Effective UI website up for awards...vote now!

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http://www.effectiveui.com is up for a South by Southwest (SXSW) Award (or 2?)  Vote here! https://secure.sxsw.com/peoples_choice/

As of today, the book to which I and many others here at Effective UI contributed has hit #5 in Multimedia Information Systems Books, and it's still in Prerelease!!


...on communicating scope...

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Some quick principles on communicating software project scope with clients that I follow:
  • Make it a picture.  It's understandable, digestable, communicable, and invokes thought on the part of the client.
  • Communicate scope early and often.  Change is inevitable...change without communication is inevitable failure.
  • Like Scotty on the starship Enterprise - never let them know how the magic happens. And always under-promise and over-deliver.
  • Invoke clients to think about what is agreed, and make sure they know when they're asking for something different than what's been agreed.
  • When you can, call out and itemize work that has been performed outside of the agreed scope.  Clients will either appreciate the work, or discuss a redirection, which is only better for everyone.

Looking for Topics

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As a "professional" working in the world of business applications, I have often wondered what people are interested in learning from this perspective.  Both in terms of philosophical and technical.  

Over the next few weeks I'll be compiling a list of topics that have crossed my path, but if anyone out there is interested in something specific - I'll add it to my list.

Greetings, blogosphere.

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Hello, my name is Chuck Williams. 

Things I am:
  • Father of 3 daughters & Husband (of 1, "X" to none)
  • A "Senior Software Architect"
Those 2 things eat about 90% of my waking life.  With the remaining 10%, I:
  • Explore new ways of doing business through books, and personal experimentation
  • Investigate spirituality through books and personal experimentation
  • eat, sleep, and fulfill other biological necessities.
I find myself asking myself "Self, why are you even doing this blog?"

I can come up with more than a few justifiable reasons, but the immediately available ones include:
  • I think my ego needs an outlet, and I'd like to focus on reducing that need (and the associated ego).
  • I like to share things I learned.
  • I think I have experienced a lot of pain in business and software, and I believe that pain is a great teacher, which leads me to believe I have a lot to offer the business and software industry.
  • There's some part of me that thinks, very simply, that it should and must be done.  Oddly - this is simultaneously the most ambiguous and strongest factor in my final decision.
So - to the blogosphere at large I say "Greetings, hello, and go easy on me, I'm new at this..."