tagged by: productivity
BigScreen
How do you improve the productivity of software developers?
16 December 2006
bliki
CheaperTalentHypothesis
One of the commonly accepted beliefs in the software world is that talented programmers are more productive. Since we CannotMeasureProductivity this is a belief that cannot be proven, but it seems reasonable. After all just about every human endeavor shows some people better than others, often markedly so. It's also commonly observed by programmers themselves, although it always seems to be remarked on by those who consider themselves to be in the better talented category.
8 February 2008
bliki
FixedPrice
Many people belive that you can't do a fixed price contract in an agile project. Since the whole point of an agile process is that you cannot predict the future, this isn't an unreasonable supposition. However this doesn't mean you can't come up with a fixed price agile contract, what it really means is that you can't come up with a fixed scope contract.
29 July 2003
bliki
PairProgrammingMisconceptions
A bunch of common misconceptions about pair-programming.
31 October 2006
bliki
CannotMeasureProductivity
We see so much emotional discussion about software process, design practices and the like. Many of these arguments are impossible to resolve because the software industry lacks the ability to measure some of the basic elements of the effectiveness of software development. In particular we have no way of reasonably measuring productivity.
29 August 2003
bliki
DesignStaminaHypothesis
Is it worth the effort to design software well?
20 June 2007
bliki
FrequencyReducesDifficulty
One of my favorite soundbites is: if it hurts, do it more often. It has the happy property of seeming nonsensical on the surface, but yielding some valuable meaning when you dig deeper
28 July 2011
bliki
TradableQualityHypothesis
I commonly come across developers who are frustrated because "management want more features, they don't care about quality". I'm always sad when I hear this, because when I hear this I know that the developers, management and their customers have already lost. Their defeat has been caused by framing the situation in terms of the tradable quality hypothesis.
21 February 2011
bliki