software development concepts
The 69 page e-book Client vs. Developer Wars documents one web design company's struggle to formulate a rational development process: Up until the middle of 2000, Newfangled's development process was much like that of every other web development company. The process started with the "planning/
software development concepts
In Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects, DeMarco and Lister outline the dangers of penalizing negative thinking: Once you've identified and quantified these risks, they can be managed just like the others. But getting them out on the table can be a problem. The culture of
communication
If you asked each member of your team why they were working on what they are currently working on, what would they say? Could they even give you a coherent answer? If they did, would their answers all agree? All too often, I see developers working without a clearly defined
open source
Traditional wisdom says that the "code first, design later" approach is a bad idea. However, Charles Miller points out that when it comes to open source projects, it's mandatory [https://web.archive.org/web/20060209222222/http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2005/05/08/finding_discord_in_harmony]
productivity
Johanna Rothman posted a number of what she calls Schedule Games on her product development blog: 1. Schedule Chicken 2. 90% Done 3. Bring Me a Rock 4. Hope is Our Most Important Strategy 5. Queen of Denial 6. Sweep Under the Rug 7. Schedule Dream Time or Happy Date
software development practices
Marco Dorantes recently linked to a great article by Watts Humphrey, who worked on IBM’s OS/360 project: Why Big Software Projects Fail. Watts opens with an analysis of software project completion data from 2001: Figure 2 shows another cut of the Standish data by project size. When looked
ownership
One of the frustrations I’ve experienced with offshoring projects is the diminished sense of ownership. We’re still responsible for the software put in front of the end users, and yet we’re not allowed to put our hands on the code. Instead, we draw UML diagrams, we enter
software development concepts
A recent post by Wesner Moise after a two month hiatus got me thinking about a passage from Steve McConnell’s, After The Gold Rush. Like all Steve’s stuff, it’s great, but the title is unintentionally ironic: the book was released in 1999, at the very height of
software development concepts
One of McConnell’s 36 classic development project mistakes is gold-plating. It’s also repeated in the list, so I guess the risk of falling into this particular trap is twice as high: #28: Requirements gold-plating. Some projects have more requirements than they need right from the beginning. Performance is
project management
Sometimes I feel like I learned everything I needed to know about software project management on Monster House. Monster House is a television show on The Discovery Channel. Five random builders and the host, Steve Watson, perform a “monster” makeover on someone’s home in five days. If the builders