What Kind Of Programmer Are You?
Long time ago, at the dawn of the computer era there were funny legends about The Real Programmer who writes only in FORTRAN, drinks a lot of coffee and beer and NEVER, I mean NEVER writes comments. Today the things are different and the programming is not that mystery magic it used to be and all bosses respected. Today even the children know how to click on the keys and how to write program code even before they know how to write pothooks in their notebooks.
The same logical process happened to the evaluation of the Real programmer’s qualities. It is based on a scientific ground and there is nothing subjective or accidental anymore. A psychological test have been developed that determines your programmer’s personality. The authors claim that it is based on Myers-Briggs tests and that it is absolutely serious although I found some of the questions very funny.
Krishna Kumar Did An Interview With Me On Software Development
My fellow blogger Krishna Kumar from Thought Clusters asked me a few questions about the situation of the software industry in Bulgaria and my blogging inspirations.
His blog is devoted to project management and he has original ideas about how to manage people. I think he believes that we lack some thinking and understanding for the others and this is why I feel his blog so close to my blogs PM Stories and Stop and Think!. And probably this is the reason why I like his blog so much.
Read the interview here. You may find some food for thought.
If you like the posts in this blog or you are interested in the discussed topics, please, subscribe to the RSS feed to guarantee yourself that you won’t miss an interesting post. You can do it in an RSS reader or by Email.
Filed Under Links, Project Management, Software Development | Leave a Comment
My First Article In Quality Matters Magazine
The first issue of the Quality Matters magazine is out and there you can find my first article in a magazine called Why Cutting Off Testing When The Project Is Late Is A Bad Idea. The magazine is available only online in PDF format and you can download it absolutely free (52 pages!) from its web site (only a short registration is required) and I hope that very soon it will be available on paper, too.
The magazine is devoted to the quality assurance in the software development field and has the ambition to present some of the best authors in that area. I am really proud to be one of them! The articles are very good and Quality Matters raises the bar very high with its first issue. I wish the publishers faith and devotion to keep it valuable and useful. I hope that I will have again the opportunity to write for the magazine in the future.
Don’t miss it!
If you like the posts in this blog or you are interested in the discussed topics, please, subscribe to the RSS feed to guarantee yourself that you won’t miss an interesting post. You can do it in an RSS reader or by Email.
Filed Under Links | Leave a Comment
Follow The Sun – Tips For Offshore Development
Bas de Baar pointed me to this great advise for offshore distribution of the work process – Follow the sun:
Build in Asia
Design/Review in Europe
Test in South-America
Every day.
Every 24hrs.
Well, I am starting to believe that this is a great way to speed up the process but a small devil in me asks this stupid question:
What if at some point you need to talk with the people from the previous time zone?
Suppose you found something that you don’t understand in their specification or in their code, or it seems to be wrong. You want to discuss the issue with your offshore colleagues but their working day is over and they went home. Now you have to wait until tomorrow.
I think that the time difference is a huge problem in communication and although following the sun seems to be a good idea it is not a panacea and you have to develop a strong process to ensure communication abilities without disturbing the personal life of your staff.
There is one more great article Bas wrote on offshore software development that I highly recommend: 25 Rock Solid Tips to Supervise Offshore Development. Read it and follow those tips – they are really helpful.
If you like the posts in this blog or you are interested in the discussed topics, please, subscribe to the RSS feed to guarantee yourself that you won’t miss an interesting post. You can do it in an RSS reader or by Email.
Filed Under Project Management, Software Development | 6 Comments
My day-to-day work as a Business Analyst
Today our guest-author is Peter Lefterov – a business analyst at Bulgarian Telecommunication Company.
I notice when I talk about Business Analysis people often have a very fuzzy idea of what I’m talking about. And the deeper I go into defining the profession from a general perspective, the fuzzier it gets.
That’s why I decided to write down the things I personally do on a day-to-day basis, and I hope this will help build a better picture for the uninitiated. Other BAs might do different things, but usually there a level of similarity, otherwise there would not be a name for the profession.
1. Documentation – Most known and usually most tedious BA activity. The problem I’m trying to avoid with this is to have 5 team members and 3 major stakeholders and amongst them 15 different ideas what we are actually doing. The Business Requirements Specification is a tool for avoiding this, but not the only one and often falls short of achieving the objective.
2. Process Analysis – I don’t do enterprise analysis, at least not on my current position. What I do is more focused – when we change the systems people will change their work process. What I’m trying to describe is how things are done now (the AS-IS point of view) and how the work will be done after the change (the TO-BE process). The purpose here is to demonstrate to the team what the changes we are making will actually achieve. It also visualizes in front of stakeholders in detail what business result they have requested.
