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 than it’s fair share of defects, start asking questions about what the developers are considering. You’ll […]
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 software — just not software that yet has a customer base.) The problem was the
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.” I wanted to add “like bobble-headed dolls.” While that’s humorous, it’s not very respectful to
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 help make that work” Some of my recent posts about requirements show the problems when software
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 credit card, and check in. No one calls you. You have to know the computer
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 default ways to write — and that’s ok. The manuscript is richer for us talking
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, test) organization. There’s another option, that I didn’t see on Martin’s site, the matrix organization.
I’m a big fan of emergent schedules (see the rolling wave planning and low tech scheduling entries). I also write that way. I generally have an idea of what I’m going to say, but I’m never quite sure how I’m going to get there until I’m done writing. Emergent design also works for me as
I was at the Rational User Conference last week. I took away one significant idea from the keynotes and one of the track sessions: Writing software, according to Grady Booch is a “priviledge and a responsibility.” Systems are becoming more complex because we need them to do more things faster. We need people who
After reading Where Are the Women — And Their Names?, I tried to leave this comment on the FC blog, but was unable to, so I’ll post it here: I hope the trend is for people to make choices that fit for them. My daughters have my husband’s name. We only have trouble traveling when