Archive for October, 2007

How Hard Could It Be? Five Easy Ways to Fail

Pedro da Ros has pointed me an interesting article from Joel Spolsky about ways software projects go wrong. Five Easy Ways to Fail shows us five step-guide to ensure software failure:

  1. Mistake No. 1: Start with a mediocre team of developers
  2. Mistake No. 2: Set weekly milestones
  3. Mistake No. 3: Negotiate the deadline
  4. Mistake No. 4: Divide tasks equitably
  5. Mistake No. 5: Work till midnight.</li

Have you ever been in any situation like those above?

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Reducing the distance between programming and project management

Some days ago me and [info]bpfurtado were talking about different areas of interest on software development and the distance created by programmers in not involving themselves on another interesting (for me :-)) areas, such as process management, requirement analysis, change control processes, etcetera.
Programmers tend to create a barrier between their tasks and other areas on software development, they prefer to be more specialist. Most of them don’t like to participate on requirement analysis discussions, design sessions, development of test cases. They prefer to code instead of being involved on such activities.
When you work on a software development company, you must have interest at the *big thing*, you need to have the whole vision of your area. People around will put better eyes on you, if you show these interest.
Nowadays at my company I’m participating in activies like use case requirement analysis and programming, because I wanna be involved in the best of both worlds. I wanna increase my analysis and programming skills. It was my decision to participate part time on requirement analysis and the rest on programming activities. I think it’s very important to have this vision and consequently it makes you a better professional. And you? Dou you like to be involved not only in programming tasks?

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