Steve Hebert's Development Blog

November 2006 - Posts

• Release parties

  We are busy finalizing our 4th public release of this year and we've decided to go to a Minnesota Wild game (hockey for you non-sports fans).  Club level, dinner, and all that stuff.  I'm not a huge hockey fan, but live NHL is great to watch.  I actually learned the rules of hockey from playing NHL '98.  We've done go-karts and other activities in the past, but I'm wondering if anyone has other great ideas for release parties?  Posted Nov 16 2006, 02:19 PM by shebert with 1 comment(s)

• First Minneapolis/St. Paul Code Camp complete

  The first Twin Cities CodeCamp went off very well this weekend.  There was a wide variety of topics with four presentations running every hour from 9-5 this past Saturday.  If you missed it, you missed out!  Keep an eye on the Twin Cities CodeCamp website for the next event. This would be a great place for an RSS feed - I wonder if anyone is organizing a space where all CodeCamps could host their information and provide such services?  That would be very cool. Congrats to Jason Bock in doing much of the organizing and pulling this together.     Posted Nov 13 2006, 01:12 PM by shebert with 1 comment(s)

• Dynamics of Software Development - 2006 Edition

  I received my copy of the Dynamics of Software Development 2006 Edition by Jim McCarthy yesterday and I'm thoroughly impressed.  The book comes with a video of the presentation he used to do on his "23 rules of thumb for shipping great software ontime".  The video is worth the price of the book alone.  It's both entertaining and extremely relevant even 11+ years later.  There are several updates to his pre-existing rules that offer better insight.  One excellent example is his "Don't go dark" rule - in this edition he adds that going dark is any code that is not checked in for more than 3 weeks.  This and many other points are refinements from the original book.  Many of his rules predate the notions in Agile development by many years - just a few examples... Get the product to a shippable state and keep it there. QA is responsible for articulating the quality and status of the product at any given point in time Become great at integration - don't put off deployment testing until the end of the cycle. There is new content in the book as well, especially the portion added at the end focused on building a good team environment.  I haven't had a chance to digest this portion yet, but I'm looking forward to it. Bottom line - if you don't own this book and you have ANYTHING to do with software development, buy it.  I blogged about a 2nd Edition of this book that surfaced for a short period last summer on Amazon as a pre-order, but it just as quietly disappeared. I'm glad McCarthy got it into print. If you own the original book, buy the second book.  Just the video itself is worth the price of the book. Posted Nov 09 2006, 10:19 PM by shebert with 1 comment(s)

• In Search of Stupidity - Volume 2

  I just picked up "In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of Marketing Disasters Volume 2" and found myself unable to put it down last night.  I wasn't sure what to expect, I enjoyed the first book but the second book comes off as being more refined. The premise of the book starts out as being the anti-thesis to the early 80's management fad book titled "In Search of Excellence" (no link provided on purpose - it should never be purchased again).  The author starts out by picking apart the fawning over high tech companies in this book and examines what really happened in these companies.  If you don't recognize a few of these companies, it's because they don't exist anymore.  The updated book looks at Google, Siebel and others.  I took particular joy in reading about Siebel. (If you have ever had Siebel inflicted upon you, you are most likely nodding your head right now.) In the early parts of the book, the basic idea is that company success is inversely related to stupidity. I half expect him to make the leap in the book to say "Stupidity is the mother of all process."  I'll post more as I get into it. Posted Nov 07 2006, 09:05 AM by shebert with 2 comment(s)

• distinguishing leadership

  I read this excerpt today from the Dynamics of Software Development that struck a chord.  "The visionary leader will conceive of a future reality that must be created by the effort of the community, while the demagogue will perceive a need to remove something from the current situation." - Jim McCarthy  I highlighted the line years ago - probably back in 1996.  I did a search on this book today at Amazon and it turns out they just released a 2006 Edition. I had no idea.  I ordered it immediately without any further question, I'm excited to get the book.. The original book is still on my personal list of top 10 programming books and I'm curious to see if the new book lives up to the original. Posted Nov 06 2006, 01:48 PM by shebert with 1 comment(s)