Software Best Practices

Hi Luis, So, if I get this right, you are a individual contributor contractor who does not get any say in the development methodology of your client. The client has poor requirement practices especially around managing requirements (traceability, prioritizing). There are a few things you might be able...

One spinoff from the 10x difference in programmer productivity was the Chief Programmer Team structure. The idea of the chief-programmer team was originally developed at IBM during the late 1960s (Baker 1972, Baker and Mills 1973). It was popularized by Fred Brooks in the Mythical Man-Month (Brooks 1975...

The question of how to scale up quickly in a software startup company is a perennially tough issue. There are some good ways to get started -- starting with a core of really senior people is one time-honored approach. Starting with a core team of people who have worked together at another employer is...

As i stated in another forum , if you have money to spend and are doing agile development, Rally has set the bar that everyone else should be measured against.

Hey thollis, Hands down, the best product out there for this is Rally . Spend 2 hours with their free (10 user) community edition and you will know what Agile Project Managment should be like. The only issue is the price. The are asking $39 / user / month for their middle range SaaS offering, and $65...

One of my readers asked the following very reasonable question: We are looking for industry benchmarks detailing the amount of time developers spend on a percentage basis in the following three categories: 1) Core job activities (writing, testing, deploying code, etc.) 2) Meetings 3) Administrative activities...

David - There may also be a more dangerous effect at play. Those who don't attend THINK they know more than they do while those that are attending embody the "the more I know, the more I know I don't know" principle. In other words: those that don't attend have ego's that exceed...

[updated June 1, 2007] CMMI on the surface is definitely not very inviting to Agile. CMMI can be done in an agile fashion however. If CMMI is something you have a need for, then for secrets of how to do it "Agile-style", and details of success stories and lessons learned, take a look at the...

A comment I'm hearing with increasing frequency is "The job market is getting to be like the dot com era all over again. Developer salaries are increasing, and it's getting harder and harder to attract and retain good developers." Our May ECSE Meeting focused on the topic of "Compensation...

[last update: 27-April-2007] For a colleague at work, I compiled a list of resources covering Lean principles & practices, their integration with Six Sigma and/or Agile development methods, and the application of Lean to software development. I thought others might find it useful, so here it is ...