Back in the early part of this decade, 2001 to be precise, when I'm starting my career in software development. Software Developer's are given the same treatment as with the likes of other employee that work's in a manufacturing job. As I look back during that time, I'm pretty sure that what carried me to survive that period was the adrenaline rush of having my first job. The pay was almost the same as any blue collar worker (Very close to be a minimum wage earner) ok, P5,200 ($113.04)/month to be exact after all the deductions. To give you an idea how close to a factory sweat shop the working environment we have, here are some rules in our working environment:

• You may never roam around the work area during office hours, except when consulting anything work relate with another employee.
• You are only allowed 5 minutes in the comfort room.
• You may only bring 5 items in the office. Which for me is my Wallet, ID Holder, Ball pen, Handkerchief and Cellphone.
• You may never be seen near the bundy clock 10 minutes before the official out time.

Well i think you get the picture right?

I'm just glad those days are behind me. Most of the software development companies now are realizing that software developers are more like the employee's in a creatives department. A 5-hour of stress free mind has better productivity than 9 hours of intense thinking.

With this in mind, the BlastSuites teams has been reminded by the product owner that he understand that 8-9 hours of pure software development is simply not realistic and have told us that 6-7 hours is actually acceptable to him.

Can you imagine what the BlastSuites team do with that free 2-3 hours? Let me give you some pictures as clue:

One of the most important aspects in a workplace is the personality of its employee. To effectively lead a group, you have to have a clear understanding of the personality of each team member.

I have found a very useful site to determine a personality of a person through a series of question. Here is the URL:

www.MyPersonality.Info


Here are the results for some of the BlastSuites Member:


CHIEF (Mavi, Chet, Partha)

Natural born leaders. They live in a world of possibilities where they see all sorts of challenges to be surmounted, and they want to be the ones responsible for surmounting them. They have a drive for leadership, which is well-served by their quickness to grasp complexities, their ability to absorb a large amount of impersonal information, and their quick and decisive judgments. Leader, ambitious, hard working, dominant, prepared, hates to be bored, confident, opinionated, analytical.

OVERSEER (Daday, Ami)

Go by experience and that is what counts, not speculation and experimentation, and certainly not fantasy. They keep their feet firmly on the ground and make sure that those under their supervision do the same. Responsible, finisher, decisive, norm following, respects authority, punctual, hard working, stiff, self confident

MENTOR (Ken, Jam)

Success comes through involvement in the process of making things happen for people; through the accomplishments and satisfactions of those they have helped. Altruistic, easily hurt, religious, neat, content, positive, affectionate, image conscious.

EXAMINER (Ren, Angela, JP)

They have a keen sense of right and wrong, especially in their area of interest and/or responsibility. They are noted for devotion to duty. Private, does not appreciate strangeness, not adventurous, not spontaneous, follows the rules.

ORIGINATOR (Vinny, Eli)

Their perceptive abilities cause them to see possibilities everywhere. They get excited and enthusiastic about their ideas, and are able to spread their enthusiasm to others. Attention seeking, experience junky, insensitive, adaptable, not easily offended, messy, carefree, dangerous, fearless, careless.

STRATEGIST (T-Jay, Marco)

Natural leaders, although they usually choose to remain in the background until they see a real need to take over the lead. When they are in leadership roles, they are quite effective, because they are able to objectively see the reality of a situation, and are adaptable enough to change things which aren't working well. Observer, values solitude, perfectionist, detached, private... does not talk about feelings, hard to impress, analytical, likes esoteric things

ENGINEER (Rommel)

Live in the world of theoretical possibilities. They see everything in terms of how it could be improved, or what it could be turned into. They live primarily inside their own minds, having the ability to analyze difficult problems, identify patterns, and come up with logical explanations. Likes solitude, not revealing, unemotional, rule breaker, avoidant, familiar with the darkside, skeptical, acts without consulting others.

ENTERTAINER (PD)

Likes action and excitement, and are able to link together people and resources. Because they accept and deal with people as they are, they are able to understand what is necessary in order to motivate them to get jobs done. Outgoing, social, group oriented, dislikes science fiction, does not like to be alone.

In the recent weeks, I have been conducting a leadership training for the majority of the Team Leaders of BlastSuites. I started with 7 attendee's:

1. PD Barcelona
2. Rommel Manalo
3. Vinny Marquez
4. Ren de Guzman
5. Ken Corcino
6. Chet dela Cruz
7. Bot Gautani

But due to unavoidable circumstances, Bot and Chet has to drop from the training. I'll just include them to the next batch if they are still interested.

Here is the outline for the module:

Week 1:

• Why are Relationships important to success?
• What do I need to know about others?

Week 2:

• How can I encourage others?
• How can I connect to people?
• How can I become a better listener?

Week 3:

• How can I build trust with others?
• What is my most important relationship?
• How can I serve and lead people at the same time?

The training will be capped off by an oral exam, here are the mechanics:

• You will be given 2 situational scenario.
• You are to elaborate your actions on how to handle the scenario.
• Your answers will be checked base on the following criteria:
• 1. Consideration of your team members character (20 pts)
  2. Consideration of your own character (10 pts)
  3. Application of the things you have learned during our training (20 pts)
• Each member of the group will be allowed to ask one question to the presentor.
• The group will score your answer anonymously. Justification for the score will also be given.
• I will consolidate the answers and score and will give you your total score.

Hopefully this training will help the future team leaders of this company mature faster.

The BlastSuites Stakeholders, after careful deliveration and study, has decided to use Telerik for developing the new version of BlastSuites.

Telerik as a company has started around 2002. There first product was the RadControls for ASP.Net which includes RADEditor and RADMenu. Over the span of 7 years, the ASP.Net RadControls had grew to 35 fully functional controls. Including made easy AJAX tools to help you give your website that professional implementation.

The license that BlastSuites bought is the Telerik Premium Collection for .Net. This includes the following suite:

• RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX
• RadControls for WinForms
• RadControls for WPF
• RadControls for Silverlight
• Telerik Reporting
• Telerik OpenAccess ORM
• JustCode Beta
• Telerik Extensions for ASP.NET MVC Beta

Majority of the BlastSuites application will be created using OpenAccess ORM and RadControls for Silverlight. Like the tagline of Telerik, The BlastSuites Team is confident that with the help of Telerik they will "Deliver more than expected".

Here are sample screenshots of the Telerik Tools in action:

After tinkering with Axure, i have be researching about how to do prototypes with WPF and Silverlight and i stumble upon SketchFlow.

This thing has been installed in my pc for months and i don't even know what it is used for >.< One thing i learned in prototyping is that it should be done with minimal effort that you don't have any personal attachment to it when it comes to just throwing it away. SketchFlow lets you do that, and the cool thing is the wireframe you made is base on XAML. This will help you easily port the prototype into a working prototype.

Here are some links to help you get started:

http://www.silverlight-travel.com/blog/2009/07/18/sketchflow-rocks
http://www.silverlightbuzz.com/2009/07/14/using-sketchflow-and-behaviors-for-quick-easy-demos/
http://www.silverlightswitch.com/tutorial/two/tutorial.html

I just finished creating the outline of the Leadership Training that I will conduct. Here is the outline:

Module 1: RELATIONSHIPS

Week 1 (Nature of Relationship)

1. Why are relationships important to success?
2. What do I need to know about others?

Week 2 (The Building Blocks of Relationships)

1. How can I encourage others?
2. How can I connect to people?
3. How can I become a better listener?

Week 3 (The Growth of Relationships)

1. How can I build trust with others?
2. What is my most important relationship?
3. How can I serve and lead people at the same time?


Module 2: EQUIPPING

Week 1 (Equipping for Success)

1. Why do I need to equip others?
2. How can I adopt a team mind-set?

Week 2 (Equipping the Right People)

1. Whom should I equip?
2. What does a potential leader look like?
3. What does it take to equip a leader?

Week 3 (Equipping for the Next Level)

1. How can a leader inspire others to excel?
2. How can I help others fulfill there potential?


Module 3: ATTITUDE

Week 1 (The Impact of Attitude)

1. How does attitude impact leadership?
2. How does attitude impact an individual?

Week 2 (The Formation of Attitude)

1. What shapes a persons attitude?
2. Can attitude be changed?
3. Can obstacles actually enhance an attitude?

Week 3 (The Future with the Right Attitude)

1. What is failure?
2. What is success?
3. How can a leader keep climbing?


Module 4: LEADERSHIP

Week 1 (The Development of a Leader)

1. Why should I grow as a leader?
2. How can I grow as a leader?

Week 2 (The Traits of a Leader)

1. How can I become disciplined?
2. How should I prioritize my life?
3. How do I develop trust?
4. How can I effectively cast a vision?

Week 3 (The Impact of a Leader)

1. Why is the influence important?
2. How does influence work?
3. How can I extend my influence?
4. How can I make my leadership last?

Lately i have been reading Leadership 101 by John Maxwell. I have learned a lot of things from this book and for retention purposes i have decided to create a training program base on this book.

I have consulted with our HR and he gave me the go ahead and ask permissions from the Project Manager of the potential attendees. Fortunately, all of the Project Managers are glad to allow the candidates to attend.

The Attendee's will be:

1. Ren de Guzman
2. Vinny Marquez
3. Chet dela Cruz
4. Ken Corsino
5. Rommel Manalo
6. Bot Gautani
7. PD Barcelona

Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) has been introduced to me around March, 2009. This is the suggested patter to use to fully gain the benefit of the binding capabilities of Silverlight and WPF.

I have found a very nice tutorial of Jason Dolinger that discusses this pattern. Here is the link:

http://www.lab49.com/files/videos/Jason%20Dolinger%20MVVM.wmv
http://blog.lab49.com/archives/2650