When we are assigned with a task, we are usually expected to:
I think Mr. Adzic must have met some real bad MCSD.NET who passed all 5 exams solely by learning by heart the damn brain-dump stuffs from Test King or the similar when saying that he would automatically fail a candidate if s/he happens to have the word MCSD.NET in his/her CV. I do have an MCSD.NET and I think that is way too big a generalization that Mr. Adzic makes.
Read more…
In 1975, Frederick P. Brooks wrote one of the most influential books in the software engineering field, The Mythical Man-month. Within this book, the essay with the same name, The Mythical Man-month, is cited the most by many software managers, but unfortunately, it is much less often read or understood. Read more…
Hai raised a question about the need for QCs in a project team. Basically he described an situation in which a manager was probed by a developer who believed QCs were not necessary for the project team because developers and BAs could handle all the QC’s tasks, and thus, having the QCs was an unnecessary effort. Read more…
1. The Code is the Design
At university, most of us are taught that the development of a software should go through the following phases: requirement specification, design, construction (or coding), and testing. By gathering system requirements (e.g. from the clients, market researches etc.), analysts would come up with a bunch of functional and supplementary requirement documents, use case model and specifications during the requirement specification phase. Read more…
Behind closed doors – Secrets of great management, by Johanna Rothman and Esther Derby, walks the readers through a story of a mid-level manager, Sam, who turns a group of “disconnected” people into a single jelled team who works together to achieve the organization goals. Read more…
Lately, I’ve seen some job posts in the local newspapers which seek for senior .NET developers and senior Java developer who have at least 4 years of experience in .NET/Java, and feel a little bit dissatisfied with them. Read more…
Imran wrote that people often cheat in their CVs by enumerating things that they don’t really know about. He also suggests basic sets of knowledge, each for a specific skill/tech (e.g. Java, design patterns etc.), that a person needs to possess before claiming the skill/tech in the CV. I generally agree with his observation about the fact that many developers exagerate about their competences in their CVs. Read more…
An interesting post by Jeff Sutherland in the Scrum development mailing list. Thanks to Marco at http://brainscrum.wordpress.com/2006/08/28/the-importance-of-agile/ that I found this.
Prof. Peter Senge of MIT was asked to update “The Fifth Displine” for republication as one of the leading business books of the 20th century. He sent a note to Edward Deming asking him for a comment for the book. He wasn’t sure Deming would response as he did not know him and Deming was over 90 years old at the time.
The father of the Japanese post-war industrial revival and was regarded by many as the leading quality guru in both Japan and the United States. Scrum roots are in Japanese lean development and that was started by Deming. So really, what we are doing is a U.S. initiative that had to be repackaged by Japan because of dysfunctional management in the U.S.
Deming responded to Senge: “Our prevailing system of management has destroyed our people. People are born with intrinsic motivation, self-respect, dignity, curiosity to learn, joy in learning. The forces of destruction begin with toddlers—a prize for the best halloween costume, grades in school, gold stars—and on up through the university. On the job, people, teams, and divisions are ranked, rewarded for the top, punished for the bottom. Management by Objectives, quotas, incentive pay, business plans, put together separately, division by division, cause further loss, unknown and unknowable.”
Senge comments: “I believe that the prevailing system of management is, at its core, dedicated to mediocrity. If forces people to work harder and harder to compensate for failing to tap the spirit and collective intelligence that characterizes working together at its best.”
The importance of Agile processes and particularly Scrum is that we are changing the way people work all over the world. While we are often surprised at the resistance to change we see, we can take confidence that we are driving forward Deming’s vision and not just in the world of software. If he were alive today, he would certainly be encouraged by it.
Jeff Sutherland
Recent Comments