First off, I apologize to all of my college professors. I have spent 7+ years taking college classes at 3 different colleges and I have enjoyed every minute of it. In fact, I plan to take more classes in the future and wish I could constantly take classes. Unfortunate I am currently short on both …
On many projects, the question I many times hear is “how much time have you spent?” Time tracking systems are often created to track time spent. This seems logical and often times people do not think twice about it, but it is one of the leading factors contributing to late projects. Let’s look at an …
Time Remaining is More Important Than Time Spent Read More »
One of the artifacts used to track work on an agile project is the release burndown chart. This chart plots functionality along the y-axis and time along the x-axis. A line is then drawn from the size of the desired functionality over to the correct time, labeled the “ideal” line. This is the line that …
Release Burndown + Cone of Uncertainty = Release Uncertainty Burndown? Read More »
Below is the PowerPoint from the presentation that myself, Randy Makoski from Paychex and Jason Smith from IBM presented at IBM Innovate 2013. The topic of our presentation was why we chose to implement the Jazz Suite (Rational Team Concert & Rational Requirements Composer), our adoption approach, successes and challenges. If you have any questions …
One of the challenges that I have faced in both my professional and entrepreneurial career is that I am young and therefore others perceive that I lack the experience that others who are older than myself have. I recently read “The Power of Starting Something Stupid” by Richie Norton (full review to come soon) and …
Defect Density is defined as the number of defects for a specific time divided by the overall size of the component or project. *Size is defined in either lines of code changed (LOCC) or function points (FP), depending on who you talk to. I have been on teams that use this calculation, but …
Anyone who has ever worked on a project probably realizes there are three (really four, but people often forget about the fourth) criteria that project success is focused on: 1. Features (Requirements) 2. Estimates (Cost) 3. Schedule (Timeframe) 4. Quality (Often forgotten about since it is hard to see/define/measure) Regardless of whether we use waterfall …
I read a lot of books. Most of my reading is not “fun” reading (as my wife would describe). I generally read books on the topic of self improvement, motivation, finance, business, software development, etc. I really enjoy learning and improving myself. Below are my Top 10 favorite books that span many of those topics. …
My sister graduated from college this past weekend. On the night before her graduation, we had a discussion around her time at college and the future. During the conversation, she said “but I don’t want to fail.” I have heard many people say these things in the past, and I was one of them. Once …
I’m excited to announce that a co-worker and myself will be presenting at IBM Innovate 2013 in Orlando. The conference runs from June 2nd – 6th and contains a ton of different sessions. Our session is titled “Paychex Case Study: Successfully Deploying a Jazz ALM Solution to In-flight Projects with Minimal Disruption and Immediate Benefits.” …
IBM Innovate 2013 Presentation – Case Study of Using Jazz ALM Read More »