe VB fell out of favour a bit before?

Or maybe you don’t think it has?

The most sincere form of flattery?

Years ago people used to claim Microsoft products were just cheap copies of other companies products.

But what goes around comes around, Now Microsoft is the one receiving the compliments.

I’m sure there is a good reason Google are shadowing Microsoft, producing pale reflections of their products but I can’t see it. (being a desktop fanboi goes a long way to explaining that I guess)

It reminds me of when my little sister used to copy everything I did (but badly) when we were young kids.

And I noticed the Sharepoint conference was sold out last week, its either on now or in a couple of weeks. I didn’t hear of the Office dev conf being sold out did you?

Maybe I should just sell out and join the Sharepoint consultant herd. mooo!

(I prefer the google docs deployment story though…)

cheers

simon

Suits v geeks

I think the suit/geek thing is inspired from stuff I have read on Joel On Software, but it might be from elsewhere. Also I’m talking trends here, no shooting for 100% stereotyping so if you know an exception, great, but what’s the most common?

Geeks is anyone who works with technology as a primary job role, so devs, sys admins, dbas etc.

Suits is pretty much everyone else, finance, legal, marketing (there is no Hawaiian shirt category)

Many organisations do away with a Chief Information Officer (CIO), or IT Director. Instead the IT/IS function reports up through the FD (Finance Director) (CFO). (geek reporting to board via a suit filter)

This leads to a few strategic issues, but from a power POV, who is likely to have the most sway, the finance underling (that the FD totally understands, has the same qualifications as etc etc) or the IS underling who talks about loads of stuff the FD doesn’t understand?

Its easy to say that tech companies should target the IS function, but actually large scale projects are likely to be better received if they are presented in a finance stylee. (IMO of course - no proof or owt)

I think this is one area where the suits have more power over the geeks, and I think the effect is the slow down of technology adoption until it is completely financially justified. I don’t see that as a bad thing.

The big downside of this structure is that the geeks get hammered any time there are cuts because they struggle to articulate what they do. Or at least the FD understands the value they add least, so shafts them the most.

I would love to claim those orgs without a CIO have an over reliance on spreadsheets, whereas those who recognise the strategic value of IT will manage their spreadsheet use more effectively. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least, but I have no proof. What do you think?

cheers

Simon

Linux to take over the world?

I recently read an interesting article here. It talks about recent market trends and how Linux is actually making significant headway.

Of course lots of people always rush to poor scorn on the Linux on the desktop stories. But recently some brand new things have happened.

The biggest thing is the arrival of systems from renown manufacturers with Linux preinstalled. That just did not happen 12 months ago. And now Dell are doing it, Asus are doing it, and Walmart too (’ll have to get down to Asda and see what they are up to).

Its hard to work out how much of the Vista negativity is just that so many people are chipping in, or if it really is that bad. I have never used it, and have no current plans to, so I can’t comment.

I’m looking forward to seeing how things pan out in the next 12 months, if a few more manufacturers release Linux systems things could really take off. And with Windows XP being retired (ie: no longer available for sale or pre-installed) in 6 months time (extended from Jan 2008 till June) Linux could get a major boost.

Add to that that OpenOffice seems to be investing more in VBA than Microsoft, and the incompatible UI in Office 2007 and its easy to imagine a future with more OpenOffice Calc on Linux and less MS Office on Vista.

And of course we haven’t even touched on the Apple phenomenon. (OpenOffice is the only office suite that runs on all three o/s’s).

My main t’internet machine is now a Linux box, anyone else actively using Linux (or a Mac)?

cheers

Simon

Licensing the crown jewels

I believe VBA plays a key role in keeping MS Office in enterprises, and I believe MS Office plays a key role in keeping Windows in enterprises.

Sure there are plenty of other factors, but these are important in my mind (could be biased by my experience in this area of course).

Stephane made a point in a comment that reminded me of an interesting snippet.

Microsoft used to licence VBA (the IDE, the run times etc) to anyone. As a vendor if you want to add VBA scripting to your app, all you need to do is expose the right bits in the right way and your customers can automate your product with VBA. Whilst this isn’t a 10 minute job, its a damn site easier than creating a scripting language from scratch and writing your own programming environment to host it.

Now they only licence VSTA, the .net based equivalent, VBA is no longer available to other vendors. (This change might have been a factor in the incorrect (/premature?) reporting of the demise of VBA)

I wonder if they have(/had) a restriction to prevent the use of VBA on products that compete with Office?

I know at least one open source spreadsheet project that was contemplating licensing VBA from Microsoft. I wonder what would have happened if they had done…

It makes me wonder how wise it is for Microsoft to be licensing what I would consider a key technology? I guess its ok if they have restrictions on the type of use, what do you think?

The fact that Proclarity, Autocad etc have VBA adds to VBA’s appeal as a language to learn I guess.

What do you think?

cheers

Simon

OpenOffice migration

I was chatting with a potential client (large, well known national chain) recently about a large migration project they were undertaking to migrate from MS Office to OpenOffice.

I explained that the spreadsheet stuff should migrate with few problems. Did they have any VBA I asked, ‘oh yes’ was the reply, lots of it, all over the place.

I said the trivial stuff would probably migrate ok, especially if they use one of the VBA friendly builds (OxygenOffice and Novell sprang to mind). The more complex stuff would realistically need re-writing I suggested, at which point he kind of lost interest. I did point out that it was a great opportunity to rewrite those apps in something more robust like .net but the lights had gone out by then.

VBA is the jewel in Microsofts Office lock-in crown, and they seem to act like a spoilt princess who is bored of diamonds, and now only wants emeralds or something. (And of course Office is the jewel in the operating system lock-in crown…)

If OpenOffice get highly compatible scripting or effective code migration tools before VBA’s replacement is broadly adopted, things are going to get fun in the spreadsheet development world. (They could do with a better coding environmet too, OO’s code window is even more arcane than the VBAIDE, (in fact it reminds me of Excel 5 modules)).

For many companies if print macros and navigation macros worked in OOo they could migrate probably 75% of their users, and just keep the real power users on Excel. All it would take is a few successful large scale migrations written up in the IT press and there could be an avalanche. I’m not clear why MS don’t seem concerned about this?

Anyone else getting sniffs of OO work?

cheers

Simon

Outsourcers shafted

I see the backbone cable cut fiasco is affecting connectivity in many key outsourcing destinations.

I wouldn’t mind if it meant I can do my telephone banking with someone who understands my accent.

[lo - see the chaos theory in action, a boat anchors in a slightly different place than normal in Asia somewhere, now my bank is unobtainable, my favourite weather site is down, and work enquires have shot up]

I don’t generally worry about off-shoring, Excel/VBA/Finance does not seem to be a key target technology for most providers.

I did once have a client fire us off in preference for some cheap offshore developers, but they came back once they had a quick lesson in basic maths:

Total cost = Time taken x cost per time unit

Halfing the cost per day is a bit pointless if the time taken quadruples. Especially if you are in a hurry. Anyone ever done a non-urgent Excel/VBA project?
I’m sure there are some valid uses for off-shoring and maybe once upon a time it made sense. But in most software development/maintenance I see it as a sign of low class/ignorant management.

Anyone out there feeling the pinch from cheap off-shore labour?

cheers

Simon