Posted by Robert Merrill on April 26, 2010 under Software-Intensive Businesses, Waterfall (SDLC) | 
I’ve long told my customers that big waterfall software specs are more like insurance policies than blueprints, especially when I hear the phrase “sign-off” more than once a week. They are part of Covey the Younger’s Trust Tax.
But in Deniability, Seth Godin puts it better that I ever could. “At some point, that effort [anticipatory CYA] becomes so great you never actually ship anything, which of course is the very best protection against failure.”
Ouch!
Posted by Robert Merrill on March 2, 2010 under Estimation, Project Set-Up, Software-Intensive Businesses |
Q: Why were they late for the meeting?
A: They didn’t leave soon enough.
But…they got stopped by a train, and they remembered that they needed to pick up a loaf of bread, and…they have a slow car!
Details like speed limits and the police aside, what do the car, and the bread, and the train have to do with it? The trip took 25 minutes, five of it spent waiting for the train, and five of it in the convenience store, and fifteen of it driving. They left 20 minutes before the meeting, and they were five minutes late.
Well, they didn’t plan on the train or the bread.
Do they ever plan on the train or the bread? Read more of this article »
Posted by Robert Merrill on October 8, 2009 under Agile Methods, Software-Intensive Businesses |
If your firm hires or contracts programmers, and your business results depend on their work (and if your business results don’t, why did you hire or contract programmers?), this question is for you. Read more of this article »
