Month: October 2015

October 29, 2015

Greg Thomas

The Look of Many an NDA

Keeping up with some Friday Randomness, I tweeted about this yesterday but thought it might be funny to share. No matter where you work, you are probably subject to an NDA of sorts and then if you work with partners, you are subject to their NDAs as well so everyone stays on the same page. And if you subscribe to some early developer SDKs, well then there is a whole slew of other NDAs for you to keep under your belt. And then if you work with any early adopter platforms that those SDKs are built on, you might have another

October 29, 2015

Greg Thomas

Factors of Software Estimation – Your Knowledge

We are at the half-way point in this series and I thought I’d try to fit in this post while I wait for my 9GB of Halo 5 updates to be downloaded to my XBOX. Experience and Understanding the Problem are two of the four pieces to being good at estimating what you are trying to do.  The third?  Knowledge. You might say – “Well isn’t experience knowledge?” – no it’s not, experience is the act of gaining knowledge through doing estimation.  But knowledge can be garnered without experience, i.e., I can pick up a book and read all about

October 27, 2015

Greg Thomas

Factors of Software Estimation – Understand the Problem

Continuing on our this very recent series of Software Estimation where we first talked about Experience, now we are going to turn our attention towards the answer everyone says when their estimation is off the mark; I didn’t understand the problem How simple is that, understand what you are building?  When you think of a house being built, how much effort goes into the ground before a drop of concrete is poured?  Soil samples, digging – groundwork – this is what is laid when you are able to understand the problem.  Are the doors being installed when the floors have yet

October 25, 2015

Greg Thomas

Factors of Software Estimation – Experience

Ask anyone in any field how long it takes to accomplish a task and you would hopefully get something of a straight-forward response in a decent amount of time. Ask a Software Developer how long it takes to code X and you’ll probably be graced with a number of questions that could include, but not be limited to; Have I ever worked on this component? What language am I using? Do I know this language? Is this a hard problem? Do I know the platform? Do we have requirements? Is this a high-priority? When does it need to be done? And the

October 23, 2015

Greg Thomas

Words I Strongly Dislike

Employee a person employed for wages or salary, especially at non-executive level. I strongly dislike this word, it is one of the few words that I go out of my way to use (BTW this definition is taken straight from Google).  If I am about to type it, I delete it and find another word to use; users, members, team, people, something, anything. It takes away all other aspects of someone wanting to work with you, as though the only reason they are working with you is because they can monetary compensation.  The best part of this definition is the delineation

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