Software Best Practices

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...