Improving the world with software
Better software. Better questions.
Essays on software development, teams and the craft of building things that last.
Essays, page 2
40 essays in the archive
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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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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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PMI vs. Agile, what is different, and why should we care
The PMI people don’t seem to stop trying to “guess” what Agile is. Guessing is the right term, because anyone with more than a few hours experience in Agile software development can see their cluelessness from afar! Take this article by Lynda Bourne DMP, PMP (no, I’m not making those TLA’s up, she uses them). …
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The CMMI folks are out to get you! Seriously, they are starting with Scrum, what’s next?
The folks talking about CMMI and Scrum are dangerous! Not the least of which because they miss some of the most basic points about software development! You would think they would know about software, but you would be wrong! Check this out: In an article about CMMI and Scrum the site ExecutiveBrief (go there at …
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Does Toyota really use waterfall for software development?
I saw this post and could not resist leaving a comment. Here’s what I wrote as a comment to that post: How can they [Toyota] apply waterfall and be predictive, fast and high-quality? Those are all qualities that waterfall lacks. Predictability is lost because of lack of visibility into quality until it is too late …
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The Software quality hash tag #swquality
If you do Twitter you probably know exactly what I’m referring to, if you don’t here’s an article you should read. Together with @most_alive and @Mendelt we just coined a hash tag to aggregate discussions about the cost of quality in software development. The hash tag is #swquality just add that to every tweet that …
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Perfection in software is cheaper! not more expensive…
The fallacy of perfection = expensive has many forms. Two of which I just run into in the blogosphere. What is this fallacy? Simple, you say to yourself: “perfection in software development is way to expensive, therefore I should not even try to achieve it!”, but that’s a false problem, because perfection is only expensive …
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What is a bottleneck? (TOC)
When faced with a problem in a process, the first step you should take is to identify the process map and bottleneck. This is nothing new, TOC people have been advocating this for a very long time as part of their “5 focusing steps“. But if it is why don’t we do it? Well, because …
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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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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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Apple on unfair claims in advertising
Part of being a cool company is that you respect your customers. This is not a show of respect by Apple. Seriously, this is just used car salesman tactics. Apple, shape up!
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Continuous integration requires a good SCM
Lately I’ve been discussing SCM (Source Control Management) systems and how that impacts the continuous integration efforts of the teams and the projects where they work. I could not have expressed this better than Dean Wampler, check his blog post out.
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