“Teams use CheckMarx to make their code more secure.” CheckMarx is a tool that analyzes code, looking for vulnerabilities. It produces a report of likely problems, with specific locations in the source code. “We will mandate that our teams use CheckMarx.” Will this make the code more secure? That depends how the team reacts to …
As a manager, I want to tell a team what I need and they make it. Is that too much to ask? It depends what you mean by “tell.” Without the information we need, work is like “Bring me a stone.” In this game, the Boss says to the Worker, “Bring me a stone.” The …
Software is completely clockwork at the scale of one function, and completely complex in production.
Code is like a coastline: the closer you look, the farther from here to there. Can we diminish this effect?
What’s more valuable, a big old company with assets, or a small nimble company with ideas?
Functional stupidity is: don’t self-reflect, don’t ask why, and only think about what we ask you to think about. This can be good in corporate-land. It is a disaster for software.
“Plants are movers…. Plants grow to where they’re going.” Frazier, P. & Jamone, Lorenzo & Althoefer, Kaspar & Calvo, Paco. (2020). Plant Bioinspired Ecological Robotics. Frontiers in Robotics and AI. 7. 10.3389/frobt.2020.00079. This is a keynote written originally for a private company. I’ll do it at conferences, including YOW! in September 2020. Short bite: In …
Say you’re aiming for outcome-based product teams that write and operate software. Maybe you hire for roles in these teams like Software Developer, Product Owner, Designer, Tester. How do you define each role? We usually ask, what does each person do? A typical job description includes: what does the person do? What are they responsible …
Read moreDefine roles by what each person increasingly knows
Imagine you’ve never cut open a human body before. Nor seen a diagram drawn by someone who has. Back before anatomy textbooks, the organs and systems of the human body would not have been obvious. I imagine asking, what are the parts that make up a person? and getting: head, arms, legs, hands, feet, chest, …
Read moreThe visible lines of division are not the meaningful ones
