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I gave a talk entitled “Time-Based Estimates Are For Suckers! Size-based is The Way to Go” at this year’s GLSEC on April 29. It’s meant as a call to action for those who haven’t made the leap to size-based estimation, or who have been beaten back by some of the challenges you’ll encounter when trying,…
The Build is an essential cog of any software project, but it is most often maintained by identified “experts.” This needs to stop. Agile depends on shared code ownership and understanding of the system — all parts of the system. Consequences of Ignoring the Build Most sufficiently-sized projects use a continuous integration system and some…
I recently came off a project where it is clear, in retrospect, that we operated in a rush throughout much of the last half of the project. The budget got extended more than once so that we could “just get it out the door.” It was a small project: a month or two initially, then…
For a recent career fair, our marketing coordinator Lisa Tjapkes produced a hand-out detailing what a marketing career involved. Part of this handout listed 6 skills that a good marketer should have: Empathy: Understand your customers; see things from their perspective. Strong Writing Skills: Be clear, be concise, be interesting. An Analytical Mind: Carefully review results….
Atomic has added Crucial Conversations to our short list of required reading, meaning new hires will be expected to digest this book within their first weeks on the job. We think it’s important enough to rank right up there with Extreme Programming Explained (1st edition!) as a book that explains how we work and what…
In a previous post, Tear Down the Walls! — Shattering Team Boundaries, I discussed the boundaries (or silos) that traditional teams often end up segregating into, especially when deadlines are looming. The project I am on has many teams scattered across multiple physical locations (even continents), and teams are frequently under separate silos of management. Epic-level…
“…no one is born a great cook, one learns by doing.” – Julia Child, My Life in France Or, to paraphrase the late great Julia — no one is born a great designer, one learns by doing (and testing). Cooks test out their recipes with an audience, and the same principle applies to new products…
There are a lot of great mobile app user experiences out there these days. This is great — we’ve won! Unfortunately there are so many that some really great examples can get lost in the noise. As a follow-up to my previous post of iPad gems, here are some more amazing implementations of great user…
Carl is the president and co-founder of Atomic Object