Chance favors the prepared mind. — Louis Pasteur Today is the dumbest day of the rest of your life. If you’re doing a software project, you should know at least a little bit more about the project tomorrow than you do today, the next day a little bit more, and so on. Don’t get into detailed decisions and plans at the beginning of the project. Defer decisions to the last responsible moment; that’s when you’ll have the best information available. Upfront planning is not for the purpose of generating plans, which quickly go obsolete, but for the purpose of creating prepared minds with which to face the uncertain future. Read more →
Black Father of the Year
NEWPORT BEACH — Two Los Angeles residents believed to be a father and a daughter were arrested early today near John Wayne Airport on suspicion of burglarizing four local businesses, authorities said. Donald Perkins, 48, and Kenesha Perkins, 28, were pulled over for speeding at about 3:15 a.m. near Dove Street and Newport Place Drive, said Sgt. Evan Sailor of the Newport Beach Police Department. — Orange County Register Kenesha Perkins is a lucky girl . . . most black fathers are not actively involved in their children’s activities like this . . . Read more →
People I Thought Were Dead
Bowie Kuhn – Major League Baseball commissioner Updates Bowie Kuhn – died 3/15/2007, age 80 Read more →
Happy Thanksgiving
Things I’m thankful for this year: Nothing lasts forever. Read more →
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
But in Old Rimrock, New Jersey, in 1995, when the Ivan Ilyches come trooping back to lunch at the clubhouse after their morning round of golf and start to crow, “It doesn’t get any better than this,” they may be a lot closer to the truth than Leo Tolstoy ever was. The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It’s getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That’s how we know we’re alive: we’re wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that — well, lucky you. He had learned the worst lesson life can teach — that it makes no sense. And when that happens the… Read more →
Divorce Wizards
I was walking through a business park in Newport Beach today when I saw a company called Divorce Wizards . . . I am the Divorce Wizard! With a wave of my wand, I free you from the shackles of matrimony! I cleanse your mind of bitterness and recrimination, as though the whole sorry episode never happened! Uh, thanks . . . can you make me twenty years younger again too? Read more →
The Sheriff of the Dog Park
Hi everybody! That’s me, Lightning Epps, subduing an over-aggressive puggle at the Irvine dog park. I am like the sheriff of the dog park; I don’t start trouble but I don’t mind finishing it. Last week, I was chasing a pug named Blossom around and having a great time when a male husky ran up and started harassing Blossom. These big dogs think they can get away with anything where pugs are concerned. I snarled and charged at the husky. They never expect that. He got confused, ran straight into another husky and knocked it over. Everyone laughed. Then I went back to find Blossom and hump her but she wouldn’t let me. That’s gratitude for you . . . — Lightning Read more →
Brush with Greatness
I saw Lindsay Davenport yesterday at Borders in South Coast Plaza. She was sitting in the cafe area talking with another woman when I walked past. I had to double back to make sure it was really her. I expect famous people to be larger than life, and Lindsay Davenport is a big girl anyway, so I’m thinking that she should be gigantic, which she wasn’t. But I walked past a second time and it was definitely her . . . Read more →
Halp Us Jon Carry
You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq. — John Kerry And I think this reveals, is a glimpse into what the Democrats actually mean when they say we support our troops. They support them as victims, as children, as people too stupid to know better. But they don’t support them in the mission they’re fighting, thousands of miles away. — Mark Steyn Read more →
Asians and Idiots
My son’s junior high school is having a co-ed pickleball tournament at lunch. The results are posted on the school web site. The funny thing is that if a team name contains any sort of cultural reference, the P.E. teacher in charge of the tournament either can’t or won’t put the name on the web site without a deliberate misspelling. For example, 3 White Guys and a Hindu becomes 3 Wite Gus and a Hidu, because identifying someone as white, male or Hindu is unacceptable. Curiously enough, the team name 3 Blondes and a Brunette comes through unscathed. Why are people allowed to self-identify as blondes, but not as white guys or Hindus? It seems like the same thing to me. The weirdest one to me is 4 Asians and an Idiot, which comes out as 4 Ans and an Idiot. I ask my son, “Who’s the idiot?” “Some white… Read more →
Three Reasons for Software Project Failure
Jerry Weinberg‘s top three reasons for software projects going over budget or failing to meet their original requirements: The original budget, schedule and requirements were totally unrealistic, due to the inability of people to speak truth to power. The original budget, schedule and requirements were totally unrealistic, due to the inability of people to understand and acknowledge their own limitations (which we all have). Even in those rare cases that people pass those first two hurdles, they lose emotional control during the project when something goes wrong — and something ALWAYS goes wrong. In 50 years, I’ve never seen a project where something didn’t go wrong. When it does, the project’s success is determined by the leaders’ ability to manage themselves emotionally. Read more →
