Managers Under Attack!
We're under attack! In just one week I read at least three accounts of people telling me that my job (as a manager) is on the line. P...
The Slightly Above-Average Programmer
OK, ok, I admit. I'm only a slightly above-average programmer. I love writing code, and I know how hashtables work and what mutexes a...
What’s Driving Our Process Improvements
The first couple of years after getting my driver’s license, I was a really bad driver. Taking a seat behind the wheel (if I could find...
Fan Mail on Iterations and Increments
Hi Mary, Thank you so much for your reply! Feedback from the experts on my writing really helps me to plug the holes and to soften the sh...
The Avalanche of Unfinished Work
Last week I sent a message to everyone in our organization, telling them not to allow other people to take any shortcuts and hand down un...
Honor Thy Errors
Errors are an essential part of biology. Countless species on this planet could never have evolved if it wasn't for the intentional e...
New column in The Software Practitioner
This week Robert L. Glass, writer of a number of great books, like Facts and Falacies of Software Engineering and Software Creativity 2.0...
Every Project Will Fail
We all know the industry reports (particularly the CHAOS report of the Standish Group) saying that only a small number of software projec...
Arthur C. Clarke (or HAL vs. IBM)
Sorry, this is completely off-topic. But it’s important to me, so deal with it… It’s already been published everywhere ...
The Agile Blind Spot
The biggest problem with agile methods is that they rely on people being smart and attentive. The "people over process" paradig...
Traditional Risk Management Doesn’t Work
Last week I attended a presentation on Risk Management, given by Karel de Bakker from the University of Groningen. Mr. De Bakker is doing...
Agile Book Writing
Let me tell you how writing a book (at least in my case) is simply another agile project: I have a high-level feature list that contains ...
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