People say there are certain things that are hard to unsee once you’ve seen them. When you start to see software development and delivery processes through the lens of lean thinking, it seems you can never unsee it again. You can’t fail to notice opportunities for improvement. Sometimes it’s puzzling that others don’t see the same things, but it may be they’re looking at the situation through a different lens.
Continue reading Induced WorkCategory: Uncategorized
My personal quest for a UML diagramming tool
Guest post by A. Cranky, Old Man
tl;dr – I’m using Visual Paradigm.
When I needed a way to create a reasonably good-looking sequence diagram for a recent engagement, I was suprised to discover more than 80 diagramming tools on the market. Given such a large pool of candidates, I expected to find several good ones, and I embarked on my quest in hight spirits.
You’d think at my age I would know better.
Continue reading My personal quest for a UML diagramming toolPoor Misunderstood COBOL
I stumbled across an article about COBOL dating from 2020, and I thought it might be useful to clarify a few points. The article is What Is COBOL and Why Is It in Demand? by Jennifer Seaton, published on the Make Use Of site.
Where to Find Prominent Voices in Software Other Than Twitter
Where to Find Prominent Voices in Software Other Than Twitter
Updated 6 Nov 22
Thousands of thoughtful and experienced software professionals use Twitter to share information and interact with one another. We’ve come to depend on Twitter as a source of information and interaction with colleagues.
With the recent changes at Twitter, many users are looking for alternative social media platforms. But many of us hesitate to “leave” Twitter because that’s where we find industry leaders in the software field, and we don’t want to miss out on what they have to teach us.
Continue reading Where to Find Prominent Voices in Software Other Than Twitter
Ten Landing Pages in Five Minutes
Way back in October, 2022, Florin Pop tweeted this question:
He got 400 responses in 10 hours. Some were lighthearted: “I would use HTML.” Others went into some detail about a favorite webapp development stack. I came to the party late, but I thought it would be a fun thing to try.
How we think about recruiting
There’s an odd situation in the software industry. Employers are adamant that they can’t find suitable talent to fill the technical jobs they have. Job candidates are adamant that they can’t find suitable work. It seems strange to me that both these things are true at the same time.
Many people have opinions and observations about this. Often, they cite academic studies, industry surveys, formal management models, psychology, and various other things that are confusing for a Bear of Very Little Brain like me. I wonder if we could go a long way toward solving this problem if we ajusted, just slightly, the way we think about what we’re aiming to accomplish, on the hiring side and on the job search side.
Scrum in quotes
William van den Ende was trying to find a good balance for quotes included in blog posts, and his effort inspired me to try and assemble a blog post entirely out of other people’s quotes.
It’s a bad idea. Set your expectations accordingly. Here goes.
Continue reading Scrum in quotes
Scrum pain in large organizations
Although “agile” has been around a long time, and Scrum even longer, many large organizations are only now undertaking “agile transformation” initiatives. People in those organizations who have not had experiences elsewhere with “agile” or Scrum are on the learning curve. I’ve noticed a handful of challenges that seem to be fairly common in these organizations.
Maybe it will be helpful to mention some of the common points of confusion and try to clarify them. I hope so, anyway.
tl;dr warning
Continue reading Scrum pain in large organizations
Gilded Rose: Read by Refactoring
People who practice refactoring often turn to the Gilded Rose exercise, originally posted by Bobby Johnson and extended and elaborated by Emily Bache. The exercise can be approached in many different ways. I think that makes it especially useful for exploring alternative ways of dealing with existing code bases.
Several years ago, Arlo Belshee came up with an interesting way to address existing code that he calls read by refactoring. I will admit that I haven’t discussed this with him directly, nor have I attended his training on the subject. I’m basing this on my reading of the idea online and experimenting with the approach on my own. So, I might be missing key aspects of the idea. Please feel free to correct me if that’s the case.
Continue reading Gilded Rose: Read by Refactoring
80/20 Skills
People in our field like to cite various maxims or laws. To name a few, there are Conway’s Law, Hyrum’s Law,
Brooks’ Law, the Peter Principle, Hofstadter’s Law, the 90-90 Rule, Parkinson’s Law, Sayre’s Law, Eagleson’s Law, Postel’s Law (a.k.a. the Robustness Principle), Linus’ Law, the Dunning-Kruger Effect, the Principle of Least Astonishment, Hanlon’s Razor and it’s notable parent, Occam’s Razor, and of course the ever-popular Murphy’s Law.
I’d like to consider a couple of maxims today: the Law of Diminishing Returns and the Pareto Principle, or 80/20 Rule, in relation to the idea of multi-skilled team members on a cross-functional team.
Continue reading 80/20 Skills