Zendcon Uncon 2009

Around this time every year, something happens within the PHP community.  We come out of the lazy days of summer with focus and excitement.  It's due to a number of things – like kids going back to school – but  one of the biggest on the calendar is ZendCon. While php|tek has a definite community […]


Software Development Failures?

In my regular wanderings of the web, I came across an interesting article titled “Why Software Developers Refuse to Improve“.  While the author talks about metrics including developer effectiveness and team vs team effectiveness and company-wide effectiveness, he cited another data point that I thought was interesting: “He offers some suggestions as to ways that […]


Is the PMP exam worth it?

I’ve worked in marketing and product development for a biotech startup for about three years. I have no formal training in project management and it hasn’t been mentioned in my job description, but I’ve been working in a project management capacity for most of my time here. Shortly after I came on board, we were […]


IT – Internal projects

In the following posts I’ll define the term “Internal projects” and will show that they are essential for any IT department. Despite the fact that there are managers out there, that understand the value of inner projects and the fact that these project already exist, too many IT departments still fail to understand how important […]


Building Community & Open Source

If you’re not part of the Joomla community – I’m not – you might have missed something significant that happened this morning (This morning being 12 midnight on 02 July 2009): The Joomla Extension Directory (JED) went 100% GPL. [1] [2] While this doesn’t seem like a big deal to many, the change is interesting. […]


Unit Testing Strategy – web2project

I’ve been quiet on web2project for the past few weeks, but I thought I should share some of the latest developments. The single biggest improvement currently is the inclusion of Unit Testing. Unit Testing has been on the agenda for months and years.  The problem was that something else – often bugs, sometimes new features […]


Contributing to Open Source

Over the last few months, I've heard a common thread in a number the various Open Source communities I participate in or watch: How do I get involved with the Open Source Community? When someone considers how to get involved, they always think first and foremost about code.  They believe that the only way to […]


CodeWorks 2009 Webcast Series

If you were paying attention a few months ago, you know that for php|tek 2009, MTA put together a free webcast series. We had great turnout, feedback, and success with them, so we're doing it again: We have the FREE CodeWorks 2009 Webcast Series! It works basically the same as last time around.  About every […]


Data vs Useful Data

Years ago I worked for a company which shall remain nameless.  They collected data on everything: We had to swipe cards to get in the building in the morning and again at lunch.  Our computer login and logout times were checked.  We had to remain 95% billable (no kidding) while the maintenance workers were tracked […]


Bad Assumptions in Development

Quite often when I'm pouring through an old codebase or evaluating a new codebase, I run into a variety of things that drive me nuts. First, there are quite often duplicated/similar function names like doSomething(), doSomething1(), and doSomething2().  Every single one does something very similar to all the others but normally there's a special case […]