As we saw in the last essay, the 80:20 rule seemingly appears in many circumstances. When I was attending college and working as a programmer during the 80’s, there were some commonly accepted tenets that guided our software development processes and behaviors.
Read the full story »What happened to the software industry? I hate professional certifications. It didn’t used to be this way. Many employers are looking for the certificate du jour on your resume as a filter for an interview. Having a certification means nothing. I remember as a child it was a big thing if someone had their black belt in Karate. It meant they were tough until they picked a fight with the real tough guy who knew nothing about Karate. Everyone was awed.
I’m reminded of an interview I had with a young company for a Software Director role. They were at point where they were ready to begin rapidly acquiring new customers. When a new customer signed, …
January was a good month at You Want It When? It had the largest increase in unique visitors in a single month. Unique visitors for the month of January grew ~75% over the month of …
One of the difficulties I have with the Agile software methodologies and its proponents is that they go to far. They are often susceptible to hyperbole while hawking their methodology like used car salesmen. Their …
First, I’d like to wish everyone a belated Happy New Year. I’m starting to get back in to the swing of things, and I’m looking to publish as frequently as I was before the months …
It’s often said, you have to take risks to be successful. Who would disagree with that? Starting a business is risky. Investing in the stock market is risky. Going to college is risky. Getting married …
It finally happened. It was only a matter of time before the day of reckoning would strike. Leading up to the crisis, you’d never have known there were clouds forming in the real-estate and credit …
It was worse than I thought. I figured I’d be able to get at least one essay a week published during the month of November, but that even proved to be difficult. I’m just juggling …
What if you could be more accurate in your software estimates? What if you could gain more control over your project schedule? What if you could improve your product quality and know that you did …
The month of October has just come to a close, and it was an interesting month here on You Want it When? The month started with the first of a series on metrics: “Software Metrics: …