A Forceful Dose of Reality
. . . there is nothing like a tested, integrated system for bringing a forceful dose of reality into any project. Documents can hide all sorts of flaws. Untested code can hide plenty of flaws. But when people actually sit in front of a system and work with it, then flaws become truly apparent: both in terms of bugs and in terms of misunderstood requirements. — Martin Fowler, “The New Methodology” Read more →
Hockey Families I Have Known
I know some “hockey families” where the kids — boys or girls — can play any sport they want . . . as long as it’s hockey. They have email addresses like smiths4hockey@hotmail.com (assuming their name is Smith), and from the parents’ point of view, it simplifies things a lot. You don’t have kids getting into one sport, losing interest, moving on to something else. From the kids’ point of view? Maybe not so good. And I actually think it helps kids athletically to do more than one sport . . . Read more →
Tennis Parents Can Blow Me
My kid plays Team Tennis here in Irvine . . . on Saturdays, they play other teams from around Orange County. Tennis parents are obsessive, just like hockey parents. The difference is that hockey parents can scream at the kids, refs, coaches, other parents, passers-by, etc., during the games, whereas tennis etiquette requires parents to stay quiet during the matches and berate the kids afterwards. My son’s team played the Balboa Bay Racquet Club team this past weekend. One of the smug tennis dads on our team showed up wearing a backpack with his own racket in it. Now why would he do that? He’s obviously not going to play tennis with it because it’s a kids’ event, so he just wanted everyone to know yeah, I’m a tennis player myself, my son is a tennis player because I’m a tennis player, blah blah blah . . . My lifetime… Read more →
PowerPoint Tips from the Pros
As part of a presentation I’m putting together on managing software projects, I want to talk a little bit about what not to do and how things can go spectacularly awry. A great recent case study for this is the FBI Virtual Case File system, cancelled last year after spending over $100 million. The original slide I put together (click to enlarge) showed the basic facts of the case illustrated with a photo of a rocket sled crashing into a wall. The heading I put on there — “Another fine mess” — didn’t seem to add anything to the mix, and I couldn’t think of a better one, so I started to think about other ways to lay out the slide. In the second version, I dropped the header, used the rocket sled photo as the background, and overlaid the text on top of it. I think it came out… Read more →
Another Argument Against Day Care
Cypress babysitter jailed after infant’s death — Orange County Register Read more →
A Methodology Question
Let’s say your software development methodology tells you to do A, then B, then C, then D, and so on, until you get to Z, at which point, you’re done. And let’s say you do A, then B, then C, then D, and you notice that your project is not going according to plan for reasons that appear to be related to the methodology. What do you do? Do you forge ahead with E, F and G, even though that now looks like the wrong thing to do? If you’re committed to the methodology, you have to, right? Or — do you fall back on the knowledge and experience of the project manager and the project team, and rely on them to do the right thing? And if you can rely on the knowledge and experience of the project team now, what was the point of the methodology in the… Read more →
Goofus on Software
Goofus sends out an email to the team stating that the company is going to decommission the custom CRM we just spent 18 months building and replace it with Seibel. Five minutes later, here comes a reply from a troublemaker: “So why did we build the custom CRM in the first place? Just asking . . .” Goofus replies: “Siebel was not on the company roadmap at that time.” Note that he completely sidesteps the actual question of why we answered a Build-or-Buy question by deciding to build a system, only to immediately thereafter buy a new system to replace it. Goofus didn’t get to be a superstar in this organization by being unable to serve up bland, poker-faced responses to provocative questions. Read more →
Lightning Goes to the Beach
Cory Lidle: 1972-2006
It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement . . . and they underestimate what is of true value in life. — Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents Two men die in a plane crash. One man’s death is widely lamented; the other man is barely mentioned. Why? Because the first man was good at throwing a ball. It just goes to show how insignificant some of the things that we think are significant really are. — Various sportswriters and ballplayers Really? Well, now that this has been brought home to you, are you going to quit your job as a ballplayer or a person who writes about ballplayers and do something “significant” with your life? I didn’t think so. Read more →