Alistair Cockburn says “A user story is to a use case as a gazelle is to a gazebo“. If you are extremely familiar with both techniques then this makes sense.  If you are not… Read More

We often hear the customer is always right!, but is this really true? Haven’t we all been in situations where the customer is asking for something unreasonable or is simply downright w… Read More

Connecting with your customers and delivering value depends on understanding your customer’s requirements and selling the correct product or solution that solves your customer’s… Read More

Opinions vary on whether a project manager needs to have domain experience.  Certainly project managers that do not have domain experience will be the first to say that domain experienc… Read More

Virtually everyone complains that there is poor documentation for software systems. However, if you ask the same people during a project to document what they are doing then they will tell y… Read More

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) was adopted as a standard by the OMG in 1997, almost 20 years ago.  But despite its longevity, I’m continually surprised at few organizations a… Read More

Extreme programming (XP) introduced most people to pair programming. The theory was that the sooner that code was reviewed, the more effective the review — so how much more effective c… Read More

It is a guarantee that don’t like someone on your development team and they have behaviors or habits that you might find objectionable: Mashable talks about 45 most annoying offic… Read More

Infeasible software projects are launched all the time and teams are continually caught up in them, but what is the real source of the problem? There are 2 year actual projects for whic… Read More

We often hear the term schedule risk, however, it is generally a Red Herring. Stating that the schedule might stretch is about as useful as saying that eating can cause you to… Read More

All tools are useful when used appropriately, and User stories are no different. User stories are fantastic when used in small teams on small projects where the team is co-located and has ea… Read More

Just as eternal as the cosmic struggle between good and evil is the challenge between our two natures. Religion aside, we have two natures, the part of us that: thinks things through; m… Read More

3 of 10 software projects fail, 3 succeed, and 4 are ‘challenged’1.  When projects fail because you cut corners and exceed your capabilities then — you get what y… Read More