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Why I preach it
The other day, I gave a presentation on “Three Ways to Get Your Web Development Project Back on Track.” It’s the same overall concept as what you typically read on this blog, in a little different...
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Fantasy: the self-organizing team
I wrote about this phenomenon in a different context about a week ago, but it’s come up again. Twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern, right? I was talking to a client the other day about a...
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Friday Night War Story
Nondisclosure agreements don’t usually come with an expiration date, but this story is so old nobody will care. Still, names have been changed to protect… oh… me. I was doing this Clipper-on-Unix...
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When KanBan crumples
So this week I’m seeing on the KanBan: #101: “I want to be able to comment on a comment.” #102: “I want to be able to post a question in response to a comment.” #103: “I want to be able to post a...
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When they won’t let you do Agile
If you’re a fan here, or if you’ve had more concrete experiences of working on Agile software teams, you probably have a good sense of how well the Agile values and practices can really work. Problem:...
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What to ask first
Oh my. Here’s a Project That Sucks. It sucks so much I seriously don’t (yet) know how to make it not suck. How crazy is that? Good thing I that Making It Not Suck isn’t the immediate task. My job now...
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That’s what my game is
My idol Naomi Dunford suggested that my fans and readers might not be clear on what I do and why it might matter to them. This makes me sad, because I want to be known for more than throwing rhetorical...
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How did we get into this mess?
I’m in the midst of an email conversation with a pretty well-known turnaround CEO adviser, the kind of person who can Make Your Company Not Suck. He’s way beyond me in terms of influence and reach, and...
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Solving the right problem
For several years now, I’ve been describing my business as “Making Your Software Project Not Suck.” Here’s where that catchphrase came from, and how I actually go about doing that. Where it came from...
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Help right now for tech-dependent startups!
(tl;dr: Answer a few easy questions to see if I can help your startup!) Do you have a startup company that’s not yet all the way started up? Not quite done with the software tech product that defines...
View ArticleiTextSharp frustrations
I’ve been working a lot with iTextSharp lately. It’s incredibly useful but also sparsely documented, and the design concept is far from obvious. Here’s what I mean. You don’t instantiate a PdfDocument....
View ArticleThe no-iteration iteration
We were stuck. There we were, a few iterations into new product development, and there was still no deliverable. I was getting frustrated because the little bit of work I’d been doing on the GUI slice...
View ArticleAn analogy that might help
We just got hired as a jazz band, which is great. But there’s this one guy who insists on playing drums and only plays marching music. It’s the way he’s always played music and it’s all he knows. He is...
View ArticleChecklist of suck: Wrong Tech Approach
Everyone wants their software development projects to go well. Nobody wants their project to suck. And yet, the world is full of Software Development Projects That Suck! Why is that? I’ve worked with...
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