Someone mirrored one of my posts from earlier this week – http://managerspeaks.blogspot.com/2007/02/rethinking-process-improvement.html At the bottom, he wrote “link”, linking to Creative Chaos. Otherwise, I would think the material was his. Now, when I quote someone, I quote part of the article (not in it’s entirety), I put it in italics, and I make a descriptive […]
Errata
I’m pretty buried in side projects right now, but I did want to get a few things out. First, I found this bit from Joel Spolsky, excerpted from the book Founders At Work, and wanted to share:I think probably there are a lot of workaday programmers working on upgrades to Enterprise Java (now I’ve insulted […]
Against Systems – IV
I’ve been looking for a way to wrap this up, when I stumbled accross and article titled “Process as a Substitute for Competance” that seems to do it for me … On one recent project, the software development managers insisted on a 5-page requirements definition document, two management reviews of that document, a functional specification […]
… I was wrong
A few weeks ago I put out a post on Elisabeth Henricksen’s 2002 presentation, “Why Are My Pants On Fire?”. My conclusion was that the sentiment was obvious, but people don’t act that way. While we might “know” the material intellectually, our behavior indicates otherwise. So, while the material wasn’t new, we still need more […]
Against Systems: Interlude …
More Against Systems to come, but first, a couple of things … 1) Jon Kohl points out that we only exist because of little systems like circulation, muscular, the solar system, and so on. Obviously, the blog entries “Against Systems”, which I chose for a bit of shock value, are talking about a different kind […]
Against Systems – III
Did you know that honor codes that consist of a specific list can be gamed? For example, the US Air Force Academy Honor Code, at one time, was: “We shall not lie, cheat, nor steal, nor tolerate those among us who do.” So, let’s say you are nineteen, go to a tavern and order a […]
Intuition
James Bach is running a rapid software class over the web, and I am enjoying it. (You can take the course for $250 per session; read about it – here). He also has forums set up for people who are taking the class. Here’s my latest post to those forums: Michael Bolton Wrote:Intuition, to me, […]
Great Writing
George Dinwiddie wrote this and it struck me as worth quoting… 5. In spite of a technical background that goes back to childhood, my sailboat has virtually no electronics. The depth sounder died years ago. I use a leadline. The knotmeter also gave up the ghost. I drop a potato chip off the bow and […]
Standards – II
George Dinwiddie has a great response to my previous post on standards. In his post, George says: Why do people want to choose a standard before they’ve tried something to see how well it works?… (snip) …Processes, like software, don’t work well unless they, well, work. So get it working first, and then worry about […]
Standards?
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 it into my CD Player, and not worry about compatibility. For that matter, it’s the same thing with CD’s, DVD’s, VHS, and the players for […]
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, evaluate, and demonstrate the inherent problems with the term “Software Development Life Cycle”, and it’s strengths and weaknesses in use as a model … What […]
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 on post moderating. I am loathe to do this, but I don’t want to waste my reader’s time either. For the time being, I am […]
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 indicate that a project progresses in a way that is non-linear. For example: If the customers reject a build badly enough, it could bounce back […]
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 the talk, then come back. I’ve got some spoilers, and I want you to develop your own opinion of the talk before I share them. […]
References, Holidays, and Enterprise Architecture!
First of all, Agile Shark Jumpin’ got a reference last week on InfoQ.com. Nifty! Second, I am taking a short sabbat from Creative Chaos over the next few days. There may be a couple of posts next week, and more serious stuff after the new year. When we come back: More from Jim Brosseau, I […]
(Sidebar: Going Meta …)
Bob Martin actually wrote this three years ago: As I said before, going meta is a good thing. However, going meta requires experimental evidence. Unfortunately the industry has latched on to the word “Agile” and has begun to use it as a prefix that means “good”. This is very unfortunate, and discerning software professionals should […]
Shark Jumpin’ – III
I made a posst to the Agile-Testing list a few months back about AgileCMMI; I thought it was worth repeating here: >In the long run should we have ‘agile CMM’? Ok. I’m going to take a stand here. The Agile Manifesto has an explicit value system – individuals and interactions over processes and tools, customer […]
Scaling Knowledge work …
Ron Jeffries has an interesting article on a project he is currently working on. I read the article and responded to the XP E-mail list; here’s a copy of the response. Ron Jeffries Wrote:I wonder what would happen if Chet and I were putting in four or eight hours a day on this thing. Suppose […]