So one of the biggest challenges I’ve repeatedly heard about technical debt is that although the delivery team knows it exists, there is no easy way to measure the actual cost of technical debt. However, there are ways to help bridge the unspecific to the specific. With technical debt, using a financial analysis of comparingContinue reading “How to Measure Technical Debt”
Monthly Archives: July 2015
Engagement Ceremony
If there is ever an art to delivering technology, it’s about knowing when and how to prioritize events as they unfold. Some events are small and may only need an email. Others, a simple test or instant message may do. At higher levels of modality are direct phone calls with screen sharing, Skype, or even face to faceContinue reading “Engagement Ceremony”
Types of Technical Debt
There are three primary types of Technical Debt: Naïve technical debt Unavoidable technical debt Strategic technical debt Naïve technical debt is common where a specific best practice is not followed due to being unaware of the best design pattern, unfamiliar with naming convention, documentation guidelines or even coding guidelines such as following abstraction in developmentContinue reading “Types of Technical Debt”
Technical Debt Explained
This will be first in a series of blogs. Technical debt is an interesting term that has been formed in the IT industry in order to have non technical businesses understand the cost of building code in a manner that causes higher maintenance and increased barriers to changing. Technical debt is intended to have aContinue reading “Technical Debt Explained”
Weatherman and Forecaster
Good project managers (and Scrum Masters) consider themselves like project “weathermen” — they report the current project conditions and forecast the future as accurately as possible. One important aspect of a weatherman (or weatherwoman) is to escalate quickly and effectively. The project manager should have a “sixth sense” or intuition when a project is going downContinue reading “Weatherman and Forecaster”
Does Empathy Matter in the Workplace?
It’s very common in software engineering to recognize there is a right way to do things and then there is everything else. Often, that “everything else” is the wrong way to do it. For instance, using no design pattern or an incorrect design pattern (i.e. a behavior pattern for a concurrency problem) would be “everythingContinue reading “Does Empathy Matter in the Workplace?”
User Stories Expanded
This is a continuation of my July 16th blog on User Stories. User stories in the simplest form is documentation for Agile delivery. However, User stories are not necessarily requirements. There is a fine line between a user story and a requirement and difficult to often distinguish. A user story is different than the “mustContinue reading “User Stories Expanded”
The Importance of Visibility
At one of my former employers, they were implementing a huge engineering project (estimated costs in the billions) and brought me in to lead the IT project oversight for the adoption of software to support the Reliability and Maintenance (R&M) of specialized oil tankers once placed into commission. At the onset, the overall R&M Project Manager believed this extra levelContinue reading “The Importance of Visibility”
Building Good User Stories
In developing accurate requirements and derive accurate estimates from client engagements, user stories are increasingly becoming the de facto standard for documenting. Simple in concept, but difficult to master, user stories have this basic format: As a <actor/user>, I can/want <what> so that <why> The “how” is kept out, since that is what the deliveryContinue reading “Building Good User Stories”
Teams Today and In the Past
Modern day development teams can learn a lot from our history. For instance, the Three (or Four) Musketeers: One for all and all for one! This brings the scrum model of a unified team into principle that everyone is here together and the team in indivisible, i.e. together in one unit. Teams should practice “gemba” or swarming whenContinue reading “Teams Today and In the Past”