The latest episode of Software Engineering Radio contains an interesting discussion about a project management technique known as Developer Anarchy. Fred George, the interviewee, defines anarchy as a group of people managing themselves, with few or no rules being imposed by higher levels of management. George describes how he first discovered this technique when working …
On organisational structure and software architecture
Organisational structure In his 1975 book, The Mythical Man-Month, Fred Brooks claimed that adding more people to a late software project would make it even later. His reasoning behind this claim, which has now become known as Brooks’ Law, was that people in a team need to communicate with each other. As the team grows …
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Daily stand-up meetings: A communications pattern and anti-pattern
The pattern I like the idea of holding a daily stand-up meeting. This involves a team coming together at the start of each day to provide brief status updates and discuss the challenges ahead. I see stand-ups as being particularly useful in helping to resolve issues that are blocking progress, such as in this fictional …
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Software project failure rates
In order for a project to be classified as successful, it must satisfy three criteria: its outputs must be of the agreed quality, they must be delivered in the agreed timescale, and they must be delivered at the agreed price. The two studies below show that around a quarter of the software projects involved failed catastrophically (i.e. cancelled or delivered …