July 17, 2009

get ms ie to handle standards?

IE7 is a JavaScript library to make MSIE behave like a standards-compliant browser. It fixes many CSS issues
/IE7/
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July 12, 2009

Software Development Today: Why specialization in Software development is bad for business

Specialization in software development hurts our business! I'm not talking about the kind of specialization that leads to spend some more time in one area than in others. I'm talking about the specialization that leads us to have ... programmers that don't do anything else!
....
This is not to say that we don't need people with particular strengths in some areas (called "generalizing specialists").
Software Development Today: Why specialization in Software development is bad for business
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July 6, 2009

questions for daily stand-up

this is from a pdf on a different topic entirely (PDF: Dr Holt's CCPM Games - Sixes Game), but in the middle (p.8) is a few questions that could be used for a quick daily stand-up:
1. Did you complete the Active Task Yet?
If not: 2. How Much Time is Remaining?
If not: 3. What are you awaiting?
If not: 4. What can we do to help you?
no. 1 and 2 is in effect info om MIT(s), the Most Important Task(s).
no. 3 and 4 is in reality info on what i call BPP (SPP in Norwegian): Biggest Potential Problem.

this could also be used along with a kanban board, especially if you limit yourself to only one Active Task most of the time.

positive effects of asking/ providing this daily:
  • people will recognize the urgency of completing tasks
  • people will disconnect the due date from the actual completion of the task
  • giving time remaining leads to a better daily view of actual project buffer status
  • having a list of BPPs/ "what's holding up our process" is extremely valuable for process improvement and planning
  • "how can i help" may actually provide help to lingering tasks
NB: ask the 4 questions daily, without much discussion, without penalty, with assistance as needed

July 1, 2009

rapid, "throw-away" prototyping is the crucial and neglected stage in project design

a problem I think is endemic in the industry these days [is] the inability or unwillingness to engage in rapid prototyping. Every successful project I've ever worked on (and I've worked on some fairly large enterprise-sized projects), we started by designing and coding a quick "throw-away" skeleton of the application, that let us look at how the thing worked, where the unseen warts were, and where the vendors had lied about their APIs, etc. This is the crucial and neglected stage in project design, one that most modern design paradigms ignore or actively discourage.
The Hacker Ethic - Harming Developers? - O'Reilly Radar
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