Aggregated enterprise architecture wisdom
Gene Hughson This week’s episode of Tom Cagley’s Software Process and Measurement (SPaMCast) podcast, number 376, is something new. Tom hosts a discussion of what to expect re: technology in 2016 with the full cast of his regulars: Jeremy Berriault (The QA Corner), Steve Tendon (The TameFlow Approach), Kim Pries (The Software Sensei), and me (Form Follows […]
Maybe it’s a sign. Although I haven’t made New Year’s predictions in the past, this year I took part in a panel discussion with Jeremy Berriault, Steve Tendon, Kim Pries, hosted by Tom Cagley for his SPaMCast podcast (it should be posted this weekend, I’ll link to it when it does). As Tom described it […]
This week’s episode of Tom Cagley’s Software Process and Measurement (SPaMCast) podcast, number 373, features Tom’s essay on #NotImplementedNoValue and a Form Follows Function installment on simplistic mental models. Tom and I discuss my post “All models may be wrong, but it’s not a contest to see how wrong you can be”, talking about cognitive […]
Greger Wikstrand‘s tweet from earlier this week packed a wealth of inspiration into one image: The second statement particularly resonated with me: “The present is built on the past.” How often do we, or those around us, long for a chance to do things “from scratch”. The idea being, without the constraints of “legacy” code, […]
People of a certain age might remember the Road Runner cartoons from their childhood. In each episode, Wile E. Coyote suffered numerous accidents attempting to snare the bird using products from Acme, Inc. Aside from the opportunities for a product liability lawsuit, I always wondered why he didn’t just quit buying from them. Sometimes I […]
The one thing you can be sure of is that nothing is dependent on only one thing. Michael Feathers‘ tweet last week brought this to mind: Too often we construct simplistic mental models that fail to account for outcomes that are possible, but inconvenient for us in some way. As Aneel noted while discussing OODA […]
Prof Bo Molander once pointed out to me and the other students in the class that when you try to change people, you go up against billions of years of evolution, “good luck with that” and when you try to change groups, you go up against millions of years of evolutions, “good luck with that […]
Much has been written about the potential benefits of designing applications using microservices. A fair amount has also been written about the potential pitfalls. On this blog, there’s been a combination of both. As I noted in “Are Microservices the Next Big Thing?”: It’s not the technique itself that makes or breaks a design, it’s […]
This week’s episode of Tom Cagley’s Software Process and Measurement (SPaMCast) podcast, number 369, features Tom’s essay on stand-up meetings, Kim Pries on mastery, and a Form Follows Function installment on #NoEstimates. Tom and I discuss my post “#NoEstimates – Questions, Answers, and Credibility” and take on whether it’s realistic to eliminate estimates given their […]
One of the few downsides to being a Great White shark is that they must continually move, even while sleeping, in order to keep water moving over their gills. If they stay still too long, they die. Likewise, organizations must remain in motion, changing and adapting to their ecosystem, or risk dying out as well. […]
One of my hobbies is the study of history. Not the dry, dusty, “…on this date these people did that” type of history, rather I’m fascinated by the story of how real people interacted with each other and the world around them. I’m interested in the brilliance and the stupidity, the master strokes and the […]
Continuing our discussion that I mentioned in my last post, Greger Wikstrand tweeted the following: I encourage you to watch the video, it’s short (7:39) and makes some important points, which I’ll touch on below. Serendipity, when it occurs, is a beautiful thing. Serendipity can occur when heads-down order taking is replaced with collaboration. Awareness […]