Technical Debt: Why We Work Harder Instead of Smarter
We’ve all heard the cliché, "Work smarter not harder." In an article he wrote for ACM’s Communications magazine, Phil Armour wonders, “If we were smart enough to do that, wouldn’t we already be doing it?” Sometimes we simply don’t know how to work smarter. But sometimes we don’t work smarter because we choose ... or are not allowed to do things right the first time.
Abraham Lincoln said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” Sharpening our axe requires several things:
Frequently Asked Questions About Software Sizing
Software is everywhere in modern life - from automobiles, airplanes, utilities, banks, to complex systems and global communications networks. They run the gamut from tiny applets that comprise just a handful of instructions to giant systems running millions of lines of code that take years to build.
Software professionals are at the front lines of this information revolution. This post addresses Frequently Asked Questions about measuring the size of software applications after they’re finished and estimating the work for a project that has yet to be started. We hope it will help software professionals do a better job of describing what they are building for their companies as software continues to grow in strategic importance to our companies and to our daily lives.
Question: What do we mean by the term, “Software Size”
Forrester Survey on Agile Development
QSM has been collaborating with Forrester Research on a report focused on the current state of Agile development. Prior Forrester data shows an adoption rate of about 38% among developers in 2010 and continuous growth YoY in the last three years. However few have really scaled it to the enterprise level. Have you?
To get a better data representation, we encourage to participate in this survey. Tell us about your current and future Agile development plans. This survey will ask questions like:
Managing Software Risk via "Whether Forecasting"
Here's a risk question for you:
If today’s weather forecast predicts a 40% chance of rain and it actually rains, was that forecast “inaccurate”? If the weather channel predicts a 40% chance of rain, but the sun shines all day, was the forecast “accurate”?
Software project estimates, like weather forecasts, should always be accompanied by some explicit attempt to quantify the risk that the actual outcome will differ significantly from the estimated outcome. Estimates delivered without explicit risk assessment are more like targets: goals someone wants to achieve.
What If? The Power of the Question
After being away from QSM and the software world for three years, I was blown away by SLIM v8.0's dynamic product integration. I knew it was coming, yet I was still impressed by the simplicity and power of analysis promoted by real-time data and tool links across the SLIM Suite that frees managers to focus on the important program issues.
SLIM-MasterPlan is the center of the SLIM Suite product integration. It improves upon previously existing program management features of aggregating multiple SLIM-Estimate projects and ancillary tasks with two new capabilities:
