The Blog

World domination plans

published February 23, 2010

A minimal working product. These words seem to be very hard to grasp, I do not understand why. There is a study by the Standish Group, which claims that 45% of software features are never used and 19% are used only rarely. “This is something that we won’t need now, but will need it in the future”, I hear all the time. This kind of thinking is also very strongly present in RFQs (Request for Quotation). I call these world domination plans. A plan to build the greatest service from scratch and release it in a one big bang. “Not gonna happen”, I say.

Start with a minimal working product. This does not mean a crappy web page with animated GIFs and scrolling texts. No, it means a simplest thing that fulfills the most critical needs. Establish a constant flow of new important  features, minimize a lead time, and listen your customers. This is how you build the greatest services.

Samuli @ 20:15 (No Comments)

tags: Business, Customer, It should not be that hard, Lean, Process

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The pain with Liferay themes

published December 23, 2009

During this year, I have seen development of 5 Liferay themes and I do not like what I see. This stuff takes way more time than it should. Usually in our projects, a HTML layout is created by a UI designer working “outside of a project” and that layout is afterwards converted into a Liferay theme by a developer or UI specialist working “inside our project”. Immediate problems can arise if the HTML layout is designed wrong way.

The most basic error is to completely ignore how a portal framework creates portlets and the HTML it produces. You should know how HTML divs and other Liferay elements are created. Ignoring this will create a nasty mismatch when the layout is converted into a Liferay theme.

If you manage to get a good HTML layout, theme conversion is much easier but still takes a lot of time.  It is common to see 90% of theme ready quite quickly and use another 90% of time to fix remaining 10 percents. Common problems include:

• Cross-browser functionality, to get all browsers to render perfectly.
• Fixing broken Liferay controls, i.e. portlet controls, drag and drop, etc.
• Fixing broken themes during a Liferay upgrade. This is a major one.

You will need a specialist who can handle these things and who knows what she is doing. Without her, it will cost you, a lot. I would like to see solutions on how to easily create a theme without a hassle.

Samuli @ 17:41 (No Comments)

tags: It should not be that hard, Java EE

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