EPICenter 2010 : Software Development War Stories

Recently I had the pleasure of speaking at EPICenter Ireland at Trinity College Dublin with my great friend and colleague Steve Spencer on our experiences over the last few decades

This blog contains many of the links and subject information from this talk however here is a useful quick summary of some of the resources mentioned.

I think the summary I would like to pass on is, treat people well, don’ let them take advantage, provide good opportunities for training. One person what is the killer sign to watch out for, my answer “we will have to start from scratch”.

The guide to people and estimation came from  Rob Thomsett, “Double Dummy Spit, and Other Estimating Games,” American Programmer (now Cutter IT Journal), June 1996

The 13 symptoms of unhappiness came from Sam Guckenheimer Microsoft for reference here they are

**13 Symptoms of Unhappiness
**

• It's the code, stupid!
• Actually it's the requirements!
• No, the problem is that you neglected the architecture!
• Architecture, schmarchitecture. I just want a working build.
• What good is that the way we mix up versions?!
• Not code versions, but the environments, don't you get it?
• Ever heard of security?!
• Yeah, but you ignored performance, duh!
• So what if it worked in the lab -- it's still unmanageable!
• Oh, and did we mention testing?
• Since you're not measuring it, you can't manage it anyway!
• With a process like that, what do you expect?
• It's our culture - you'll never change that.

The project success factors came from : The Standish Group International, The Standish Report, 2001

•Dynamics of Software Development

–Jim McCarthy (Microsoft Press 2006)

•The Pragmatic Programmer

–Hunt and Thomas (Addison Wesley)

•The Productive Programmer

–Neal Ford ( O’Reilly )

•Team anti-patterns

–http://ellnestam.wordpress.com/2009/03/31/software-development-team-anti-patterns/

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