Blog posts on software development

Posts selected fromManagement Blog - Engineering Blog - Investing Blog and other blogs

• Deming and Software Development

  "Dr. Deming’s ideas are about finding ways to improve the effectiveness and reliability of delivering value going forward. That idea is natural for many software developers. I find that software developers understand the value of designing the process to achieve repeatable success over the long term more than others (including managers)."

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• Software Testers Are Test Pilots

  Software testers should be test pilots. Too many people think software testing is the pre-flight checklist an airline pilot uses.

  ...

  Checklists are extremely useful in software development. And using checklist-type automated tests is a valuable part of maintaining and developing software. But those pass-fail tests are equivalent to checklists - they provide a standardized way to check that planned checks pass. They are not equivalent to thoughtful testing by a software testing professional.

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• Practicing Mistake-Promoting Instead of Mistake-Proofing at Apple

  Mistake proofing is a wonderful management concept. Design systems not just to be effective when everything goes right but designing them so mistakes are prevented.

  ...

  But guess what, the unnecessary steps Apple decided to force me through are broken so I can’t just waste my time to make them happy. No. They have created a failure point where they never should have forced the customer in the first place.

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• Which PM Said “The last programme I wrote was a Sudoku solver in C++”?

  "The last programme I wrote was a Sudoku solver in C++ several years ago, so I’m out of date. My children are in IT, two of them – both graduated from MIT. One of them browsed a book and said, 'Here, read this'. It said 'Haskell – learn you a Haskell for great good', and one day that will be my retirement reading."

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• Building a System to Reduce Interruptions for Software Developers

  I feel strongly about the damage done by interruption to maker's focus. My appreciation for this damage to system performance was greatly enhanced as I became a software developer.
  
  In my work prior to software development I could see that interruptions were not ideal but they were not so damaging to my work and they do also have value. But work that requires extra focus, and software development sure did for me, the damage increasing greatly.

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• A Programmers Take on Agile Software Development

  I am also a strong proponent of agile software development. Information Technology projects have a poor success rate. The best method, I have found, to provide better software solutions is agile development (and I find a grounding in management improvement techniques is useful – customer focus, process improvement, systems thinking, understanding variation, data driven management…)...

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• Future Directions for Agile Management

  Agile management (agile software development specifically) is something that makes a big difference in my work life.

  ...

  Deliver working systems quickly (with limited features, add features based on user needs) – [management improvement practice: PDSA, pilot ideas on a small scale, go to the gemba...

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• How to Respond to a Request for Estimates on Software Development

  If they say they need some way of deciding if doing that work is wise or something that is going to be so difficult that it isn't worth it then some kind of estimate is sensible.  If they talk about scheduling, then other explanations make sense to me - talking about the issues with fixed estimates etc. but giving them alternatives of fixed schedule with variable features (if there is a business need to deliver on some date)., etc.

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• Software Testing and the Impact on Quality

  The aim for software testing is not just to fix the bugs software testers catch but to function as part of a system to figure out the reasons those bugs were created and improve processes so fewer bugs are created in the future.

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• The Edge-case Excuse

  I have found “edge cases” to actually mean we don’t want to fix it. Often the issue isn’t needing some special code to deal with an “edge case” it is the coding was done poorly and breaks in many different “edge cases.” It isn’t that those edge cases need to be coded for. It is that the code should have been written in a robust way that didn’t break for lots of “edge cases” but the excuse given for not fixing the fundamental coding fragility is the bugs found are just “edge cases.”

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• 6 Questions to Ask Your Software Testers

  Making sure your software testing process is staying current with the best ideas in software testing is an important factor in creating great software solutions that your customers love. Often companies understand the need to stay current on software coding practices that are successful but fewer organizations pay attention to good practices in software testing. This often means there is a good deal to be gained by spending some time to examine and improve your software testing practices.

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• Applying Toyota Kata to Agile Retrospectives

  Retrospectives are a good method to help improve but if there is no time to think about the issues raised and come up with experiments to improve and review of whether those experiments worked or not and why failure to improve is the expected result.

  Creating a culture where it is expected that any improvement ideas are tested and evaluated is one of the most important changes on the path to a company that will be able to continually improve.

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• Bringing Lean Principles to Service Industries

  Iteration is very important. It is important in proper use of the PDSA cycle – many quick iterations are much better than one long slow one. And for software application development it is an excellent strategy.

  I think iteration is even more important in software application development than most other areas (for now anyway) because many stakeholders cannot visualize what they need from software. Therefore attempts to force rigid requirements up front fail...

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• Testing Smarter with Michael Bolton

  Michael Bolton is a consulting software tester and testing teacher who helps people solve testing problems that they didn’t realize they could solve. He is the co-author (with senior author James Bach) of Rapid Software Testing, a methodology and mindset for testing software expertly and credibly in uncertain conditions and under extreme time pressure.

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• Testing Smarter with Ajay Balamurugadas

  Ajay:

   To be convincing, you might have to work on your reputation first. Work on it. People most of the times say "No" until they are convinced. Once you highlight the benefits of pairing and collaboration, people will listen.

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