Product Management

Recently Paul M. Jones published great article on the Software Engineering major conflict between Business and Software worlds: Product quality that perfectly matches Robert L.Glass book I’ve been recently reading on “Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering”. If you still didn’t read it - strongly recommended! Just few excerpts on the article: They [engineers] have a reputation to maintain. Low quality for their kind of work is bad for reputation among their peers....

Seth Godin published once again a great article on work/life motivation. Becoming a better version of yourself Catastrophe (or the world as we know it will end) Connection (because others will join in) Creative itch (the voice inside of you wants to be expressed) Dissatisfaction (because it’s not good enough as it is) Engineer (because there’s a problem to be solved) Generosity (because it’s a chance to contribute) Possibility (because we can, and it’ll be neat to see how it works in the world) Selection (to get in, win the prize, be chosen)

Always code as if the person who ends up maintaining your code is a violent psychopath who knows where you live. Code of conduct - absolutely great thing in the world of open source and overwhelming media. We try to setup a certain pattern of communication with others, to avoid bashing, insults or any other types of miscommunication. It perfectly works in community organisation. People know their “do’s” and “don’ts”....

Great article describes how Automattic handles most of the managerial routines, and keep things running: The great irony in this, of course, is Mullenweg himself. In the jazz ensemble, Mullenweg’s notes overrode everything. “I’m married to WordPress,” he told me. All the high-stakes decisions for all three organisations were made by him - and often low-stakes ones as well. Employees jokingly referred to the following common occurrence as “Matt bombing,”...

Great article on software development sins from Ionel Cristian and great quote on technical dept: Management fear risks. Juniors fear getting in intractable situations or just don’t know how to solve it better. Seniors with cozy positions fear embarrassment - it’s already cozy enough and the golden shackles are so shiny. Why risk looking like a fool and give management reasons for downgrade or lose that minuscule 1% salary upgrade....

CRAP is short for Change Risk Anti-Patterns – an acronym to protect you from deeply offensive code. Measures the C.R.A.P. (Change Risk Anti-Patterns) score. It is designed to analyze and predict the amount of effort, pain, and time required to maintain an existing body of code. A method with a CRAP score over 30 is considered CRAPpy (i.e., unacceptable, offensive, etc.). C.R.A.P.(m) = comp(m)^2 * (1 – cov(m)/100)^3 + comp(m) Where comp(m) is the cyclomatic complexity of method m, and cov(m) is the test code coverage provided by automated tests....