Improving the world with software
Better software. Better questions.
Essays on software development, teams and the craft of building things that last.
Essays, page 12
314 essays in the archive
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It was a beautiful day in Helsinki today
Today the weather was brilliant. Here, haved a peak:
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Intel everywhere? Programmers will like this…
This year’s CES is presenting us, software/programmer types, with a very rosy picture of the future. A good example of what I mean is the push that Intel is making to the mobile phone segment with it’s Moorestown platform. Imagine a world where you can easily port all of your work to a new platform …
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The tablet craze, HP-tablet, I mean…
Gizmodo just published the summary of last night’s keynote by Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer and man it looks gorgeous (at least in the marketing video). Now the tablet craze starts to make more sense. If the print media industry want an electronic distribution media (and they should by now), then they must create an open standard …
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Agile Scales, Waterfall doesn’t – Video of a talk at Agile Eastern Europe
Sometime ago I did a talk about Scaling Software Development at Agile Eastern Europe in Ukraine. The slides are up in my slideshare account, but now you can see the video of the talk that Agile EE made available. In this talk I try to describe what “scaling” means and come to the conclusion that …
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We don’t need software engineering religion, we need software engineering science!
During the Scan-Agile ’09 conference there was a lot of discussion about why Agile works and if a specific flavor of it would be better than other flavors (you know, the Scrum vs Kanban fight). Despite those surface issues, there was a deeper debate going on. Why does Agile work? And in what context should …
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Opera Mini 5 is the king of mobile browsing, proof inside
In a discussion with @james_cooper and @iramo on twitter we came to argue about the performance of some mobile browsers. Now, if you are anything like me you hate propaganda as well as deceptive advertising. I raved on twitter about Opera Mini 5 (which I think is the best mobile browser out there, bar none!) …
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PMI vs Agile, the debate continues
Prompted by a comment by Murray on my first blog in this debate I wanted to expand some of the ideas that have not yet been explored. Here are the key excerpts from Murray’s comment: PMBOK V4 is compatible with and supportive of Agile processes. Here are some relevant quotes from CHAPTER 2 − PROJECT …
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We have Open Space for learning at Scan-Agile
I’ve been in many conferences, and without an exception the best part of every conference was the time I had to talk 1-on-1 or with a few people about some subject that really interested me. This normally started in the hallways, during the coffee breaks. We started talking and suddenly we realized that we had …
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What can Science teach us about Agile? (or why you must come to Scan-Agile)
I’m sure that you’ve heard many things during your life that made you think: “Boy, that guy/gal doesn’t get the basics of (put your favorite subject here)”. Well, there’s a reason for that. People make assumptions and claims that are false because they have a faulty model in their head. They simply don’t know better! …
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Why learning is *still* so important (or why you should attend Scan-Agile ’09)
Last year I wrote a very personal story about how learning made a huge difference in the life of two people of similar age and in a similar context. Check out my story about Grandpa Tony and Grandpa Frank (BTW: it’s a real story!). So, this year I thought of finding a different way to …
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About when I stopped worrying and embraced Engineering!
Product Managers often forget that they can make or break a project. If your team is using Scrum that is even more true, because Product Managers are (or should be) involved regularly in the planning of the work with the team. Either as Product Manager or in the role of Product Owner. It is therefore …
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The challenge to the Agile community: can’t we do better than PMBOK?
Another Knowledge Area in the PMBOK is Human Resource Management. The very name of the knowledge area already gives away the values behind it. It should not say “resource management”, it should say People Management! The old-skool project management is very much based on the values of Scientific Management and Hierarchical organizations that have permeated …
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