Products Not Projects

5 years, 9 months ago

Form Follows Function on SPaMCast 454

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I’m back for another appearance on Tom Cagley’s Software Process and Measurement (SPaMCast) podcast. This week’s episode, number 454, begins with Tom talking about iteration planning. Jeremy Berriault comes next with a segment on QA team leads and I bat cleanup with a Form Follows Function installment based on my post “Trash or Treasure – […]

5 years, 10 months ago

Form Follows Function on SPaMCast 450

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It’s time for another appearance on Tom Cagley’s Software Process and Measurement (SPaMCast) podcast. This week’s episode, number 450, features Tom’s excellent essay on roadmaps and a Form Follows Function installment based on my post “Holistic Architecture – Keeping the Gears Turning”. Our conversation in this episode continues with the organizations as system concept, this […]

5 years, 11 months ago

Holistic Architecture – Keeping the Gears Turning

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In last week’s post, “Trash or Treasure – What’s Your Legacy?”, I talked about how to define “legacy systems”. Essentially, as the divergence grows between the needs of social systems and the fitness for purpose of the software systems that enable them, the more likely that those software systems can considered “legacy”. The post attracted […]

5 years, 11 months ago

Trash or Treasure – What’s Your Legacy?

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The topic of legacy systems is something of a contentious one. In most cases, a legacy is understood to be a good thing. What makes a system “legacy”? Is it a technical or business decision? A little over a year ago, Greger Wikstrand took a stab at clarifying the term with his post “Legacy systems, […]

6 years, 11 months ago

Building a Legacy

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  Over the last few weeks, I’ve run across a flurry of articles dealing with the issue of legacy systems used by the U.S. government. An Associated Press story on the findings from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued in May reported that roughly three-fourths of the $80 billion IT budget was used to maintain […]

7 years, 6 months ago

Fixing IT – Too Big to Succeed?

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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 […]