September 13, 2009
How to Really Measure Software Teams 3
Ever do the retrospective dance? You know the one, where at the end of the sprint everybody plays all the retrospective games: start-stop-continue, timeline, word-pong, or sprint-painting -- and then nothing in your team actually changes?
September 12, 2009
How to Really Measure Software Teams 2
Good metrics are about learning stuff. If you're reading a graph or a report and you don't have an "ah-ha" moment, you're wasting your time. You should know something significantly more after a measurement than before it.
September 11, 2009
How to Really Measure Software Teams
Metrics are important, but they're misunderstood and misapplied. Small, quick, adaptive, immediately-useful metrics can really make a difference. But that's not the way they're usually done.
August 27, 2009
Conference Fun
All-in-all it was the people part that impressed me much more than the presentation material. I'm not sure if I can afford to do another conference -- unless I've invited again to speak -- but I hope I can work it out. I really enjoyed meeting people and hearing their stories.
July 29, 2008
A Process Blast From the Past
I had a chance yesterday to present principles around the MAT to some people from a large organization. It was fun. I hadn't had the MAT material out in a long while, so I was almost as fresh to the...
April 16, 2008
Speck on a Whale
I had a really great experience happen to me in an agile team the other day -- I was wrong. I guess most people would think being wrong is a bad thing, but I look at the ability to be...
March 6, 2008
It's not the Code, Stupid (Part 2)
Ludwig WittgensteinCouldn't there just once be a bikini model who was also a philosopher?Seems like we always get guys like this. Things are never what you think they are. Take developing software. We call it that because -- duh! --...
December 25, 2007
It's not the Code, Stupid
Programming is not about programming. I came to this realization after reviewing my XP and Agile books as part of an engagement for a large client. I must confess that each time I start on my XP books I have...
October 17, 2007
Who me? Worry?
Coming soon is the big day where Y-Combinator chooses its Winter teams. Over on the news.yc board, there's a lot of angst and tension.I applied too (for the first time), but I have absolutely no worries at all about...
July 18, 2007
Ares 1 Won't Make it to the Moon
Ares I, also known as the Crew Launch Vehicle, the flagship of the new Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) is already maxing out weight requirements and is several metric tons short of taking anything useful to the moon. For the...
February 21, 2007
Schmoozing with the Peeps
I'm a member of a local group that supports entrepreneurs, so tonight I thought I'd attend the annual membership meeting. It was fun! If you like hearing about that sort of thing, read on....
December 12, 2006
Speaking Update
Your humble correspondent spoke at the Virginia Piedmont Technology Council luncheon today. The crowd was great, and we had a lot of back-and-forth Q&A after the stand-up. I really like getting out and sharing my experiences, and hopefully somebody...
May 12, 2006
Unusual Attitudes
When I was learning to be a private pilot, my instructor kept telling me I should learn something called "spins." When I asked him what a spin was, he explained that it was basically the airplane twirling violently around, hurdling toward the ground at high speed.
January 20, 2006
Work Work Work
I've been working on a new set of tools for blogs lately. I'm pretty excited about it, and if you're a blogger I think you will be too. It's got all the buzzwords, AJAX, Blog, Web 2.0. Hey -- if...
December 11, 2005
Transitions
It's been a busy last couple of weeks for me, and I apologize for not blogging! A few interesting things have happened.
November 11, 2005
Speaking Update
I will be speaking in Chicago Wednesday night at the Bank Of America Building.
October 12, 2005
Publicity Stuff
Publicity Stuff
September 27, 2005
MAT Backgrounder
I've been putting together some background news articles about the MAT, the wisdom of crowds and predictive markets, for reporters who may need to get up to speed.
September 23, 2005
Welcome Reporters!
We've just issued our first press release, so if you're visiting to check out my blog, you can click on the category links on the right to get a lot of articles at once. There is a MAT category for entries regarding the tool.
September 10, 2005
Welcome DeCA Users!
Welcome DeCA Equipment Inventory users!
August 29, 2005
Department of Defense Agency Uses MAT for Six Sigma Effort
The Defense Commissary Agency, as part of their modernization, re-engineering, and process improvement efforts, has decided to use the Markham Assessment Tool to identify key areas for improvement. "We plan on using the MAT to identify key elements of the...
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August 19, 2005
Checking out the Movies
My wife and I are going out this weekend for our anniversary. We both love the movies, and I try to keep up with what is good and what is not-so-good.
August 16, 2005
Busy Busy
Sorry about the paucity of blog entries lately -- I have been working on a presentation to the Research Triangle Park Rational User's Group.
August 7, 2005
Evolution of Corporations: Similarities with Governments
It used to be, the guy who ran the tribe was the toughest of the bunch. He carried the biggest club, he was the tallest, biggest, baddest, and meanest. It also used to be that the guy who started the company was the big cheese. He hired and fired at will, he had the big ideas, he was the alpha male of the workshop.
So what's changed?
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August 3, 2005
CSS Support Improved in IE7, but Nowhere Up To Par
Great article over on ArsTechnica about how IE7 is supposed to have much better CSS support. As a developer who has been suffering through MS CSS schlock for the last year, it sounds like good news. But that ain't all...
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August 1, 2005
August Newsletter Created
Don't you hate those "flashback" TV shows? It's like they can't come up with any new material so they just rehash all the old stuff. Sounds like a plan to me. Especially for those who don't read the blog. I'm...
July 31, 2005
Shuttle, Shuttle, Everywhere
It looks like the space shuttle is all over the Sunday morning talk shows today. As anybody who has three brain cells knows by now, some stuff fell off the external tank on the way up. I just got through watching the NASA administrator on NBC.
July 29, 2005
Think You Know Your Market? Fuggettaboutit
One of the interesting points in the book I'm reading now, "A Good Hard Kick in the Ass", is that most inventors think they know their market. But having a general feeling about "what to fix" in the world and...
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July 25, 2005
Predictive Analytics: Wave of The Future
Here's a buzz phrase I like: predictive analytics. People like to have opinions and make choices. Computers like to churn data. Put the two together, add some salt, and sometimes you get systems that can predict human behavior. But that's...
July 23, 2005
Infrastructure Management: A New Way
I had somebody email me over the weekend and ask if the MAT could be used for infrastructure management. Not only does it work very well for process quality, it also gives you a good understanding of what to fix in your infrastructure.
July 20, 2005
MAT -- The Theory Can Be Used For Hurricanes Too
Okay. Okay. So I invented the MAT. Looks like the theory behind the MAT, that large numbers of people can make better decisions than small numbers of experts, is going to be used to predict hurricanes.
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July 19, 2005
CSS and the Forces of Darkness (technical)
Programming for the Version 3.0 prototype of the MAT is going along very well. I am trying something new -- tiering the code based on the CSS standard -- and it's a completely different way of looking at things.
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July 18, 2005
Potter Patter (no spoilers)
In the spirit of providing feedback, here's my take on the new Harry Potter book (no spoilers)
July 16, 2005
James Bond: You Knew Who He Was
This week's poll question, "What book did James Bond Write", once again showed that most people usually get the right answers to these things. The correct answer was Birds Of The West Indies Turns out that when Ian Flemming was writing his first Bond book, he wanted a name that sounded as dull as possible. Reaching for a book on his shelf, he decided that the ornithologist James Bond had a truly a dull-sounding moniker. What the real James Bond thought of this is unknown.
July 14, 2005
Slashdot Readers
The story about the LCD display that two people can watch at the same time is here. Also in tech news today, Fujitsu has displayed a flexible LCD that keeps the image even when the power turns off, and 3-D display slot machines may end up in Vegas, baby. Yeah!
Version 3.0 Prototype Started
I started working on version 3.0 of the MAT yesterday, and the design goals I have are completely unrealistic. The nice thing about being your own customer? You know exactly what the requirements are. The bad thing about being your own customer? You know exactly what the requirements are.
July 13, 2005
Principle behind MAT Catching On
Steven Pearlstein has written an excellent column in the Washington Post about how people receiving the aid might be the best people to provide input on where it should go.
