project management Archive

  • During ‘The one thing you need to know’ talk at the Agile Testing Days 09 in Berlin, Mary Poppendieck presented a summary of how software development tried to deal with complexity historically. Poppendieck started by quoting Fred Brooks, who wrote that “Complexity is the enemy in software, inherent complexity software...

    How to divide and conquer software projects effectively

    Posted on October 19, 2009 | 2 Comments
    During ‘The one thing you need to know’ talk at the Agile Testing Days 09 in Berlin, Mary Poppendieck presented a summary of how software development tried to deal with complexity historically. Poppendieck started by quoting Fred Brooks, who wrote that “Complexity is the enemy in software, inherent complexity software...

    Continue Reading...

  • One of central agile programming ideas is to deliver frequently and get feedback early. To get the full benefits of this approach, it is not enough just to make sure that we deliver often and seek feedback — it is extremely important to plan our deliveries correctly as well. If...

    Delivering useful software

    Posted on April 28, 2008 | No Comments
    One of central agile programming ideas is to deliver frequently and get feedback early. To get the full benefits of this approach, it is not enough just to make sure that we deliver often and seek feedback — it is extremely important to plan our deliveries correctly as well. If...

    Continue Reading...

  • Jeff Patton from Thoughtworks held a very interesting session at XpDay last month in London, focusing on a common misconception that causes “agile” projects to fall into the same trap that the waterfall ones typically do. Incremental is not iterative Using a very interesting combination of pop music and rock...

    The waterfall trap for “agile” projects

    Posted on December 4, 2007 | 11 Comments
    Jeff Patton from Thoughtworks held a very interesting session at XpDay last month in London, focusing on a common misconception that causes “agile” projects to fall into the same trap that the waterfall ones typically do. Incremental is not iterative Using a very interesting combination of pop music and rock...

    Continue Reading...

  • Every now and then some ingenious project manager thinks of a way to deliver faster by negotiating to skip testing. At first glance, this looks like a win-win deal: customers get software faster or cheaper, as long as they “understand” that there will be problems. Developers, on the other hand,...

    The Zero-Testing Time Bomb

    Posted on October 23, 2007 | 1 Comment
    Every now and then some ingenious project manager thinks of a way to deliver faster by negotiating to skip testing. At first glance, this looks like a win-win deal: customers get software faster or cheaper, as long as they “understand” that there will be problems. Developers, on the other hand,...

    Continue Reading...

  • From the naïve view of an average enterprise software developer, the situation today is a bit insane - most customers will always choose more functionality and faster delivery over testing and documentation - not to mention GUI polishing. They will look you in the eye, tell you that they sincerely understand the software will have problems once it is live, and then come back furious when the software does not work. As if we were not all speaking the same language, somewhere the meaning of 'it will have problems' gets lost in translation. Or maybe it's not the definition of 'problems', but the definition of 'done', or maybe developers and customers really come from different planets...<!--more-->

    Developers are from Magrathea, Customers are from Ursa Minor Beta

    Posted on December 25, 2006 | No Comments
    From the naïve view of an average enterprise software developer, the situation today is a bit insane - most customers will always choose more functionality and faster delivery over testing and documentation - not to mention GUI polishing. They will look you in the eye, tell you that they sincerely understand the software will have problems once it is live, and then come back furious when the software does not work. As if we were not all speaking the same language, somewhere the meaning of 'it will have problems' gets lost in translation. Or maybe it's not the definition of 'problems', but the definition of 'done', or maybe developers and customers really come from different planets...

    Continue Reading...