There is much discussion about how to build software right. Agile techniques help in getting the software right. But are a good process and a good result good enough? Are you building the right software? I’m a big fan of risk management and prioritized feature lists but they are not enough. You need to understand […]
Project Deadlines Are Targets Not Absolutes
The practice of senior management selecting a deadline and telling the project team to meet it lives on. It’s frustrating for all of us but there are many good reasons for this approach. Big companies have many facets to their businesses and coordinating all the activities toward a common end date is as tough as […]
Agile Is Widely Misunderstood
Agile software development offers great promise. Agile techniques are simple, team-oriented and low-overhead. Too good to pass up, right? Not so fast. Software development is risky business. There are no panaceas and no guarantees. In an enterprise environment, you will still need project managers to control chaos, manage risk, deflect interruptions, and resolve issues. So […]
Large-Scale Distributed Agile Is Tough
We generally think of agile development teams as being 5-7 people. That’s fine but it’s hard to build a major enterprise application in any reasonable time frame with such a small group. You can create multiple small teams and face the challenge of coordinating them. Now add the additional complication of not having all the […]
Successful Agile Teams Are Focused
Completing any software project successfully is not easy, regardless of the methodology you follow. One critical success factor is focus. The team must be able to answer the following questions without hesitation: What is the goal of the project? Who is the target audience? What is out of scope? Simple questions? It may seem so […]
Agile Teams Estimate Together and Are Accountable Together
In order for an agile development team to do well, the individual team members must do well. The reverse is equally true. At the end of each sprint, everyone must be held accountable for what they committed to deliver both individually and collectively. Do you know who your star performers are? Do you know who […]
The State of Agile
Enterprise Adoption of Agile Development Will Not Be Easy Agile software development is going mainstream. It has arrived in major corporations across the globe along with high expectations. This sets up the inevitable – a fall from grace. My time in the software business is measured in decades not years. I’ve seen many solutions to […]
The move to IPv6 finally heats up
It is suddenly ‘breaking news’ that the world will run out of Internet addresses sometime next year. I wrote about this subject back in October, 2007 in an article called “IPv6 Support Is Now Mandatory for Many Suppliers”. It was published in the Indus Business Journal and can also be found on my website. When […]
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