In The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle describes culture as the set of living relationships between a group of people working towards a shared goal. Coyle goes on to say that culture is not something “you are”, but something “you do”. When reading this I imagined a network diagram of an organisation, with the people being …
MSc dissertation: Improving the safety-critical software engineering process through the development of knowledge management capability
This is the extended abstract of my dissertation for module T802, which is the final module of my Open University Master of Science degree in Technology Management. It was a tough module, spanning just over 12 months (including preliminary research), but at the same time was very rewarding. Background Software is becoming increasingly common in …
Five jobs in ten years: Lessons that I have learned
The period between Christmas and New Year always allows me some time for reflection that I typically don’t get during the rest of the year. Today I realised that I have now worked for five different companies over the past ten years, which started me thinking about the lessons that I have learned from these …
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How I tackle an Open University Tutor Marked Assignment (TMA)
I’ve been studying with the Open University now for six years; the first three years studying at undergraduate level, and the past three years at postgraduate level. Over this time I have developed what I feel is quite a nice system for tackling the Tutor Marked Assignments (TMAs) that OU students regularly complete, so I thought …
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Developer Anarchy
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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Mobile apps (Oops, something went wrong…)
A personal perspective The first time I came across an error message telling me “oops, something has gone wrong…” was when I installed the LinkedIn app on my Windows Phone back in 2013. After a little research, I discovered that what this particularly unhelpful message was trying to tell me was that the time on …
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Functional requirements by the book
In preparation for my next Open University module, I have invested in getting an early copy of the set book so that I can start working through it at a nice relaxed pace. The book itself – Mastering the Requirements Process (Robertson and Robertson) – is a renowned text that deals with the specification of …
Good luck, and watch out for bugs!
The latest issue of The Embedded Muse contains the following quote regarding the use of the term “bug” by software developers: We could, for instance, begin with cleaning up our language by no longer calling a bug “a bug” but by calling it an error. It is much more honest because it squarely puts the blame where …