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Who is NOT Happy
24 February 10 02:23 PM | Earl Beede | with no comments
That should be the real question that any project should ask. Far too often the purpose of project work is to make lot of different customers happy. We get requirements from every Tom, ***, and Harry, from the business, from marketing, from sales, from the technology gurus, from the people who will have...
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Usability Collateral Damage
11 December 09 12:51 PM | Earl Beede | 1 comment(s)
Astute followers of my blog (Hi, Mom!) will have noticed that all of my previous posts are now attributed to “Anonymous”. Same as my forum responses to date. Why? Well, I accidently deleted myself from the site. “Smooth move, ex-lax,” my mom would tell me if she actually did read my blog. A little background...
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Fail Yet Succeed?
16 September 09 12:42 PM | Anonymous | 2 comment(s)
If you build EXACTLY what “they” tell you, you do it in the timeframe they ask for, and at the cost they wanted to pay, is that a successful project? The project is On time On budget Delivers the requested functionality No defects The team is ready for the next project Is it successful? “Yes,” you say...
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Relationships Rule
22 July 09 08:36 AM | Anonymous | with no comments
Getting better in software development requires change and change is hard and change is unpleasant. Most of all, it doesn’t seem like we actually change. We talk about change, we start change initiatives, they pay people to teach us new ways, we may even read books, but at the end of the day we seem...
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Logic Loses
08 July 09 09:21 AM | Anonymous | with no comments
I have recently read a book called “ Change or Die ” by Alan Deutschman that has some good insights on how people change deeply held behavior. I like to share some thoughts inspired from (and some outright lifted from) the book. We spend a lot of time talking about change. We want to become more agile...
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Spirit of Waterfall
24 June 09 09:34 AM | Anonymous | 1 comment(s)
It is not uncommon for me to see on blog posts, newsgroups, or presentations the phrase or comment that something is not, "in the spirit of Agile". In fact a project team could be doing many of the practices of Agile but, if it fails, the agilist will claim that the project was not Agile in...
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Watching Agile Grow Up
03 March 09 02:24 PM | Anonymous | 1 comment(s)
Is Agile, which was baby a few years ago, growing up to be just another moody development adolescent on the way to becoming a ho-hum mainstream adult? One of the fascinating (or darn scary) aspects of having children is watching them grow up. As they take on more and more decision making on their own...
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Feedback from Stakeholders – A “Done” Criterion
17 December 08 07:59 AM | Anonymous | with no comments
Each of the previous “done” criterion had the need for the individual applying the criterion to make a judgment call as to the “doneness” of the work item under review. This gives it the power necessary to determine “done” in contextual situations. However, if a person only used one of the criterion...
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Sanity Checks – A “Done” Criterion
05 December 08 12:54 PM | Anonymous | with no comments
For every work artifact we create there is often a short list of attributes or questions that can help us determine if the artifact is done. This short list reminds us of classic patterns that have risen to become accepted truth and classic mistakes that continue to dog us. This list of questions or...
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Defining "Done"
08 September 08 01:32 PM | Anonymous | 2 comment(s)
In software development, like many other areas of life, we need to decide when some item of work is done. The decision of "doneness" has wide impacts as under-done creates creates defects, downstream rework, and lost opportunity costs while over-done wastes time and resource and incurs its...
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Functionality Is Cheap
16 July 08 02:54 PM | Anonymous | 5 comment(s)
Well, I better rephrase that. The functional part of a requirement is cheap. I can deliver the functional part of a requirement in as little time and in as small of a cost as you like if you let me control the non-functional parts of the requirement. That is a heck of a claim. So how do I back that up...
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B*tch'n and Moen
23 April 08 05:50 AM | Anonymous | 3 comment(s)
Steve McConnell put up a post on his lack of a real estimate for a child's fort and how that was related to a software project. I have a similar example of an agile bathroom remodel. The Story Our existing bathroom had a small problem. Water was leaking through cracks somewhere in the older tile...
