Archive for Business

The big picture

September 18th, 2008 • Business, agile, gtd, software development
Tags:

Software development is fun, there’s no doubt about it. All the collaboration, client interaction, protoyping, system architecture, and all that lovely code.

But, what happens when we, as developers, get too close? What happens when we get too involved in the code?

It all sounds rather obvious, but it can happen:

  • We don’t take a regular step back.
  • We lose the wider perspective.
  • We lose visibility of what ‘finished’ looks like, what parts make up the whole and how close we are.
  • We strain relationships with ambiguity, overly detailed feedback and uncertainty.

Getting this wrong can result in project failure. Getting this right takes a strong, close, confident and brutally honest relationship between all members of a project team. All members maintain a focus on the scope, plan and budget; especially the seniors. Daily catchup meetings provide a platform for team members to demonstrate their responsibly to the rest of the team and a platform for all members to consistently establish their awareness of the whole. Challenge is normal and data is king.

With all this in hand, projects flow and risk is clear and manageable. Team members are empowered and in every way are a part of the solution. Resource management is possible early and in perfect balance. Reporting and escalating is possible iteratively, keeping everyone empowered and in the loop.

How do developers get to this place? More to follow…

Uprooting agile

September 14th, 2008 • 2 comments Business, Internet, agile, software development
Tags: , , ,

Agile methodologies are being bantered around again and are quite often discussed as if for the first time, with an energy that is exciting, but at times with a level of certainty and yet incompleteness in some people that just doesn’t seem to fit – I’ve recently sat through presentations and had discussions where people seem to be looking for some kind of fame or self-certified expert opinion without getting to the roots of this clearly historically evolved perspective – They are grasping at small aspects of what appears to be a much broader subject that requires careful review. Don’t get me wrong, i love the banter, but either i am just well far behind everyone else on this subject (which is most likely true), or they are just blagging.

So, my mission is to uproot the agile working methodology and get an understanding of:

  • What are its parts?
  • What are its predecessors and its history?
  • What is its scope and who does it impact (it’s clearly a lot more than TDD, although some people don’t seem to think so)?
  • Is it actually possible to “do” or “not do” agile, or is it valid to adopt only some of it’s parts (This sounds like an obvious one, but i’m fed up with hearing “we do agile” and “we don’t”!)
  • How can we benefit from its many parts?

I’ll be posting more as I progress my uprooting.

The origins of Mac OS X

August 28th, 2008 • Apple, Business, OS X
Tags: , , ,

Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP

Quite an interesting history and explains why OS X is such a good OS

i just love this

August 26th, 2008 • Apple, Business
Tags: ,

fantastic advice from a business icon. excellent speech. i do somehow feel the audience didn’t quite get it mind you – possibly because Steve started by telling the bunch of graduates that he didn’t see the point in finishing college. That confused ‘em

congratulations iPhone App Store

August 26th, 2008 • Apple, Business, Internet, iPhone
Tags: , , ,

What an incredible commercial success! Drop a shopping cart into thousands of chic-geek professionals’ pockets and watch them get bored, go browsing and buy stuff they’ll rarely use! Works for me! I love spending money on games and apps i’ll never get round to using in anger. It all seems so polite, with prices ranging from £0.59 to £5.99 (well, that’s the range i’ve been willing to stretch to so far). I just can’t feel offended with such low prices, even if the app isn’t quite what i need, er, ever!

Well done Apple! A job exceptionally well done.

Newer Entries »