quotes
We’re not so different, you and I
Ben Sandofsky wrote a post about why QA departments are still necessary, specifically with regards to mobile app development. He makes a good point: mobile apps create a distribution bottleneck that makes very rapid iteration impossible. I agree, and this is a good angle to think about. I would...
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Grabbing for good enough
Uncle Bob, who I consider my favorite programming writer, had a post a few weeks ago titled “Thorns around the Gold“. In it he describes how writing tests for your core functionality first can be harmful. Instead, Uncle Bob prefers to probe for “thorns” around the “gold” first. I...
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The QA Department Mindset
From this post by Rands, titled “The QA Mindset”: At the current gig, there’s no QA department. […] My concern is that the absence of QA is the absence of a champion for aspects of software development that everyone agrees are important, but often no one is willing to...
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First, do no harm
From a wonderful post by Matt Williams about the type of business he is looking for: A Business Manifesto We are uncovering better ways of running a business and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value: – People and interactions over profits and prestige...
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If you hear “perception is reality” you’re probably being screwed
I was once told in a performance review that “perception is reality.” I was infuriated, and the words stuck in my mind as the most toxic thing a manager could say to an employee. I have avoided writing about it, but the “This American Life” episode about Carmen Segarra’s...
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Keeping talented employees
I saw a tweet the other day about the eight things that keep talented employees: Talented employees stay when they're:
1 paid well
2 mentored
3 challenged
4 inspired
5 empowered
6 appreciated
7 on a mission
8 having fun — Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) August 17, 2014 I’m normally not a fan of reducing human behavior to...
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Two weeks is the worst sprint length
Mike Cohn over at Mountain Goat Software says this in My Primary Criticism of Scrum: In today’s version of Scrum, many teams have become overly obsessed with being able to say they finished everything they thought they would. This leads those teams to start with the safe approach. Many...
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Can you quantify trust?
In a previous article, commenter Robert Kist asked: How are you going to judge if people trust you – what would your indicators be, if you decide to treat it as a metric? This is tricky. I don’t think there’s a good answer. Bad managers, who are by definition...
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Hire talented people and get out of their way?
Whenever I need inspiration for a blog post, I check my LinkedIn feed. I am bound to find a stupid inspirational quote. Today’s is: In most cases being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way. This advice (hire smart, don’t micromanage) is...
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GeoCities and the Qt Designer
In a review of my book, Practical Maya Programming with Python, reviewer W Boudville suggests my advice of avoiding the Qt Designer is backwards-looking and obsolete, such as writing assembler instead of C for better performance, or using a text file to design a circuit instead of a WYSIWYG...
