Improving the world with software
Better software. Better questions.
Essays on software development, teams and the craft of building things that last.
Essays, page 16
314 essays in the archive
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Estimation is needed but useless. Do it and throw away the numbers!
I’ve discussed this idea a few times with some friends, but I’ll concede that the ultimate argument for stopping to estimate altogether is still to come… In the meanwhile here is more food for thought. Rob Bowley argues why estimations are bad in software development. My favorite part of his presentation: [In a study discussed …
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The Law of Disproportional Consequences
Why this title? I wanted to describe this idea that in software it is far harder to develop the right things. Yet the impact of developing the right product is disproportionally higher than incremental improvements in the way you develop an existing product. If you look at the history of software companies this is quite …
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The reason why top managers should questioned and challenged by us, the Lego edition
For many people that have read about the Toyota Production System (TPS) the image of Toyota has been improved and their willingness to buy a Toyota car has been positively affected (heck, I _want_ to buy a Toyota, I just can’t justify buying a car). But how about reasons not to buy a product from …
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The Toyota Way in the clothing industry, examples to pay attention
If you have been following this blog, it is no news for you that I’m a big fan of what is known as Toyota Production System and it’s ideas as described by Jeffrey Liker in the famous “Toyota Way“. What you don’t know is that I’m a big fan of many other companies that exhibit …
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The “it’s not my bug” anti-pattern
Talking to a friend we were discussing the organization of feature teams in a local company. They were previously organized in component teams, which led to a lot of inefficiencies and disconnected work. This happened because one team would only work on one component, and when one feature required work in many components, that feature …
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Nokia goes agile. Will the rest follow?
Ari Jaaksi from maemo.org is blogging about Scrum in Nokia’s Linux/Open source projects.Also, Juha-Markus Aalto (of Object development fame) presented what I would call the “Nokia Agile Requirements Model” (and what Dean Leffingwell calls “Lean, Scalable Requirements Model“) at the Object days in Tampere. See the slides here(PDF alert). With all of this I can …
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Why Apple deserves to sell many iPods/iTouch (or Why MUST features will kill your project…)
So lately I’ve been trying to convince some friends that they don’t want to have “MUST” features in their project, rather they should opt for a force-ranked prioritization of all features that they want to deliver. First off, I must explain this idea. You do still have a minimum marketable content for your product. If …
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The Skill issue, the industry shame
I was reading Jason’s blog when I came across this post. I could not agree more. Way too many times I bump into problems that can be traced directly to the idea that you can hire just anyone, with any skill level and they will perform to the expected level of professionalism. This is pure …
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The thing you always wanted…
… Running Quake 3 on your Nokia mobile phone! Your commutes just became fun!
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Agile Finlandissima is organizing another great gathering, don’t miss it!
Agile Finland will organize another cool gathering for the community. This time we have Marko Taipale and Jeff Sutherland plus a cool dinner with the most agile people around in the country! Check out the announcement and registration form
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Beware of the ignorant consultants, beware of LAME
So I was listening to the OnSoftware podcast (which is, by the way, a very bad podcast, so bad I’m not even linking to it!). In one of the latest episodes (actually 2 episodes) Jean Tabaka was interviewed. Jean now works with Rally Software and apparently (according to her, in that podcast) is facing the …
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Note to self, use more simulations…
Great simulation description by Elisabeth Hendrickson, and I’ve got great first-hand feedback from this simulation. I can’t wait to see it live! Check out the post here.
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