I'm hearing about a lot of companies that act like they're agile but the only agile thing they do is the SCRUM process. Is this enough to be considered agile? Using SCRUM alone seems like the perfect excuse for a bad manager to get more meetings more often. Should I be weary of such companies? ...
What are your experiences with SkinnyBoard? ...
We have a distributed team working on a mid-sized project; I am currently the only technical person involved. At the beginning of the project we had a discussion on what to use for project documentation and we agreed on a wiki. We are now a couple of months into this project and still nobody except me has put any actual content into the...
Have you ever worked on a long-term project designed for a hardware base which is currently cost prohibitive? The feasibility of such a project would be dependant on the hardware being cost effective in ~5yrs . . . If so: Did the project actually go into Production? Did it fracture in its Scope? Was it Abandoned? ...
I have read on Stack Overflow some people that have converting to C#2.0 to C#3, but is it really worth it? I have a project that is done at 75% before going in maintenance phase. I am asking to myself if it is worth it to switch to C#3.0? Update: The project will have a web interface now so before entering the maintenance phase we hav...
I am about to join a new software team midway through a project. They are using ExtremePlanner to track their progress. While they tracking tasks completed, they are not tracking how the estimated size of the project is changing over time. In the short time I have been monitoring the project this estimate has changed faster than the co...
I'm probably asking for the world, but is there any Windows-based software for easily managing lots of tasks/projects and all the associated documents (spreadsheets, Word documents, other files) that can be quickly navigated/searched. I deal with probably 10-20 active projects and tasks, some lasting only a day or so, some lasting week...
Besides open-sourcing your project and legislation, are there ways to prevent, or at least minimize the damages of code leaking outside your company/group? We obviously can't block Internet access (to prevent emailing the code) because programmer's need their references. We also can't block peripheral devices (USB, Firewire, etc.) The ...
... that you've never seen before. But at the moment, you are are focused on task X, and you really don't want to believe what you've just seen, so you let yourself believe that the crash/problem was just some random fluke. And then you forget all about it. Weeks or months later as your app gets wider usage and that fluky thing you s...
I am trying to find sensible resource-allocation models for developers. The department will have many different projects for different external customers, so I need to make some guidelines in order to avoid people getting angry due to lack of focus, not working on things they want to, etc. Currently I have suggestion for a model: Ju...
What advice can you give to someone who is going to assume a role of software development project manager for the first time? Please list up to 7 things in order of importance and focus on quality and relevance of every piece of advice, rather than overall quantity of tips given. Less than 7 is perfectly OK. ...
Every software development professional (and especially project managers) has to deal with a never ending stream of e-mails. What is the best way of organising them in MS Outlook? Obviously some fancy issue tracking tools give more flexibility but I am interested in plain vanilla approach that can be deployed within most organisations. ...
In our company, developers always have dozens of important tasks assigned and tight deadlines in which to complete them. In this environment, a code review often shows that their program will execute correctly but is "smelly", i.e. hard to read, hard to maintain and a potential breeding ground for bugs. How do you persuade developers (...
I am sure we have all been in this boat. You have two or more projects that are both critical and need to get done. How do you split your time to handle each project? Ideally you could go to the stakeholders and get them to decide the order. Well, that's what I would do. But let's say they both need their projects progressed for so...
Obligatory up-front clarification: I have a great boss. Very smart guy. Respectful towards all. Dude is awesome. Seriously. Now for my question: I am looking for an easily digestible book to possibly present to my boss/team. Background info: More and more of our meetings at work involve my boss/team pondering how to implement ...
Just like human beings have vital signs (e.g. temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing function); what vital signs are essential to collect and track to aid in the evaluation of the overall health of a project? No clear winner yet based on the voting to date (June 2009). ...
When reviewing requirements specification (that includes functional, non-functional requirements, constraints etc) however small or large it is what are the "deadly sins" committed by authors to look out for? Please list not more than 7 most essential things (in order of decreasing severity) that being done (or not done) in requirements...
Let's say you already "know" what your client wants from you (i.e. you already did some analysis and have some clue about what are you supposed to deliver). What are the next steps you usually go through after this phase? In other words, what are the steps (in terms of preparation of the framework, plugins, repository, etc.) you do in th...
We have different steps in our planning for online webprojects: 1) Information Architecture Provides user stories Provides wireframes 2) Design Use Wireframes to develop a nice design 3) Development 4) Testing I know that working agile asks for dedicated teams. But it is impossible to have a dedicted IA until the end of the pr...
We are looking at hiring a software development project manager. His job is going to be concerned with running multiple dedicated project teams focused on delivery of software for external customers. He will also need to provide support to our business development unit and oversee post-implementations support of the aforementioned softwa...