editorial
N
Ovidiu Măţan, PMP
ovidiu.matan@todaysoftmag.com Editor-in-chief Today Software Magazine
umber 21 of Today Software Magazine has Project management as a general theme. This theme was not randomly chosen, but to be in keeping with … even mammoths can be Agile, event which is entirely dedicated to the project management domain. It is now at its fifth edition and it will take place in Cluj. Today Software Magazine has manifested its support and involvement in the organization of this event, acknowledging its undeniable efficiency in conveying and promoting the basic principles of this complex universe which is project management. The ampleness of this domain most of the times generates the risk of some much too personal interpretations which lead to the undesired direction of failure. Project management is often understood as a way to promote technical leaders who have distinguished themselves by their results. Unfortunately, through this endeavour of turning PM into a promoting title, one may fall into the trap of ignoring the managerial side. There is the risk that the person invested with the new role might not prove the same abilities and higher level skills in the domain of management, too. Beyond the ideal formula of the technical expert doubled by a good manager, which the project manager aspires to, it is important to be given the opportunity to highlight and develop the technical leader skills of those of a manager. The correct strategy in such cases is the existence of two directions of career evolution. At the end of 2013, Project Management Institute published the awards offered for the best projects. The winner was Adelain Desalination Project from Australia. Launched in 2008, to reduce the risk of running without water in the South of Australia, the project was built to cover 25% of the water demand. Afterwards, they were required to double the quantity of delivered water. Under these conditions, the project management team succeeded in completing the project 19 days before the deadline and having exceeded the budged only by 1%. Another award was given to the construction of the biggest highway in Utah, USA. The initial value of the project was 1 billion dollars and they managed to complete it saving 260 million dollars, two years earlier and delivering 10 extra miles. By these two projects I wanted to point out the advantages of a quality management and the real value that can be added. From this perspective, I recommend a PMP or a Prince 2 certification to all project managers in terms of standardizing the processes and the project structure. Of course, we will discuss all these in detail during the event… even mammoths can be Agile. Here is a short presentation of the articles in this issue. Startup Weekend Cluj is a recent event, whose presentation we wanted to offer you from the perspective of the person who has built the winning team, Antonia Onaca. Still in the area of events, we mention the article on Barcelona Mobile World Congress, which presents the main tablet and phone launches that took place. We continue with the interview given by Csaba Suket for our magazine. He talks about the main challenges that emerge from being the biggest online gamble developer. The following articles: Our Fight against Technical Debt, PM in Agile, Agility before Agile, Phases and Processes in Project Structure, are a first series of articles dedicated to the project management theme. Among the articles with a technical theme, which are all distinguished by interesting subjects, we offer you a few titles such as: Tick Tock on Beanstalkd Message Queues, Back to the Future: Http 2.0, JavaScript Logging Library for Developers. The virtual Hip Hop Machine presents in detail the evolution of the virtual machine used by Facebook, and Autoencoders continue the series of articles in the area of neural networks and artificial intelligence. Enjoy your readings !!!
Ovidiu Măţan
Founder of Today Software Magazine
4
no. 21/March | www.todaysoftmag.com