I was on the road half to two-thirds time for for about 25 years, nearly always visiting or working with software teams. I’ve worked with teams as small as 2 and as large as 500. I’ve worked in the US, much of Europe, and even a bit of China. The orgs involved might be centered […]
We Haven’t Seen It All Read More »
I’ll tell ya a story. Once upon a time there was a team that had it pretty good. They were internal-facing in a VBCA, supporting a variety of analysts of different types, with about 3 dozen small projects clustered around a large but mostly stable analysis model. The work was mostly about fronting the analysis
Change the Problem Read More »
I saw the five-minute meeting with developer thing again. Not offering it here cuz I don’t much want to give it the publicity. The gist: when you interrupt a developer the time-loss is far greater than the duration of the interruption. There are three cases being made. First, that developers are a special class of
About Interruptions Read More »
So. We’ve talked now about cost & benefit for thin-client, i.e. browser solutions. What are the cost & benefit of fat-client, i.e. app solutions? There is one primary cost for a fat client, as opposed to a thin, and it’s obvious: It doesn’t write-once-run-anywhere. Now a couple of things. We’ve already pointed out that a
HTTP Clients #3: The Cost and Benefit of Fat Read More »
Yesterday, we started with thin (i.e. browser) clients versus fat (i.e. app) clients. We considered the alleged benefits of thin, which I believe we routinely overestimate. Today I want to talk about the costs, which I believe we routinely underestimate. I mentioned the other day how much I prefer a fat-client approach to today’s standard
HTTP Clients #2: The Cost of Thin Read More »
I mentioned the other day how much I prefer a fat-client approach to today’s standard and largely unquestioned reliance on browser-based solutions. I want to step into it, even knowing I’m gonna get yelled at. Freely made admissions to start: 1) I admit there are situations where a browser is best. 2) I admit that
HTTP Clients #1: The Benefit of Thin? Read More »
Yesterday, we talked about Alice’s City On The Hill and her approach to getting there. I offered, instead of the Alice approach, an approach that was Human, Taken, Local, and Iterative. Today, let’s consider this business of Procedural -> Human. Every system for making software is a mixed system, with three kinds of thing in
From Procedural to Human Read More »
Change Pro-Tip: It’s common, but mistaken, to believe that some change I want to make will be procedural, given, sweeping, and final. Let’s imagine someone, we’ll call her Alice. Alice is a mid-level manager, a department head let’s say, neither quite at the top nor quite at the bottom. She’s got some power, but not
Alice’s Approach To Change Read More »
Change Pro-Tip: We can’t (purposefully) change what we don’t sense, what we don’t talk about, or what we assume can’t be changed. I remind myself of this one a lot, because it’s easy to forget in the middle of the circus that passes for professional software development. Changing things means going from A to B
What We Can’t Change Read More »
Changing Pro-Tip: When I remember to line up the"betters", so my "better" is their "better" is his or her "better", my changes go a lot better. A refresher, my definition of coaching is "Creating or exploiting openings through which individuals, including sometimes myself, can step closer to who they wish they were." This is all
Change Pro-Tip: Lining Up The Betters Read More »
