PRESENTATION OUTLINE
We don't know the requirements, what will be needed, how big the project will be and what the conditions are. We know nothing - except for two things: When it has to be finished and what it will cost!
We chase technologies and paradigms and change them, before we have even understood the previous ones.
More developers will save us. If a pregnancy of 9 months takes too long, just use more women.
Technical know-how on management level is overrated. For a senior surgeon a butcher training is a sufficient qualification.
We create rules and guidelines, reference architectures and frameworks and that will generate success and maintainable software automatically. Homer Simpson will beat Usain Bolt on 100 m - he just must buy the the correct shoes.
Softskills are more important than know-how. Every hair-dresser knows that, too. Cutting hairs is of minor importance and with eloquence one can promote an Angela Merkel hairstyle from a bug to a feature.
Why easy, if it can be done more complicated. We need an application server for a helloworld program - everything else is not professional.
Another word for software tester: User!
Banana software - the fruit "ripes" at the customer? We don't do that, we don't even have a fruit yet, not even a blossom. We have a shoot, but I don't think the date of delivery for the banana in three weeks is at risk.
Our software production rate is too low. Let us create a task force, discuss everything else in a meeting with all the developers, then we make a workshop for optimization, lessons learned following before the status meeting and the jour fix to understand where all the time is being wasted.
This is our specialist for communication. His qualification? He can use a telephone!
Self-reflection is an unknown concept. Tom DeMarco (Peopleware) describes in his books why a lot of IT projects don't work as they should. But our project is different of course!
Setting clear and realistic goals: The target is the center of the dartboard on the barn door. Do we hit the center?... not exactly the center...the dartboard? ...the door?... at least the barn?...ok, we triggered a shot successfully. We can define this as a positive, extendible outcome - let's call it release 1.0.
Outsourcing is the solution! A developer in India costs a third. In that case it doesn't matter if sometimes we have slight misunderstandings. Such miscommunication can be fixed with a few more Telcos with Dehli: "No, the three travel classes are called first class, business class and tourist class and not on the train, outside the train and on top of the train. But these error messages in Hindi are quite charming."
