project planning

The US Government's Configuration Management Problems

Joe Townsend probes the news and finds several stories detailing the US government's problems with configuration management. According to Joe, the defense industry and government agencies should be able to improve if they follow their own standards and directives.

The Truth behind Software Development EstimatesThe problem with estimation is that software is not construction. We can’t create software the same way we build a house or manufacture anything else. We can't say, “We can build this software for x dollars per square foot.” But other people often think of our estimates that way. What can you do?
Quitters Sometimes Do Win: How to Recognize and Confront Sunk CostsFrom Freakonomics coauthor Stephen Dubner: "A ‘sunk cost’ is just what it sounds like: time or money you've already spent. The sunk-cost fallacy is when you tell yourself that you can't quit because of all that time or money you spent. We shouldn't fall for this fallacy, but we do it all the time."
What You Can Learn from Sony about Cost Versus ValueSony is now worth a fraction of what it was ten years ago because the company started asking, "What will make us the most money right now?" Your question should not be how much something costs; you should be asking, “How much value will this project provide?” Learn to tell the difference.
Agile Development Teams: Plan or Be Planned ForSteve Vaughn writes that if your team is not planning for future releases, someone else will plan them for you. Teams must embrace the fact that strategic planning will happen and take ownership of the process.
What Team Members Get Wrong with RetrospectivesVenkatesh Krishnamurthy explains some common misconceptions with retrospectives. Having a rigid mindset and believing that teams should only do retrospectives at the end of an iteration or raise issues only during standup meetings reduce agility and result in process-oriented thinking.
Why You Need to Take Technical Debt into AccountTechnical debt is a metaphor for the result of skipping design or the implementation steps in order to achieve a short-term goal. The next time you work with code, remember that changes may be more costly to make because of your prior decisions. You achieved something, but you incurred debt.
Book Review: The Art of PossibilitySteve Berczuk reviews The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander. The book will help you learn how to focus on what’s possible given a difficult situation, rather than just concentrating on the current problem.