Articles for category: Delivery

December 2, 2015

Greg Thomas

Remember when you were the Newbie

I had something else in mind to write about tonight, but then in the middle of a break watched this video and immediately started laughing.  I don’t know what the context is (I don’t watch Scandal) but it brought me back to my first day starting with an ASP Hoster out of University – having other developers throwing projects and code at me and literally freaking out the whole day that I was 6 hours away from being fired when I wouldn’t be able to fix the shopping cart so customers could start buying again.  I went home that night and read all

Selling Yourself

This is the last thing anybody wants to do, it’s not easy, its awkward and everyone always worries how they come off. But it’s a necessity to life – especially in technology. Whether it be to an interview, a performance review or meeting someone at a conference for the first time, at some point you are going to have to Sell Yourself… not for the sale… but for the you. Now this not about shilling the product you just spent 8 months working on, no this is about you the person having to show your team, your leader, your peers,

November 25, 2015

Greg Thomas

Forget the Ranking

Early on, it was very important for me to delineate myself between a Junior, Intermediate and Senior Developer – after all there is a certain cachet associated with being that “type” of developer. I’m no longer a junior, those tasks should be handled by a junior, I’m and Intermediate now – give some meatier problems to solve. The thing is – every problem is a junior problem if you don’t know anything about it, even to the most seasoned veteran.  Worked with databases all your life and now you’re having to build a Web UI?  Welcome to juniorsville. I remember

November 9, 2015

Greg Thomas

How to Make Great Software Estimates

Well, I decided to take everything that I’d done in my recent series on Software Estimation and throw into a Slide deck with some added thoughts to it. So here it is – everything you ever wanted to know about Good Software Code Estimation in one handy deck. https://www.slideshare.net/GregThomas3/how-to-make-great-software-estimates

November 3, 2015

Greg Thomas

Factors of Software Estimation – Slush

The last and final piece of any software estimation is knowing what you don’t know. Let’s review… Experience gives you the background to know what type of problem you are trying to solve, what should I be asking, what pieces of history and context do I bring to this estimate. Knowledge is the frame on what do I know about this domain, is this my area of expertise and what do I have that I can leverage to fix this problem. Understanding the Problem is about avoiding the trap of glazing over the problem and not getting a proper description