Software Project Leadership

If you have been setting goals and rewarding yourself for achieving them - if you achieve them - then you may be sabotaging yourself with your own dopamine. https://youtu.be/1TSTnDRnIAs spl.drwill.co/freeconsult

This will be our last recording in this location … we are moving our place of business … and reflecting on what that means

spl.drwill.co/costrisk A cost driver is the direct cause of a cost and its effect is on the total cost incurred.  What are the direct causes of the cost of software development?

Steve Jobs once said: “Be a yardstick of quality.  Some people are not used to an environment where excellence is expected.”  Some people?  Only some? Software Quality Playlist https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx2U7H9VtJ4CiuT49YNO-XnZk-R0CsGEc Self Authoring https://www.selfauthoring.com

https://spl.drwill.co/asses_schedule_risk Always plan ahead … remember, it wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.  Also … according to Peter Drucker, “Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.”

spl.drwill.co/freeconsult We are looking at another vertex of the iron triangle … cost … can we predict how much something will cost?  If we cannot then how do we make a rational argument to build it?  

spl.drwill.co/freeconsult When one of my team members brought a new product idea to me, I had two questions.  The first was: who (precisely) is the customer?  Please note that shrugging your shoulders conveys exactly what your expect … that you don’t know.  In this case it means that you haven’t thought the thing through …

I have always worked a lot. I mean, a lot. I guess I am an “ergophile” which is a nice way of saying “workaholic.” But like any good workaholic, I have never felt I needed an intervention … well, maybe once …

Spl.drwill.co/freeconsult Awhile back I noticed my team was stuck and not making much progress on some issues that had been plaguing us for awhile.  I asked for a synopsis of what was going on and discovered that they were trying to resolve 3 issues all at once … they were combining installing a new CI/CD system with deploying to a new hosting platform and adding a brand new process on top of that...

spl.drwill.co/freeconsult Rigid structures are fragile.  Compare the mighty oak to a palm tree … in a hurricane.  An organization … or a supply chain … that is too lean has no slack and therefore has no flexibility.  Guess what happens when the wind starts to blow?

https://spl.drwill.co/teams Smarty-pants philosopher Aristotle once said: “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”

Are they a biohazard?  What should be done about “social loafers” or “toxic team members?”  This is “toxicity’s” very own episode … one might not be enough! If you poke around on the internet looking for information about “toxic” team members … employees … co-workers … supervisors … whatever, you will discover an entire zoo of toxic species.  It is a wonder any work gets done.  Ever.

If you think building a team when everybody works in the same building is difficult … wait until you try it with people scattered across the globe … in different time zones, from different cultures, different native languages … 

How does a group develop integrity - wholeness, cohesion, unity? How does it become a team?

A team is not a collection of individuals.  If it devolves into that then you can stand back and watch it disintegrate … notice that word … dis - integrate … to lose cohesion or unity.  The loss of integrity. https://www.thebalancecareers.com https://hbr.org/2009/06/rethinking-trust

https://spl.drwill.co/teams What does a productive, gelled development team look like?  What does any productive, gelled team look like?

They say you don’t know what you don’t know.  It is true; not only don’t you know it, but you can’t know it.  It is that ontological risk quadrant we discussed last time. Find it here https://www.amazon.com/What-You-Dont-Know-Successfully-ebook/dp/B0B7C4L2Y2/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1TLAIXYTU58JC&

Whether something exists and whether something is known are two different questions. Formally, ontology is the study of existence … and epistemology is the study of knowledge.  You are probably wondering why software leaders would possibly need to know those terms … or even care whether they exist at all?  (See what I did there?)

So, what would you do – or how would you feel – if you realized that the software you had helped develop was responsible – at least in part – for the loss of 346 lives?

The latest security problem reported on the Apple M1 chip – PACMAN – is buried deep within the hardware.  And, no, it cannot be fixed in software. 

https://spl.drwill.co/maintenance If you have ever had to maintain somebody else’s code … without documentation … especially code that is idiosyncratic and poorly designed – or not designed at all – well, you probably ended up rewriting most of it.

https://spl.drwill.co/maintenance The three areas of concern when it comes to maintainable software: the documentation, the code, and the implementation.  First, the documentation.

https://spl.drwill.co/maintenance Successful software gets changed. It also tends to hang around for a very long time. But crafting software that will be easy to maintain is usually not considered very much by the development team.

https://spl.drwill.co/maintenance Every software system that is remotely successful will have to be “maintained.”  Why is that such an expensive proposition?  What can be done about it?

The five degrees of initiative a manager or leader exercises relative to the “boss” and the “system” and that subordinates exercise relative to you.  Also, the rules of monkey management.