Read The Graphing Calculator Story. (Thank you to Obie Fernandez for finding this gem. Some ideas that stood out for me: The secret to programming is not intelligence, though of course that helps. It is not hard work or experience, though they help, too. The secret to programming is having smart friends. …he told […]
I’m looking for a reference to something I thought I read but can no longer find. Technical people can work up to 6 hours a day on technical work. They may be at work longer, reading email, going to meetings, getting coffee, but they can only effectively do 6 hours of technical work a
I’ve had several discussions about maintenance in the past few days. I’m beginning to think I have a different definition of maintenance than other people do :-). For me, maintenance is fixing problems in code. Maintenance is short, small, well-contained and code-based, and should be fixed by the developer(s) who created the problem. So
Due to incredible volume of spam comments, I’m moving to a new commenting system. The new one is installed. I’m working on importing the old comments to this system. In the meantime, it’s ok to leave comments here.
In my project management class today, one of the students asked about how to schedule interdependent sub-projects. The scheduling tool he uses doesn’t deal well with pieces of one sub-project having dependencies of other sub-projects. It’s difficult to see the critical path, and to know what’s really going on. (It’s too easy to have
Clarke Ching’s Multitasking MAKES YOU STUPID is another great article. But when I teach PMs or coach managers, they say, “I need to multitask to get things done.” Or, they say, “I’m ok with multitasking.” Even smart people think they can do a couple of things at one time. Maybe they can. But the more
I’m teaching a few project management courses in Israel next week at Sela. If you’re in Israel, and would like to have dinner on Dec. 7, let Roy know. He’s arranging a dinner. Thank you, Roy!
Yesterday, I was talking to a colleague about a new job he’s considering. It’s in a regulated industry, and he had some assumptions: that regulated industry auditors assume a waterfall lifecycle and that organizations require process people to improve the process. Regulated industries do not require a waterfall lifecycle. What they do require is
I use enetation as my comment service. The comment spammers have found a way to access enetation’s database to spam this blog and my hiring blog. After receiving over 100 spam comments this weekend, I can’t take much more and am looking for an alternative commenting service. In the meantime, ignore the spam comments you
I led a two-hour writing workshop this past weekend. The attendees ranged from a 9-year-old who says, “I LOVE to write,” to retired adults who are involved in community projects who hate to write. We performed two writing exercises. Although the writing is useful, it’s the debrief of each writing activity that helps each writer