Posts in project management Category

Mar 22, 2008

Some More On IT Project Failures

Matt Assay points to a study which says that 62% of IT projects fail. The study cites two primary reasons: Managers do not consider the time and effort required to transfer of the know-how from designers to developers. QA is not given enough importance, and hence time. [Continue]

by Abhijit Nadgouda · Filed: for executives, project management · Tagged: failures · (0)

Mar 11, 2008

Communication And Consensus

ocean has a radical perspective about what software development is, and a good one too. … Given all this commuication going on it may be that creating software is actually a communication exercise. The goal of this communication exercise isn’t to create code — or anything else. [Continue]

by Abhijit Nadgouda · Filed: for executives, project management · Tagged: software-development · (0)

Feb 15, 2008

Measuring Distance In Time

Mumbai is probably the only city where the distance is measured in time. If you ask, “How far is Andheri (a suburb) from Borivali (another suburb)?”, you will usually get answers like 45 mins or 1.5 hrs. Sounds absurd. [Continue]

by Abhijit Nadgouda · Filed: for executives, project management · Tagged: mumbai · (2)

Oct 25, 2007

Alan Cox On Open Source Projects

Matt Assay points to Alan Cox’s talk - Dear Mr. Brooks, or: Software engineering in the free software world. There are not many talks that are informative and equally entertaining to engage you through their entire length. [Continue]

by Abhijit Nadgouda · Filed: open source, project management · Tagged: alan-cox · (2)

Oct 25, 2007

Musing About Testing Design

We do test a lot of our code to make sure that the software behaves as it intends to. But do we test our designs? A sturdy design can instill confidence in the team, much before we try to see the output or the results. [Continue]

by Abhijit Nadgouda · Filed: design, for executives, mindworks, project management · Tagged: authority, knowledge, responsibility · (0)

Oct 8, 2007

What Is Performance?

A significant term that comes up everywhere in the software world, yet is open for interpretation for everyone. The danger is when you and your client end up with a difference. It is critical to define what is meant by loose terms like good performance when software development is being discussed. [Continue]

by Abhijit Nadgouda · Filed: project management · Tagged: performance · (3)

Oct 5, 2007

What Kind Of Work Do I Like To Do?

I have been asked this question by different people at different times, enough to write about it here. Not necessarily as an answer, but to build my own thoughts about it, because I do not have a crisp and to-the-point answer. Many times the intent is to find out about my favorite technologies or programming languages or environments. [Continue]

by Abhijit Nadgouda · Filed: project management · Tagged: · (0)

Oct 3, 2007

Why Is Software Hard?

Kyle Wilson attempts to answer that, and amazingly brings up factors that are not usually discussed. Software development, by itself, is complex because there are always unknown factors, and we are still not capable of anticipating all of them. But a software project can easily turn into an abysmal hole where we keep doing things. [Continue]

by Abhijit Nadgouda · Filed: asides, project management · Tagged: complexity, kyle-wilson · (0)

Sep 28, 2007

On IT Project Failures

Michael Krigsman informs us about the study done by Computer Associates to determine causes of IT project failures. Michael presents some slides from the yet to be published study. Interesting, but the view seems to be only from the corporate world, where the discussions start and end with budget. [Continue]

by Abhijit Nadgouda · Filed: project management · Tagged: failures · (5)

Sep 7, 2007

Continuing On Pre-built Or Custom

This has been one of the most time-consuming and significant decisions in almost all software projects. It affects many things, with the maintenance getting affected the most. Sometimes hiring new people also revolves around the skills required for the third party tools (code blocks, libraries, frameworks, applications) used. [Continue]

by Abhijit Nadgouda · Filed: project management · Tagged: · (1)

« Older Thoughts