background preloader

Evidence Based Scheduling

Evidence Based Scheduling
Evidence Based Scheduling by Joel Spolsky Friday, October 26, 2007 Software developers don’t really like to make schedules. Usually, they try to get away without one. Most of the schedules you do see are halfhearted attempts. Hilarious! You want to be spending your time on things that get the most bang for the buck. Why won’t developers make schedules? Over the last year or so at Fog Creek we’ve been developing a system that’s so easy even our grouchiest developers are willing to go along with it. The steeper the curve, the more confident you are that the ship date is real. Here’s how you do it. 1) Break ‘er down When I see a schedule measured in days, or even weeks, I know it’s not going to work. This forces you to actually figure out what you are going to do. If you are sloppy, and pick big three-week tasks (e.g., “Implement Ajax photo editor”), then you haven’t thought about what you are going to do. Setting a 16-hour maximum forces you to design the damn feature. 2) Track elapsed time

Videos Open Access Peer-Reviewed BioMedical and Scientifi Coding Horror: What is "Modern Software Development"? Joel Spolsky came up with a twelve-item checklist in August, 2000 that provides a rough measure of-- in his words-- "how good a software team is": Do you use source control? Can you make a build in one step? Steve McConnell enumerated Software's Ten Essentials in 1997, ten things that every software project should have: A product specificationA detailed user interface prototypeA realistic scheduleExplicit prioritiesActive risk managementA quality assurance planDetailed activity listsSoftware configuration managementSoftware architectureAn integration plan These are great lists. The lists are still highly relevant and definitely worth revisiting today. So here's my question to you: what core set of practices constitutes modern software development in 2006?

New Relic : Application Monitoring Full application stack visibility. Real-time, all the time. New Relic monitors every move your application makes, across the entire stack, and shows you what’s happening right now. Zero in on problems fast with transaction tracing, SQL and NoSQL performance analytics, application topology mapping and deployment history markers and comparisons. We support the following languages Back to School: 10 Great Web Apps for College Students For a lot of college students, the new semester is just around the corner. Last year, we created a long list of great Web 2.0 tools that we thought would be helpful for college students. But given how fast things develop on the web, we thought we would revisit this topic again this year and look at some of the most useful Web 2.0 tools that have the potential to help students do better in school, collaborate with their fellow students, and save them time. Taking Notes 1) Evernote Evernote is a great note taking application, but that only scratches the surface of what it can do. You can also use it to bookmark web pages and write down your own lecture notes. 2) Google Notebook The Google Notebook is one of Google's lesser know products, but, thanks to a very well designed Firefox extension, it's a great tool for when you do most of your work in a browser already. One additional nice feature is that you can invite collaborators to work on a notebook with you. Online Office Suites Bibliography

Agile Software: Business Impact and Business Benefits - 10x Software Development Scrum Chickens and Pigs An interesting discussion came up on the Disciplined Agile Delivery discussion group on LinkedIn. Scott Ambler asked the question, "Is the chicken and pig analogy disrespectful?" Posted on April 8, 2014 4:36:PM by Steve McConnell to 10x Software Development Estimation Types When I get asked for an estimate, my first response is not a cost, a date, or a functionality number. User Stories Ain't Requirements Ain't isn't really a word but people use it, so does that make it de facto a word? 2013 ECSE Discussion Topics Posted I host an executive discussion group in the Seattle area called the Executive Council for Software Excellence (ECSE). Software Project Archaeology New White Papers Now Available We've recently posted more new white papers on our website. Construx Executive Summit 2012

Organizing a PDF library: Mendeley for information extrac I’ve been using Zotero for awhile now. I make no secret of the fact that I’m a big fan. In early July I was testing out Mendeley to give a workshop with a colleague who’s been excited about it. I wanted to see whether Mendeley could reduce any of my pain points. While I’m not moving to Mendeley*, I do plan to take advantage of its whizz-bang PDF organization. I spend a lot of time reading and pulling materials into my library; I spend far less time organizing materials. I usually have a “to read” pile lying around. Zotero had a small point of failure: I expected “get PDF metadata” to be in the Preferences menu, but I had to look up its location on their website. Of my 44 test cases, Zotero says “No matching references found.” on 26 of them. Zotero’s ‘identification’ of the next article is even stranger: Capital, R. I wondered whether Mendeley was grabbing metadata from the files so I took a closer look at these two files. Mendeley does better but it’s not perfect.

Coding Horror: Discipline Makes Strong Developers Scott Koon recently wrote about the importance of discipline as a developer trait: Every month a new programming language or methodology appears, followed by devotees singing its praises from every corner of the Internet. All promising increases in productivity and quality. But there is one quality that all successful developers possess. One trait that will make or break every project. It's an interesting coincidence, because I recently gave a presentation to a group of developers on the topic of source control, and I found myself repeating that very same word throughout the presentation: discipline. Instead of a nice, structured set of projects with logical branches and tags, what ends up in source control is a hairy furball of crazily named folders with no logical structure at all. And it doesn't matter what language you use, either. So I'm inclined to agree with Scott. If you ladies leave my island, if you survive recruit training, you will be a weapon.

Related: