I see a lot of articles decrying Scrum, Agile, SAFe, LeSS, Kanban, XP, or various aspects of them. Some call for the return to Waterfall. Some pit one against the other, pushing their experience as “the better way.” It’s common — and easy — to point fingers at the process…

(note: this is a rewrite of this article) Whether its Waterfall, an Agile methodology (such as Scrum), a custom-defined process specific to your organization, or one of the many other published software development methodologies (RUP, Crystal Clear, etc.), software developers follow some kind of process to build their software. Even…

There are a lot of articles about software estimation techniques, from story points to hours to t-shirt sizes. What does a story point actually mean? Is it a measure of complexity, size, or time (one product manager that I worked with used to refer to them as “unicorn horns,” because…

I remember when my oldest daughter learned to walk. It was a fascinating process. There she stood, holding onto a chair to keep herself from falling. Tentatively, she would let go of the chair and stand on her own for just a moment. Before she fell, she grabbed onto the…

A quick online search will provide you with a lot of reasons and benefits to create and maintain a budget. For example, you might see references to reaching your financial goals, saving money, or tracking what you’re spending. Those are all great reasons, but they miss the point. This miss…

Conway’s Law is an insight into the design and architecture of systems developed by organizations. Specifically, it states that the design or architecture of a system is effectively dictated by the organizational structure (or communications structure) of the organization. Fundamentally, Conway’s Law is a statement about the impact an organization…

Any software engineer with a little bit of experience knows about technical debt. …

It’s probably a little pedantic to argue about terminology used for a time-boxed process to deliver software, but hear me out. For most teams following an Agile process, that time-box is called a Sprint. It’s meant to convey that the team “sprints” during a short period of time to solve…

Many years ago, I worked for a consulting company that was asked to provide “best practices” for their software development teams. Dutifully, I helped put together what I thought were some best practices that they should follow. Today, I don’t remember what best practices I captured for that client, but…