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"Principle behind MAT Catching On"
Yes. We Do Windows
Got a call from a potential customer this afternoon, asking if the MAT covers ISO 9001 in manufacturing environments. For those of you who have never been in a start-up environment, when the customer calls, the answer is always "heck yes!"
July 11, 2005
Double-Take: ITIL
The ITIL, or IT Infrastructure Library, is a source of information that looks at the entire IT organization.
July 10, 2005
More Project Post-Mortems Needed
So many times I see shops full of smart, hard-working people who are working day and night, never bothering to sharpen their saw.
Everybody's Talking, but Nobody's Saying Much
Applying the slide rule to the organization, we're looking for the min-max points on the graph. But are people really that simple to understand?
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July 9, 2005
Getting the Word Out: Sharing Information
One of the reasons I wrote the MAT, and this blog, is that I believe that the more we acknowledge and talk about issues in the technical community, the better the chance we have at fixing problems. The web has...
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July 8, 2005
Under the Hood: Tools Used on the MAT
It takes about 5 minutes from the need to change a field and having working code that uses it. All my business logic is abstracted out in its own layer, and I can focus on UI instead of the wiring. Very sweet indeed.
July 7, 2005
Welcome to my World
So enough with the belly aching -- I really don't mean to complain. I would like to humbly point out, however, that there is such a thing as "barrier to market entry" Those guys that want to get elected? If they wanted the economy so much better, they should be working on that.
Speaking Engagment Update
For those of you interested in my upcomning Rational User Group speaking engagment in Raleigh, North Carolina in a couple weeks, attached is the blurb on what to expect.
July 6, 2005
Thin Clients Who Got Too Fat (technical)
Don't most businesses have high-speed internet already? I can't imagine a larger business being on dial-up, does that happen anymore?
July 5, 2005
It's a Numbers Game
Starting to address larger causes leads to "analysis paralysis", where you start taking apart the entire business looking for the Ultimate Cause Of Everything. Which is usually: management sucks!
July 4, 2005
If You Read One Website Today
But as the book review indicates, there is definitely a dark side to all of this, full of sleazebags and poor ethics.
July 3, 2005
Fancy Widgets
As a pilot, I love little widgets and do-dads. Being a computer/technology guy, I've got it twice as bad as most. When flying a complex airplane, for instance, a lot of times we look at a little instrument called a...
Tickle Me Softly
The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that there was no other way it could work Sure. You could train, plan, give tests, etc from the ivory tower. But on the ground, the troops are only going to give a hoot about the things that need fixing.
July 2, 2005
Are Your Deviants Standard?
We were there three months and didn't communicate that information. The MAT got it out in less than 30 minutes.
June 30, 2005
Reaching Down The Leopard's Mouth
I wonder sometimes why companies don't implement the MAT as they should. Right now, I think it's more of a marketing problem than anything else. Part of my goal with this blog is to communicate to people what the MAT...
June 29, 2005
Is it the Tools? or the People?
But there are cases where infrastructure is needed. How do you find out where this is the situation?
Tell Me What, or Tell Me How
Gosh -- how much money has been spent by how many people who didn't understand that last sentence?
June 28, 2005
Deployment as the Biggest Problem
Recently we gave an assessment to an overseas software consulting firm. While they scored highly on commitment to perform Project Management, CM, and Business Modeling, an poor area was Deployment. Ironic that you could do so well in setting up...
June 27, 2005
Web Site Update
FYI The main MAT commercial site has been updated....
June 25, 2005
Synchronicity: It's Never There
You would think that if there's one thing that people could agree on, it's "how well are we following our own recipe?" but that's not the way it works.
June 24, 2005
A Picture Is Worth How Many Words?
When dealing with multi-dimensional data, some of these charts are great if you want to confuse the heck out of people, but not so good if you're trying to explain something: a little goes a long way.
June 23, 2005
Knowing What You Know
What you don't know is easy: go find it out. But I've found that what you do know can cause all sorts of problems.