Software Best Practices

Brian, I wanted to give a little perspective on what rapid development accomplished at the last company I worked for. Using rapid development methodologies (mainly proto-typing) we were able to cut development time by 50%r, development cost by 75%, and actually improved customer satisfaction. These numbers...

@Earl: I haven't heard of the Personal Software Process before, so I think I will check it out. I read a summary of it, and anything that will help to get good project estimates is something worth looking at. I am trying to have regular progress meetings with a demo of the work so far with the project...

Brian, I worked on 50+ projects from 1983 to 2002 for a major transportation company. Most of the time I was the project manager, technical lead, data architect, systems analyst, and did most of the programming. I always felt I my efficiency was lower than it should be and was always bothered by how...

In my 25 years as a developer/manager I have worked as an "Army of One" or with a small group of professionals. Wearing the hat of both developer and PM/Architect and even tester is a daunting and lonely task for certain. When you have, essentiallly, all of the work to do, using processes and...

I have experienced the "one person does it all" problem myself. I work with a group of coworkers at a large company but the organizational structure is very vertical. Each person is in charge of his own project with very little overlap. We are slowly trying to change the culture to get more...

Hello Earl, when I read Brian's question I also thought immediately about the PSP. I have worked quite a bit with it and although it is the most complete process for individual software practitioners I would like to caution Brian that PSP is very involved and in my opinion overkill in its full version...

I find myself constantly struggling with the fact that I am a single developer on my projects and do not have other geeks to discuss technical things with. This also means I must manage myself, both from a "what should I do today" standpoint as well as a "I need to setup a SVN server and...