Blog

August 13, 2015

Greg Thomas

The Customer Trip

I’ve written about this before, in other places, but it bears mentioning again in case you have forgotten. When it’s a visit to a customer site to address any of the following; Release a new patch or version of your software. Demo the latest vaporware your company is putting together. Meet with end-users to identify their requirements. Present your roadmap for the next year. Train the users on how to implement Feature X. Troubleshoot problems with the interop between your software and their environment. Or any other task for that matter, the results should always be the same, you should always, always,

August 10, 2015

Greg Thomas

It Should Just Work

These are the famous last words of a developer who is hoping that what exists will solve your problem.  They might not fully understand your problem – where the should comes in – but they have some pretty solid confidence in their code in which it will work. It’s hard to go through your career as a developer and never utter this statement – I have done it myself many times at the end of a late night deploy – it was probably more hope than belief at that point.  At that point, you’ve been up late, probably trying to

August 9, 2015

Greg Thomas

Get a Theme Song

Everyone needs something to pick them up when they are down and the best way to do this is to find a theme song.  This doesn’t have to be a Top 40 hit, it could be anything  – a song you enjoy, the theme song to a favourite TV show or perhaps even a song from a musical you just saw – the point is – Get a Theme Song. Components for a successful Theme Song; It must resonate with you, lifting up, pushing you harder. It must give you that kick in the butt that you’ve been waiting for, but

August 8, 2015

Greg Thomas

Customization as a Product

Every time I take my family to a certain Coffee Outlet, I am simply gobsmacked by the number of times our order is wrong.  It was got to the point where my wife and I now split up the kids to make the order smaller but even then it still comes back as something we didn’t ask for. In my most recent encounter, I stood at the cash looking at my kids (the customers) who need to customize their meal, because they are picky (like your customers) and were met with a certain look of disdain because they wanted to

July 24, 2015

Greg Thomas

How to Write Great Requirements

After almost a year of procrastination, I finally took some time this past week and put together a presentation that I have uploaded to SlideShare with my thoughts on Writing Requirements. Requirements are not hard to write but time and time again I see people get confused on the how they should write them, instead of the who they are writing them for, what are they writing and why are they writing them. I put my thoughts together and here is what I came up with.