I have seen countless “roadmaps” in my career that were not much more than glorified wishlists. Pretty documents filled with ambitious ideas, but lacking the fundamental ingredients that transform hope into execution. After years of watching teams struggle with this distinction, I have come to realize there are three critical differences that separate real roadmaps […]
Every tech organization faces challenges as it grows. What starts as a speedy team delivering features quickly can gradually transform into something that feels slow, opaque, and frustrating. This is normal to a certain extent – and also not dangerous when it is recognized and tackled by the responsible tech-leaders in a timely manner. The
In my last post, I wrote about one reason why I think startups are more productive than bigger companies: employee empowerment. Today, I want to post a second one: sole responsibility. To many people working in big companies, the following made-up conversation may sound familiar: Jane (Project Manager): Have you finished the task I had
I recently stumbled across the following question on Quora: What are the best examples of software bugs that became features (a.k.a. misbugs)? And here is my favourite answer: This is from an anecdote by Ken Demarest, one of the original developers who worked on Wing Commander I on the PC… … we were getting an
Recently, I posted a link to an article about David Maynard. One more thing that resonated with me (beside the topic about age and software engineers) was this quote: There are precious few people who have seen and comprehended enough of the rise of computing (and now mobile computing) to have some perspective on the
I recently read in an article that Software Developers Are Terrified Of What Happens When They Hit 30. I did not like it too much, mostly because the main source for the article was a thread on Hacker News that discusses what happens to older developers – and shows a quite different picture. No idea