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Johanna’s Books
Monthly Archives: August 2004
Short Essay About Writing by Stephen King
Read “Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully – in Ten Minutes”, and when you’re done chuckling, note the necessary ideas: His point #5: throw away reference books. This works for all first drafts. I don’t care if you’re … Continue reading
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Links to Read and Consider
Take a look at these links: 1. Tricks of the Trade, thanks to Dave Liebriech. When I was a tester, I read the code (this tip is far down on the list.) I’m not sure the developers appreciated my … Continue reading
Process Improvement: Start Where You Are
I had lunch with a friend-of-a-friend today. She’s considering moving to a process improvement position. I suggested she not move from a technical lead to a process improvement position — I don’t trust staff positions in this not-yet-robust economy. … Continue reading
Manager’s Role for Bug-Weeding
Thanks to Brian Marick, I read Dave Thomas’s Weeding Out Bugs. Much of Bug-Weeding is developer turf. But here’s what managers can do to help: Look at defect counts by module. When you see a module that has more … Continue reading
Great Hackers Deserve Great Managers
I was reading Hiring Great Hackers, and I realized what went wrong in the places I’ve worked who hired great hackers. (In this case, a hacker is not a derogatory term, it’s someone who lives and breathes producing great … Continue reading
No Bobble-Headed Dolls
Esther‘s here this week (again), so we can finish the pre-review draft of the book. We’re telling the story of a great manager who’s just arrived to a new organization. We describe meetings ,where we wanted to say “Everyone nodded.” … Continue reading
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Producing Software is the Art of Requirements Refinement
Well, that’s certainly a provocative title. Let’s see if I can back it up :-) First, read Keith Ray‘s Engineering post, where he says “software development is a cooperative “game” in creating and deploying “knowledge” and various people-oriented practices … Continue reading
How Are the Users Supposed to Know?
I’ve been traveling a lot this summer, and I saw bad requirements exposed while waiting for my turn at the kiosk. If you buy an e-ticket, you can walk up to a computer, called a kiosk, insert a major … Continue reading
Pair Editing Works Too
Esther and I have been editing the management book this week. We’re pairing to edit also – one keyboard, one file, two heads. It’s exhausting and fun. Here are things I’ve learned this week: We don’t have the same … Continue reading
Implement by Slice
Martin Fowler recently posted PreferFunctionalOrganization. Here, his functional organization means “organize around the business functions,” what management would call a project-based organization and his technical organization means “organize around the technical functions,” what management would call a functional-based (development, … Continue reading
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