As I’ve talked about before (and everyone already kind of knows), good requirements are a key driver to success. To put it simply, you need to know what problem you are trying to solve for your customer, what your end user really wants, and what they are expecting you to build. It’s all about Expectation […]
One enormous shift occurring across the industry right now, across all industries in fact, is the migration to the Cloud. I bet if you do some web searches right now you will find a myriad, nay a plethora, of articles talking about why you should migrate to the Cloud (and why their consulting firm is […]
What is an Enterprise Architect, or a Cloud Architect, or a Software Architect? Many people think it’s just a fancy title, something to show that someone is more senior than a senior developer or a principal developer, but not necessarily a manager. A great example is Bill Gates; when he retired from Microsoft his title […]
New technologies come and go all the time, and new fads come and go all the time. But some of them, when they are true game changers, do stick. Take virtualization, for example. Boy has it stuck! One hotly-debated trend right now is, of course, the Cloud. What is the Cloud, really? Many people like […]
How can you tell if your team and organization is making forward progress? And I don’t mean just any progress, but progress in the right direction? What I’ve noticed is, depending upon your role in the organization it can be extremely difficult to know on a day-to-day basis if you are working on the right […]
I offended someone one time by referring to systems administrators as plumbers. I certainly meant no offense…after all, can you imagine life without plumbers? Furthermore I was considering myself in that category, as after all I am a systems administrator as well. Anyways, even though it was a couple of years ago, sorry. I still […]
I know I always advocate for “velocity!” and “Speed of iteration beats quality of iteration” (John Boyd) and “Move fast and break things. If you’re not breaking things you’re not moving fast enough” (Mark Zuckerbeg). For a startup environment, where the goal is to get to minimum-viable-product (MVP) as quickly as possible, even with bugs […]
Typically I am very organized about my day-to-day work, and also my short-term (3 months or so) planning. I use Trello for the “month” timeframe, iCloud Reminders for the “week” timeframe, and a paper notepad and pencil for the “day” timeframe. Sometimes, when I’m being particularly unproductive, I’ll even go into my calendar, either iCloud […]
I’ve been reading a pretty good book lately, it’s the classic How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. It’s a really good book, not dry or textbook-y at all. Mr. Carnegie keeps the reader engaged with lots of anecdotes and stories about real life people. I highly encourage this book for anyone, […]
I’ve been blogging for over a year now, but it’s only been about the last 3 months that I started being really intentional about writing 2 or 3 times a week. This last week, I only wrote once. At first I was disappointed in myself. I had set a goal of at least 2 articles […]
Knuggets of Knowledge 