Construx Blogs
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The 2010 Executive Council for Software Excellence (ECSE) meeting topics have been announced. They are: January Optimizing for Innovation February Accelerating Organizational Change March Successful Leadership in Software Development April Managing the Release Process May Managing "Core" Development...
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A reader of our 2008 Classic Mistakes White Paper made the following observation: I work in the Aerospace/Defense industry and have read your article called Software Development's Classic Mistakes 2008 dated July 2008. I am most interested in questioning the results of your most damaging classic...
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Astute followers of my blog (Hi, Mom!) will have noticed that all of my previous posts are now attributed to “Anonymous”. Same as my forum responses to date. Why? Well, I accidently deleted myself from the site. “Smooth move, ex-lax,” my mom would tell me if she actually did read my blog. A little background...
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The more I work with companies that are struggling with Scrum, the more I’m starting to believe that ‘hybrid’ Scrum adoptions, where people pick and choose which Scrum practices to follow and which to ignore, invariably lead to failure. Whoa! you say… Wait a minute! Agile is about doing what is right...
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…and start solving them. Sounds great, but what does it mean? What’s the difference between managing a problem and solving it? I recently held a workshop on using Scrum to drive process improvement at CIISA 2009 , held in Guadalajara, Mexico, where I focused on using Scrum as a process improvement...
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If you build EXACTLY what “they” tell you, you do it in the timeframe they ask for, and at the cost they wanted to pay, is that a successful project? The project is On time On budget Delivers the requested functionality No defects The team is ready for the next project Is it successful? “Yes,” you say...
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I recently went with trepidation into a class with Pragmatic Marketing called “ Requirements that Work ”, part of their Practical Product Management series. Marketing professionals have been my foil for bad requirements for years and here I was, ready to hear from the experts themselves how marketing...
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Many teams moving to Scrum have questions about the Product Owner position. Is the Product Owner a member of the Scrum team? What role does the Product Owner play in the day-to-day life of a Scrum project? How do we map current functional roles to Scrum roles, specifically with regard to the Product...
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One benefit of my job is that I get to talk to people from hundreds of companies every year, and the people I work with talk to even more people. In recent discussions I've seen a disturbing trend emerging -- disturbing because it's so common and because the effects are so easily predictable...
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A question was posed on one of the Scrum discussion forums recently about changing the sprint backlog during a sprint. The scenario was as follows: the sprint has been running for 2 days when the Product Owner comes to the daily standup and wants to replace a committed sprint backlog item with one of...
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Getting better in software development requires change and change is hard and change is unpleasant. Most of all, it doesn’t seem like we actually change. We talk about change, we start change initiatives, they pay people to teach us new ways, we may even read books, but at the end of the day we seem...
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Is Scrum really only valuable to folks who care about agility (or Agility)? Let's say I'm running a project with defined requirements, fixed scope, a fixed schedule (firm completion/release date), and fixed resources. What advantages does Scrum offer over other project management methodologies...
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Welcome to the first post on my new software development blog! Let me tell you a little about myself. I'm an experienced software developer, tester, program and project manager, QA manager, and development team manager, with over two decades of experience in high tech. I've worked at small startups...
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I have recently read a book called “ Change or Die ” by Alan Deutschman that has some good insights on how people change deeply held behavior. I like to share some thoughts inspired from (and some outright lifted from) the book. We spend a lot of time talking about change. We want to become more agile...
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Construx has developed the State of the Practice Survey with the goal of better understanding which software practices really work, which really don't work, and identify trends in practice adoption. Survey participants will receive a summary report of the findings later this year in advance of the...
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It is not uncommon for me to see on blog posts, newsgroups, or presentations the phrase or comment that something is not, "in the spirit of Agile". In fact a project team could be doing many of the practices of Agile but, if it fails, the agilist will claim that the project was not Agile in...
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I now have a public Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/n/?pages/Steve-McConnell/198720075270&mid=8a4602G316afb94G1ae8a37G4c . I plan to use this page for small scale blog entries, updates on what I'm reading, announcements, and so on.
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I'll be giving a free webinar tomorrow at 10:00 am Pacific time on the 10 Deadly Sins of Software Estimation. You can sign up here: http://www.sdtimes.com/content/webinars.aspx Here's the full announcement: The average project overruns its planned budget and schedule by 50%-80%. In practice,...
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Recently, Mark over on the Agile Project Management Yahoo discussion list posted this little remark. “A feature will take *exactly* the same amount of time whether the estimates are "good" or "bad"! “I swear I'm going to print that on a 10 foot banner and hang it over my desk...
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Is Agile, which was baby a few years ago, growing up to be just another moody development adolescent on the way to becoming a ho-hum mainstream adult? One of the fascinating (or darn scary) aspects of having children is watching them grow up. As they take on more and more decision making on their own...
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I receive several requests a year to sit on various advisory boards, and I always say no--I just don't have the time. Last year I received a request I couldn't refuse from Charles Seybold, Bruce Henry, and Jason Carlson at LiquidPlanner . I had known Charles and Bruce when they were at Expedia...
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After listening to doom and gloom economic reports for the past few months, we decided we would try to do something to brighten our little corner of the world. Here's our official press release about it: Construx Software has designated 25% of its public seminar seats free of charge to software workers...
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The 2009 Executive Council for Software Excellence (ECSE) meeting topics have been announced. They are: January Successful Leadership in Software Development February Overcoming a Legacy of Poor Quality March Organizational Structures April Accelerating Organizational Change May Working Effectively with...
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Each of the previous “done” criterion had the need for the individual applying the criterion to make a judgment call as to the “doneness” of the work item under review. This gives it the power necessary to determine “done” in contextual situations. However, if a person only used one of the criterion...
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For every work artifact we create there is often a short list of attributes or questions that can help us determine if the artifact is done. This short list reminds us of classic patterns that have risen to become accepted truth and classic mistakes that continue to dog us. This list of questions or...
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