To paraphrase Tom DeMarco, I am all in favor of product standards. After all, Product standards are the reason that I can buy a Double-A battery from any manufacturer, plug […]
An Actual Job Description I saw today –
For a senior programmer/analyst type … Must possess a strong understanding of software engineering principles including data normalization, structured programming, and software development life cycles. How about this: Must understand, […]
Certifiable – III
I am drafting a reply to the agile-leadership group, but posting it here first. Several people (including me), asked what problem certification solves, or who the “customer” is for the […]
Housekeeping
I’ve had a couple (two) of spambot like comments posted to the blog in the past week. If it continues, I may have to turn off anonymous posting, or turn […]
Agile Metrics – II
I’ve been having an off-line discussion with Jared Quinert that follows-up my post on Agile Metrics. Specifically, he noticed that I refer to the state a project is in to […]
Choices …
Imagine, for a moment, a retirement home. Crammed full of people, they are told where to live, what to eat, when to eat … not even allowed to leave the […]
Allmost posted this …
I allmost posted this to my SW-IMPROVE discussion list, but it’s a little bit too saracastic. I figured this audience could appreciate it a bit more for what it is, […]
Against Systems – II
I’ve been complaining that people like defined systems – even when they stink – because they are easy. In fact, many people don’t even see the idea of craft in […]
Measuring Project Health
I’ve been known to say that explaining a single idea so well that it can’t be misunderstood takes me about 1,000 words. Well, yesterday, on the context-driven testing yahoo group, […]
Craft Appreciation
An article on Art Appreciation that is really about Craft Appreciation and skill building – from From Paul Graham: What counts as a trick? Roughly, it’s something done with contempt […]
The Age of Reason
I just finished reading Measuring The World which is a wonderful historic novel about the world in the 18th and early 19th century. In many ways, the book explores the […]
Certifiable – II
Another post, this one to the agile-management list … Ron Jeffries Wrote:A leadership certification, one would imagine, would perforce be far less specific and far more general, but just as […]
Certifiable?
The Agile Project Leadership Network is working on a certificate program in Agile Leadership. This has been discussed a bit on the Agile Leadership Yahoo group. I just emailed a […]
Interesting Presentation
Elisabeth Hendrickson just put up a reminder of her 2002 talk “Why Are My Pants On Fire?” – It is a quick but interesting read – here. Please, go read […]
Decline and Fall – III
I like the way my colleague, Sean, summed it up yesterday. To paraphrase what he said: Asking “Ok, but how will the decline and fall help me test this web-based […]
Requirements Methodology
If you listen to James Bach enough, you will eventually hear the idea that every practitioner should be able to articulate his strategy and methodology – preferably quickly – and […]
Connecting Gibbons and Systems Thinking
I was rather hoping that someone would respond to yesterdays post with: Yes, Matt, that’s all well and good, but you still didn’t answer Harry’s Question – what does the […]
A few of my favorite things – IV
As a thought experiment, I would like to describe nation at a point in time. I’ll let you figure out the nation and time … -> The country was once, […]
Run Corporate IT like a software company
I’m still on vacation, but this struck my eye as worth sharing … … corporate IT has to find ways to deliver the most important business capabilities as quickly as […]
Off to vacate
I’ll be in vacation for the next few days, but in the mean time, Paul Carvalho has an interesting post comparing skilled (exploratory) testing to fencing. I thought it was […]