Notes and articles on managing software development projects, bioinformatics, plus the usual off-topic detritus. Comments, inquiries etc to hhinsch at yahoo dot com.

Software Project Management

Adapting and combining best practices from disparate software development methodologies:

• For at least the last 40 years, software development methodologists have disagreed about when and how to design software. Examining the principles motivating software design helps make sense of the conflicting camps and choosing the right alternative. [read "Designing Software: When and Why"]
• Strategically structuring a project is obviously a key to success, yet the subject is given short shrift. Given a long list of things that need to be done, how should that list be structured? What is the optimal order of tasks? On what basis do you decide what to do next? [read "Structuring Software Development Projects"]
• Process development and improvement is a lot like software development: Just incrementally fixing what's broken works nicely. [read "Improving Software Development Processes"]

Bioinformatics

• Free download: JavaGene is a set of Java foundation classes for genomic sequence analysis that you can learn to use in an afternoon. It's very good for doing low-level sequence manipulations, such as one might need when writing gene finders, analyzing gene structure, modeling molecular evolution and things of that sort. [read/download JavaGene]
• Recurring genomic breaks in independent lineages support genomic fragility
  Hanno Hinsch and Sridhar Hannenhalli
  BMC Evolutionary Biology 2006, 6:90 (07 Nov 2006)
• Simple methods of finding short protein coding sequences using multiple species alignments
  Hanno Hinsch and Artemis Hatzigeorgiou
  Proceedings of BIOCOMP 06

Relics

• Free download: Time Planner Deluxe is a Personal Information Manager (PIM) for Windows, commercially released in the early nineties. It's a hybrid between a lightweight project management system and a personal calendar, combining the usual calendar functions with integrated drag-and-drop Gantt charts, time and rate calculations, and a flexible system of folders (which work a lot like "tags"). I suppose today I would pitch it as an indispensable tool for the agile project manager (particularly Scrum, with all its lists). [read/download Time Planner Deluxe]
• Free download: Telios is a full-featured commercial communications program for PC-DOS, dating back to the eighties. It implements full VT-100 emulation, Kermit, Z-modem, command files - all the features that an up-to-date comm package had to have back in 1983. It may even have been the first commercial implementation of the Kermit protocol. [read/download Telios]