The common thread for all human pursuits is our nature. This is best exemplified in our current economic crisis and the events leading up to the dénouement. Peter Schiff is a market participant and analyst who was scorned and laughed at for his prescient conclusions on the US financial markets and economy.
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In the business of product development striking the proper balance between present requirements and anticipating future needs is an art, requiring a mixture of experience, talent, knowledge, and vision. It’s essentially a function of leadership, leadership that seeks council and then decides. Those leaders who strike the right balance win and secure longevity in the marketplace. Those leaders who wrongly favor the present are doomed to a regrettable future since opportunity is realized when good decisions about the future are made in the present.
The first quarter of 2008 has been a terrific start of the year for “You Want IT When?” The site continues to attract new visitors every month at an increasing rate. One article, in particular, enjoyed tremendous popularity when a popular member of dzone bookmarked the article “A Strategy for Building Stable Applications.” Consequently, the article enjoyed tremendous popularity for the month of March, pushing it to the top read article for the entire quarter.
Change is often good; change is often necessary but only when we understand the value and the consequences of change, can we make good decisions about change.
People who advocate good enough contrast it with perfection, but there is another choice: excellence. Choose to build an excellent product. Choose to build the best product. Not only will it be good for the bottom line, you will find that you are attracting the best talent in the industry. Moral is high when individuals and teams are aiming high. The best talent doesn’t aim to be good enough; they aim to be the best. Aim to be good enough, and those who aim for excellence will leave your company and your products in the dust.
When I was a child, I had a strong aversion to pineapples. Just the look of them made me ill. It didn’t matter whether it was cut or uncut; there was just something about the look that made me believe I would not like the taste. Maybe it was the color yellow, but there was something terribly unappealing about the fruit, and no matter how much my mom would entice me with declarations of how sweet it taste, I would not try it.
I felt the same way about cranberry sauce too. It was an emotional aversion; there was nothing logical about it even though I was convinced my reasons were all logical. Cranberry sauce looks slimy; slimy is disgusting; therefore, it must taste like it looks: disgusting. It’s a logical inference; though, it has little relevance to how cranberry sauce actually tastes.
As I got older, I became more open to giving foods a try (and other things, of course) that were unappealing to me. When I finally gave pineapples and cranberry sauce a try, I discovered how I’d been missing out for so long on enjoying a food that was so pleasurable to me.
Much of the software community has a similar aversion to LOC. Many of their arguments against LOC are logical, but they aren’t relevant to the science and practice of LOC as advocated by its adherents. Sure one can write a line of code with more defects than 10 lines of code, but the Law of Big Numbers says the density observed in practice will be the expected value.
Software size metrics provide benefits to managing your software projects successfully. They improve estimating, monitoring and control, and they provide objective release criteria defining when done is done. However, using size metrics on a software project requires a disciplined approach, and too often discipline is a casualty of intense pressure on software projects, but metrics, when used effectively, have tangible, powerful, and immediate benefits.
In February many of the older articles continued to have heavy readership. I find it interesting to see how the articles of interest evolve over time. Some of the older articles are the most popular articles for the month when not too long ago it was always the latest articles published that would have the largest readership for the month.
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 …
