Revised on 13 May, 2015 I found a good post about functional specs when I was reading Ian landsman’s blog this morning. Ian notes the different opinions on whether or not writing functional spec is a good idea – one camp claiming that spec is purely a political appeasement move,…
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Having a great conversation with Val the C# Gal, thought I’d share. So, Christopher . . . Not to back you into a corner, but if you had your druthers, how small would you like projects broken up? A month of requirements gathering, followed by a month of spec writing,…
In my self-appointed role as an effectiveness fanatic, I often ponder the process of setting goals for a project, or for my personal life. Setting goals is tough. “Wait a minute” you think. “What’s tough about goal setting? You state a desired outcome, and BAM! You have your goal. Right?”…
2004 has come and (nearly) gone. I can’t say I’ll miss it much. Not that 2004 was a bad year – but it was a trying year. Growing a business is hard, solitary work sometimes. I’m starting to see my company’s growth curve start to take off, and I am…
Not too long ago, a hard drive failed in my primary dev machine. It turned out that although I had been backing up most of my important files, I had not been backing them all up. Net result? The fruits of about $50,000 worth of my labor was gone. That…
I just read an interesting message posted by Pi Guy on Joel Spolsky’s site. This fellow works as a developer but does not like any of the non-coding aspects of his job: I’m a “programmer” at a small web development company. We do web design, asp/asp.net/sql server applications. I generally…
Working with small businesses, I often find that the person designated to be my point of contact on a given project is made responsible internally for the success or failure of the project, but has no technical knowledge whatsoever. I am accustomed to mitigating this kind of situation by translating…
This morning, I found a great post by Val the C# Gal on the practice of “gold plating” your projects. For those unfamiliar with the term, gold-plating refers to overbuilding a project in order to make more money from it. Val’s post raises a good questions: how much planning is…
Ever since I started in this industry, I’ve noticed that software developers have a curious aversion to criticism of their work product. On an emotional and creative level, I understand why this is so. But on a logical, business-minded level, this kind of personalization makes no sense. Case in point: …
Did you ever consider quitting the computer industry when things were at their bleakest? I definitely considered it after being laid off last year. A friend of mine was (and still is) making money hand over fist with his commercial debt collection business, and he offered me a job (I…