During QA time, focus clients on what’s wrong, not what should be

Working with your client on developing software can often seem like a never-ending tennis match of QA and Re-QA. Tweaks here, an adjustment there, pieces of functional makeup scattered about. In the natural…

First mover advantage? It just doesn’t matter anymore.

At the height of the first dot-com boom, people salivated over the idea of a first mover advantage. Being the first e-anything meant you always had a step ahead of anyone trying to compete with you. Who would dare risk buying poodle…

Knowing when to shift gears

There are many metaphors about software design that I think are useful. Unless you’ve written code, it’s very hard to describe the software engineering process in a palatable way. More specifically, it’s very hard to explain what decisions we have to make, why, when and how we…

The meaninglessness of raw numbers

There’s a fundamental problem with the way numbers are presented to the general public. Typically, there’s no perspective of how good, bad, large, or small these numbers are — unfortunately, the main point of presenting numbers in the first place.

The real meaning of agile

We often pitch ourselves as an agile development group, but, sometimes there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what agile means. And, it’s easy to see why.

We promote the fact that our internal development tools help us build rapidly and change data schemas with minimal impact…

What today’s media can teach educators about simplicity

As stern of a focus-on-simplicity advocate as I am, I still need constant self-reminders to pull me away from the compulsive thoughts of doing too much. When I get a chance to create (anything….programming, writing, drawing, painting…

On Brevity

This is my favorite story on brevity.

An apprentice hatter was about to open shop for himself. His first concern was to have a handsome signboard. He composed the words, “John Thompson, Hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money.” The image of a hat was included.

He thought he…

Start somewhere in the middle

One of the best tips I’ve ever read on writing is, when you start putting pen on paper, start somewhere in the middle…some part of the story in your head you’re attracted to the most. Don’t try to write from the very beginning. We spend so much time concerning ourselves with…