Author: Neil

Email Is the Worst Form of Internal Communication

Neil5 Comments

Email is the worst form of internal communication in common usage today. The only redeeming characteristic of email is to create proof that at some point in time, you tried to inform someone of something. In this way, it is very similar to its direct ancestor: paper mail delivered by the postal service, and it is just as obsolete. Unfortunately, as remote work has become an immediate necessity for millions of people worldwide, email has become a primary form of communication.

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The Danger of ‘The Dark Sage’

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JP Ventura left an intriguing comment on The Sage that I’d like to explore:

Considering each coin has two sides, what would be the dark side (i.e., opposite) of the Sage?

What I find interesting about this question is the fact that I had not given much thought to the “dark side” of the 12 Underappreciated Developers. The Sage, in particular, can have several dark manifestations as ostensibly, they are supposed to be a benevolent master whose primary interest is helping the members of their team grow. If we look at someone who is pretending to act in a way that could be confused with The Sage but is, in fact, the opposite, we get something like this:

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The relationship between determining technical feasibility and productivity

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This is an answer to a question asked by Ashvini Chaudhari in the “Agile and Lean Software Development” LinkedIn group:

Dear All , I m pursuing my PhD in Agile Software Engineering. I have a question regarding spike solution ” If we add spike in project development will it have effect on team velocity? and if yes what could be the parameters ? All the responses will be consider as a general opinion in my PhD thesis.

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I pity Tim Cook

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It’s clear the Job’s deathbed playbook has long since been used up. The Apple devices are getting worse and worse year over year, but Tim Cook has managed to drive shareholder value despite that. Apple is the most valuable company in the world – no one can take that away from Tim Cook; but Apple has fallen from grace, and as captain of the ship Tim Cook bears all the blame.

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Define your problem before picking a solution

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Our industry revels in coming up with solutions, but is quite poor at defining problems. This has resulted in an vast constellation of technological solutions, but with the majority of investment capital being centered around a small handful of banal consumer problems (Hailing Rides, Shopping Convenience, Entertainment, etc.) If we are to solve problems that are worth solving, we’re going to need to get better at defining our problems before we pick solutions.

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“Artificial Intelligence” is deeply disappointing, and so are we

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The term “Artificial Intelligence” transitioned from Science Fiction to Product Marketing with very little time in-between to consider what exactly qualifies as “AI”. While tackling this definition has been done ad nauseam for hundreds of years, I believe that the modern definition of “AI” and those from Science Fiction are worlds apart. This is my attempt to bridge that gap.

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Are we working or playing?

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Recently I’ve been talking to companies that want me to improve staff productivity. The opening conversation tends to be about the same: they pitch me on their company and what a “great place to work” it is. They brag about how smart the people are, how much fun everyone has, and how it’s more like a family that a bunch of co-workers. They describe all the perks like massages, video games, beer-on-tap, coffee bars, and how much everyone loves them. “Sounds like you have it all together,” I say after hearing all of this. “Well,” they reply, “I just wish we could get a bit more out of them.”

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A Far Too Brief Rough Outline of How to Approach Single-Date Estimation

Neil3 Comments

In my previous “An Attempt at a Pragmatic Framework for Defining a ‘Senior Engineer’”, in the “A Process to Estimate Work” section I said:

“It is beyond the scope of this post to describe everything that goes into making a good estimate, but suffice to say a senior engineer views estimates as a difficult challenge to be surmounted, and as a result will normally ask for dedicated time simply to come up with the estimates.”

A commenter asked that I write an article on estimation, and this is my feeble attempt to do so.

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