If there is one message I would like to communicate, whatever your job title and however your work is touched by software development, it is this: software development is capable of much, much more than it is currently delivering.
Software development has been steered wrong by the word “requirement,” defined in the dictionary as “something mandatory or obligatory.” The word carries a connotation of absolutism and permanence, inhibitors to embracing change. And the word “requirement” is just plain wrong. Out of one thousand pages of “requirements,” if you deploy a system with the right 20% or 10% or even 5%, you will likely realize all of the business benefit envisioned for the whole system. So what were the other 80%? Not “requirements”; they weren’t really mandatory or obligatory.
I ask people to think about the question, “What is the simplest thing that could possibly work?” I’m not asking you to think about what is too simple to work, just to bias your thinking toward eliminating wasted complexity.
The floods, the flames, the questions–
till the ashes tell you one day:
“Life is the building of bridges
over rivers that seep away.”
La Sagrada Familia is a nice building . . .
Everything in software changes. The requirements change. The design changes. The business changes. The technology changes. The team changes. The team members change. The problem isn’t change, because change is going to happen; the problem, rather, is our inability to cope with change.
She was a girl who knew how to be happy even when she was sad. And that’s important — you know? — Marilyn Monroe
To anyone who misses Ryan Dunn, may I suggest that you honor his memory by getting drunk and driving your car into a tree.
The tragedy here is that Bam Margera wasn’t in the car with him.
I object to having these guys introduced into my life via front-page headlines. Why is Ryan Dunn’s death more noteworthy than any other moron with a fast car and a drinking problem? Because he shoved a toy car up his ass?
Here in our neighborhood in Irvine, we had a drunk guy a few weeks ago run a red light at Irvine and Culver and smash his truck into a car containing a father, his 14-year-old daughter and three of her friends on their way home from a birthday party.
One of the girls, a freshman at Northwood High School, was killed.
The fact that Ryan Dunn killed himself and a 30-year-old man rather than a 14-year-old girl is just a matter of chance.
If your idea of a good time is to go out drinking, then get in your car and drive around real fast on PUBLIC ROADS, then you are lethally stupid and I don’t like you.
In today’s update, the boys catch a break at the airport . . .
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
Hi Dad! Happy Fathers Day!
We didn’t spend a lot of time together but my owner says I have the heart of a much larger animal and I know I got that from you!
He also says I have a “stubborn physicality” which I don’t know what that is but I know it’s good! LOL!
Here’s a recent picture of me at the dog park. Well, I’m not a puppy anymore but I’m still the alpha dog of my whole neighborhood!
If you’re ever in California, let’s get together!
Love, Lightning 
Today is my last Fathers Day with a live-in kid. My boy and I have been walking a path together for 18 years and the time has come for him to set out on his own path.
We are both headed into a great unknown . . .
My wife dominates the Twitter landscape with almost 1,000 followers . . .
“I have to say something to my followers about my son going to college,” she says.
The boy overhears this and pipes in: “My only child is leaving for college in two months. Hashtag sadbutproud.”
The joy of Father’s Day is the joy of every day: the gift of being in the company of your children, and of living for them in the way you are meant to live . . .
I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. — Albert Einstein
Forgive my ignorance. How do increased visibility and tighter feedback loops manage and reduce risk?
Get in your car. Drive to a winding road. Get up to a decent speed. Close your eyes for two minutes. Then come back and ask your question again.