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Giving Up
03 April 08 07:12 PM | Anonymous | 1 comment(s)
When is the right time to give up on a project, a design approach, or a requirement? What factors do you consider in coming to the decision that it is not in the organization's best interest to continue forward with the current approach? I know that the economically oriented folks will suggest that...
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Agile Complexity
09 March 08 03:09 PM | Anonymous | with no comments
A couple of posts ago, I shared a concern with distributed agile development. A similar thing happened to me recently with another question from two different clients who work on a highly complex mobile operating system. "Can you be agile in highly complex environment with emergent system characteristics...
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Pair Mentoring
10 February 08 03:57 PM | Anonymous | with no comments
What does it mean to be a mentor? While I can fancy myself as pretty knowledgeable in a couple of areas (mostly the proper way to eat an Oreo© cookie and how to make my wife angry), mentoring somebody else in that knowledge is another matter. As a Certified Software Development Professional (nice big...
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Distributed Agile
21 January 08 10:30 PM | Anonymous | 3 comment(s)
I had an interesting discussion recently with two different people about moving toward a more agile development practice. The first was a potential client who had a small team in California. The second was a with the office staff of a services firm who wanted to better understand what agile is all about...
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Slow Ride
13 December 07 09:21 AM | Anonymous | with no comments
My daughters like to square dance. They seem to, for whatever reason, really like the petticoats: the layers of fabric that make the square dance skirt get really poofy (as if poofy is a word). To support my daughters, I dance with them since there is a general shortage of males (even if we don't...
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Beyond Functional
02 November 07 10:34 AM | Anonymous | 2 comment(s)
I am thinking of going on a crusade against functional requirements. Why? Functional requirements are overblown, over-specified, over-referenced, over-exampled, and we need to get over them. By the over-focus on functional requirements by tools, books, and pundits, we cajole our customers to attempt...
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Quality Time
02 October 07 06:50 PM | Anonymous | 1 comment(s)
At Construx I teach both the Estimation seminar and the Advanced Quality seminar. One question I usually get during the Estimation seminar goes something like this, "How can I estimate how long quality will take?" Now this is a fascinating question in that it is so wrong and yet so important...
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Late Expectations
21 August 07 09:00 AM | Anonymous | 3 comment(s)
I don't like being late. I have never gotten into the habit of arriving well after the party starts (under the euphemism of being "fashionable", like you couldn't get your clothes on) nor sending birthday cards after the fact (though I do admit the belated birthday cards are often funnier...
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Doing Justice to V&V
29 July 07 06:40 AM | Anonymous | 4 comment(s)
One of my secret passions is to kill the man (or woman) who started to use the terms verification and validation in the software world. I know you are hiding out there and when I find you, I will do justice. I mean, first of all there is this horrible trick of using two words that sound soooo close in...
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Worst Companies to Work For, Part All
15 July 07 07:07 AM | Anonymous | 3 comment(s)
Steve McConnell (my boss) is bragging about his company since it got voted the best small company to work for in Washington State. He is so proud that he needs to do the bragging in three parts! I have to admit, it is a pretty nice place to work. Did he mention the free beer? Anyplace that has free beer...
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Incremative
01 July 07 07:45 AM | Anonymous | 1 comment(s)
In our 10x and Agile seminars, I talk about the role and purpose of incremental and iterative (incremative) development practices. On the surface incremative development is kind of wasteful. I mean, it is like asking me to drive to the grocery store and a I stop on each block, call home and ask my wife...
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Context Matters
17 June 07 10:21 AM | Anonymous | with no comments
So, I was driving along, making a right turn into a driveway like I have done a thousand times before. I did what one always does when making a right turn: I checked carefully for pedestrians and watched the driveway to make sure nobody was coming down it. I then signaled my intentions and proceeded...
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Estimate THIS
03 June 07 03:25 AM | Anonymous | 2 comment(s)
It used to be a common feedback I would get when I taught Construx's Software Estimation seminar. I would show the bright developers how to estimate their software projects several different ways and they respond with the whine, "This is all fine and good but our management won't let us...
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