Mention “risk management” and many software developers will cringe and sneak away. It’s understandable. I’ve observed some elaborate risk analyses covering everything from missed requirements to flash floods. I cringe just thinking about it! You could go to extremes in preparing an elaborate risk assessment matrix covering probabilities, impacts, mitigation steps, etc. If you’re going […]
Greatness is hard to achieve and even harder to maintain. Few agile software development teams ever achieve greatness and that’s probably a good thing — they wouldn’t be happy anyway. The best agile teams never get complacent; they never stop improving; they never get too comfortable; they are never happy with their performance. The good […]
Is your goal to preserve and protect or change and convert? Going from a traditional software development approach like waterfall to an agile approach like Scrum, Kanban, XP or Lean, will be stressful and risky. The dangers aren’t hidden in the agile approach you select. The dangers lie within the people you assign to the […]
Some software projects stay in “beta” status for what seems like forever — a kind of perpetual beta. It may seem odd but let’s think about this. Most businesses are effectively in perpetual beta, so the software they develop must be too. How can a mature business be in perpetual beta? How can it not! […]
There are many ways for software development teams to fail. That’s why retrospectives are so important. Learning from mistakes, your own or those of others, is one of the best ways to improve. Last year I posted “10 Reasons Why Projects Cascade Into Chaos”. This is such an important topic that I want to expand […]
Software development estimates are horribly inaccurate. The business people want to know how long it will take and what it will cost to build a software system — fair enough. Businesses routinely operate with schedules and budgets. However, because businesses have schedules and budgets, the business leaders already know how much time they’re willing to […]
Many software teams adopt the top-down approach to software development. Others prefer the bottom-up approach. They’re both high-risk techniques you should avoid. Here’s why. The Top-Down Approach Traditional waterfall teams like this approach. It starts with analysis and works its way down to implementation. The approach begins with high-level market or process analysis (depending upon […]
Companies create Project Management Offices (PMO) as a means of improving software project success rates and establishing best practices. Regrettably, many of these PMOs fail to offer anything constructive. They are often burdensome, costly and wasteful. PMOs are a good idea, in principle. They can be enormously beneficial when done right. When done poorly – […]
Software is finding its way into almost every aspect of our daily lives. Everything from our kitchen appliances and entertainment systems to our automobiles is controlled by software. Regrettably, much of that software suffers from poor design, UX inconsistencies, obvious defects, and sluggish performance. I focus this blog on enterprise software development because it’s a […]
Many surveys have concluded that Scrum is the most widely used agile approach to software development. This makes sense because Scrum is easy to understand and simple to implement — or so it seems. The basics of Scrum are simple enough. We have three important roles: Scrum Master, Product Owner and Software Team. We have […]
Technical debt is a complex topic. Many factors contribute to it and it tends to grow over time. Implementation shortcuts combined with quick-and-dirty fixes contribute to the buildup. But that’s not the worst of it. The biggest problem with technical debt is that it creeps up on you. Imagine a dam with water building up […]
Did Apple make a major blunder in dumping Google Maps and rolling out its own mapping solution? Was Apple dumb enough to believe that its iOS mapping app is as good as or better than Google’s app? Not a chance! I think many people are missing the boat with regard to Apple’s actions and motivations. […]