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Improve Software Project Success by Conducting a Hudson’s Bay Start The Hudson’s Bay Company outfitted fur traders in the 1600s. To avoid problems when camping in freezing conditions, they'd send traders on a short trial expedition before the real one. This idea also can be used to reduce risks when starting a software project that’s complex, expensive, or disaster-prone. |
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What Not to Do if You Want Satisfied Customers You may think that overperforming would ingratiate you to your customers. But customers don't always want you to go above and beyond—often, they just want what they asked for. Don't fall for this common misconception. The trick to customer satisfaction is delivering just what they want—and good communication. |
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Testing in Agile and DevOps: Where Are We Going? When looking at what the software market is currently talking about, the top item is DevOps and Continuous Integration/Deployment, which seems to be taking over some of the spotlight from agile and is now a widely accepted new normal. Hans Buwalda looks at where the future of software testing is going. |
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Know the “Why” behind Your Projects Every project has its own unique reason for existence. We often work on projects to deliver some kind of return for our organizations. When you start a project, do you know what that return is? When we know the reasons behind our work, we can be more successful—knowing why can create success. |
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The Difference between Plans and Planning As former president Dwight Eisenhower said, "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." The fact that plans may have to change does not mean planning is a waste of time. In projects, it's always valuable to consider budgeting, resources, and timelines. |
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Should You Cancel Your Next Meeting? Of course meetings are often necessary, but sometimes they are just rituals without meaning. At your job, would anyone recognize if a meeting weren't efficient or essential? When was the last time a meeting you were scheduled to attend was canceled because it wasn’t a good use of anyone’s time? |
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Expanded Schedules Pose Project Management Risks, Too We're all aware of the risks from projects that have overly aggressive schedules. But projects with leisurely schedules have risks, too. Extending a timeframe is supposed to give you more time to create quality products, but it can also lead to procrastination, changing teams and expectations, and more. |
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Are We Sacrificing Quality for the Sake of Speed? Are we reducing the quality of our code by pushing teams to produce at a speed that might be too fast? Will the final product require multiple updates in order to fix bugs missed along the way? Like just about every question posed about agile, it can depend on the specific team makeup. |