Filed Under Business Analysis, Guest Authors | 3 Comments
Top-down Planning – Good or Bad?
I read recently an article in PM Hut blog by Keith Mathis where he categorizes top-down planning approach as a project management mistake. I didn’t agree with the author and I will try to put my arguments here hoping to start a discussion.
First point of the author is that top-down planning is old style. He says:
Top-down planning makes the assumption that upper management has the best processes and ideas to run a project smoothly.
I think the author confuses planning with management. Top-down planning means dividing the project’s work into several big parts, then each parts is divided into smaller parts and so on until we reach small enough tasks that we can estimate and assign to somebody. Nobody said that it has to be done by the upper management although I believe that the first steps in dividing the work should be made by the project manager not because she has the best ideas but because she has the best view of “the big picture”.
Filed Under Project Management | 6 Comments
CIO Top 100 Companies For 2008
The CIO magazine announced the top 100 companies for 2008 that are creating new business value by innovating with technology. The chart in the magazine’s site shows the winners and their winning projects. For each company you can see their industry or revenue, their project type and the main technology, the primary business function and its impact. You can click on the company name to get more details or you can click on the tabs to sort the data.
It is intersting to notice that giants like IBM and HP are always “subscribed” to charts like this while Microsoft, for example, is missing. What impresses me most is that a great part of the companies Jim Collins analyzes in his books Built to Last
Take a look at this chart and I will be glad if you share your comments about the companies enlisted.
If you like the posts in this blog or you are interested in the discussed topics, please, subscribe to the RSS feed to guarantee yourself that you won’t miss an interesting post. You can do it in an RSS reader or by Email.
Loyalty
A great quote on loyalty by Stephen Covey. I found it in the Slacker Manager blog and I want to share it with you:
You can buy a person’s hands, but you can’t buy his heart. His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is.
- Stephen Covey
Of course, it is the most difficult thing to do – to win someone’s heart – but I believe that it is the best way to win their loyalty and devotion.
If you like the posts in this blog or you are interested in the discussed topics, please, subscribe to the RSS feed to guarantee yourself that you won’t miss an interesting post. You can do it in an RSS reader or by Email.
What is the project goal?
The PMI definition of a project says that it is “a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service” but it doesn’t say why we need to create that product or service. This definition is so often quoted and it makes the impression that the question “Why?” is not so important. Well, I believe it is.
Many people explain that the answer to the question “Why do we do this project?” is called a project’s goal and it is very important for the project manager to stick to it and never deviate. While I agree completely that everything we do in our professional life should be done for a reason and in project management it means that we should know why we are doing that project and never forget it, I disagree with the term “project goal” because it is misleading.
There is no project goal because only living creatures have goals. A stone doesn’t have a goal so doesn’t a project. There are two parties involved in a project usually – the customer and the implementor (the project team). They have goals and their interest is written down in some form of contract.
The customer’s goal is usually a business goal – to solve some business problem, to increase the income, to decrease the expenses, to maximize profit, or to improve the company image. They believe that this goal can be achieved by creating the product or the service as a result of that project. Many people say that the project goal is the customer’s goal. But there are some questions here:
- What if the customer assumes wrongly that the project will achieve their goal? What if you know that what the customer requests are plain stupid? (In the case of software it is usually because they give direct instructions how the product should look like without having any idea how a to develop software) What should you do if you know that in the end they are going to realize that they have spent their money for nothing?
- What is the implementor’s goal? Is it the same as the customer’s? Isn’t it just to take the customer’s money? At least that is what we do – make software for money. Why should we care about the customer’s goals?
What do you think? I am going to share my opinion on these questions too in the future posts.
If you like the posts in this blog or you are interested in the discussed topics, please, subscribe to the RSS feed to guarantee yourself that you won’t miss an interesting post. You can do it in an RSS reader or by Email
How would you reward your employees – cash or gift?
This is an interesting question I’ve been thinking for a long time on but today I found a post in the Predictably Irrational blog (thanks to Bas de Baar!) and I decided to put my own thoughts on a page. I already wrote about the motivation here but this time I think it’s more a matter of culture (individual and national) than just a management problem so I published my thoughts in a post on my personal blog Stop and Think! Read it there and then share your comments!
If you like the posts in this blog or you are interested in the discussed topics, please, subscribe to the RSS feed to guarantee yourself that you won’t miss an interesting post. You can do it in an RSS reader or by Email
-
Subscribe to this blog!
License
The content of this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial- No Derivative Works 2.5 Bulgaria License-
Admin