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Efficiency
Quality in waterfall model
It’s absolutely amazing how waterfall quality assurane easily turns into “us and them” blame game. Software quality shouldn’t be “quality assurance” as much “quality engineering”, because quality essentially is about removing variance from the process of releasing code. It’s all about automation of each stage of development, verification and delivery. Therefore both: software engineers and […]
Why am I so terribly, terribly busy?
Why am I so terribly, terribly busy? Why am I present in so many places at any single time? The reason is that other appear are far, far busier than I am and at the same time they don’t seam to be doing anything so absorbing! How it works for me? Well, it works as […]
Improving stamina
I still find it amazing how just a slight food deprivation helps with concentration and daily stamina. I could go through half of a night, or longer, if only I wasn’t feeding myself enough to induce blood rush to the stomach. It almost feel like not eating enough was helping me in achieving more, staying […]
Team collaboration
Today I’ve came up with not so much innovative idea how a software team should have been ran. Firstly, you need fixed set of meetings, let’s say three. Two out of them are absolutely compulsory, the team get to choose the dates and time. Nothing to report or son’s birthday is no excuse. Third meeting […]
Minefields of dishonesty
What do you do about games being played by exactly the ones which take babblers at senior levels who will re-org teams, most likely becoming team leaders? I can understand why people surround themselves with ones, who they can outplay in case of emergency, but for god’s sake do you really have to say strongly […]
Software Development Process
I’ve always been a big fan of specifying the bare minimum that touches on all system components, but doesn’t go into detail of some interactions ahead of the first release. Far too often I see companies, adopting the waterfall model so well, seeing senior and mid level management spent days, weeks (and believe me – […]
Improving requires quick feedback
If you’ve ever wondered why companies with long processes are slow at not only adopting but also at improving, consider the following. For software developers, getting better at what they do requires quick feedback (positive and negative) on what has been just done. The faster you get the feedback, the faster you’ll learn. With long-cycle […]
Algebra in Wonderland
SINCE “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” was published, in 1865, scholars have noted how its characters are based on real people in the life of its author, Charles Dodgson, who wrote under the name Lewis Carroll. Alice is Alice Pleasance Liddell, the daughter of an Oxford dean; the Lory and Eaglet are Alice’s sisters Lorina and […]
Keep talking – and explaining…
“For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen” – Stephen Hawking There was a time when some thought that developers worked best in darkened rooms. When the ideal solution was a conveyor-belt software factory […]
The power of experience
When I was much younger than now my mum used to say that when I’ll be her age we’ll talk. This was a kind of a way of putting a lid on a conversation when it got uncomfortable the way I’ll probably do it when my kids start talking (too) much… I used to respond […]