As an exercise, planning poker can be quite useful in instances where no prior method or process existed for estimating levels of effort. Problems arise when organizations don’t modify the process to suite the project, the composition of the team, or the organization. The most common team composition for these these types of sizing efforts […]
There is an interesting conversation thread on Slashdot asking “What practices impede developers’ productivity?” The conversation is in response to an excellent post by Steve McConnell from 2008 addressing productivity variations among software developers and teams and the origin of “10x” – that is, the observation noted in the wild of “10-fold differences in productivity […]
The fact I avoid much of the social networking that takes place on the Internet is a feature, not a bug. MySpace and Facebook look like blogging with cool features that someone else controls. As for Twitter, I think Joel Spolsky (2010) has it about right, Although I appreciate that many people find Twitter to […]
I first read about cargo cults in Feynman’s (1985) book, “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman.” So I benefited from the unique perspective he brought to the subject. I think the educational and psychological studies I mentioned are examples of what I would like to call cargo cult science. In the South Seas there is a […]