September 2007

Preparing for a Software Career — Part Two

September 29, 2007

Sometime back, I had written an article on how to prepare for a software career. Today, there was an interesting comment on that post stating that the advice was generic and could apply to any field of study. Also since most people invest a lot of their time and skills in one particular field, they […]

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Writing Software Requirements for Developers

September 26, 2007

Writing requirements is difficult. Most, if not all, requirements documents are generally incomplete to varying degrees. When developers start coding, they realize that certain conditions are not addressed and get stuck. At this point, someone has to step in and fill the gaps. Achieving 100% complete requirements is an impossible and highly expensive goal, not […]

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When Everything is High Priority

September 24, 2007

Then nothing is high priority. For this reason, it is very important to understand the difference between “severity” and “priority”. At any point in time, there may be many severe issues. In fact, every issue you have may be severe. But you have to prioritize which you would handle first. For instance, a building is […]

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What Day Should You Hold Meetings?

September 21, 2007

This is a follow‐up from my previous post on the best times to hold meetings. But what are the best days to have meetings? Here are some thoughts based on my experiences: In my opinion, Mondays and Wednesdays are good days to have internal weekly meetings. On Monday, you can discuss the plan for the […]

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What Time Should You Have Meetings?

September 20, 2007

What is the best time to have meetings? Here are some thoughts about different times of the day. Early morning meetings Having a meeting as the first thing in the morning can be good if you just want to get it over with. This is ideal for short stand‐up meetings or calls to understand whether […]

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GoToBilling — A Case Study

September 20, 2007

I recently got a chance to take a test drive of GoToBilling, an online application for business solutions. GoToBilling focuses on helping companies invoice and accept payments from their customers easily. They primarily serve small to mid‐size customers. The application has other features such as marketing and CRM that aid in sales activities. Though the […]

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Thinking

September 17, 2007

Here is an interesting quote by A. A. Milne that I found thought‐provoking: The third‐rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second‐rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first‐rate mind is only happy when it is thinking. There are different levels of thinking […]

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Software Evolution and Software Reusability

September 16, 2007

Software reusability has been the Holy Grail of the software industry. Managers and executives dream of the day when they can create software products by assembling software components like how houses and cars are built. Academicians have been predicting this for decades now. Still, we seem to be very far from such a state of […]

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Managing for the First Time

September 11, 2007

We had an interesting discussion in our office today about how developers should handle new management responsibilities and reconcile that with their regular coding work. The topic was fascinating because there comes a time in the lives of many developers when they are no longer individual contributors, but also have to take responsibility for other […]

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