November, 2008

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21
Nov 08

Software Decay

Krishna Kumar writes Maintenance over at Thought Clusters:

Like tangible products, software products also decay. They do so because the environment around them keeps changing. The rules of the business change. People’s expectations about user interfaces change. The increased quantity of data and number of users requires performance tuning as well as better physical resources. The quality of data also brings new challenges of organization and reporting. Superior technology makes the existing architecture and design outdated. 

It seems to me that software development and software capabilities are radically different today compared to just 3 or 4 years ago, so the decay rate is probably pretty high. What do you think?

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19
Nov 08

The iPhone, Again

A couple bits of iPhone love:

  • iPhone earns highest satisfaction score among businesspeople
  • NPD Group reports iPhone 3G is now the top-selling consumer mobile phone in the U.S. – ending Razr’s 3-year run. [via ars technica, Daring Fireball]
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17
Nov 08

Trillion here, trillion there. Pretty soon we’ll be talking about real money.

Duncan Mansfield reporting on a new book: What We Could Have Done With the Money: 50 Ways To Spend the Trillion Dollars We’ve Spent on Iraq.

He calculates $1 trillion could pave the entire U.S. interstate highway system with gold – 23.5-karat gold leaf. It could buy every person on the planet an iPod. It could give every high school student in America a free college education. It could pay off every American’s credit card. It could buy a Buick for every senior citizen still driving in America.

[via Made to Stick]

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15
Nov 08

Highrise – Give it a try!

Are you managing your follow ups? Can’t remember what you talked about with that co-worker 2 weeks ago? Check out Highrise – it’s an amazing tool for tracking contacts, setting follow-ups, and driving the conversations you have. In my own arsenal, it is a vital support tool I use every day to stay productive.

Highrise

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13
Nov 08

Redux: Overestimate the Risks, Underestimate the Gains

“Most people fear change because they overestimate the risks and underestimate the gains. If you want to convince them to change, you have to address both issues.” from 37 Signals writeup on how to escape the waterfall. The Waterfall Model is a philosophy regarding the software development process originating from back in the 1970’s. A more modern approach, which has been gaining significant recognition, is Agile Software Development. Agile started in the 1990’s because “the waterfall model [was] seen as bureaucratic, slow, demeaning, and inconsistent with the ways that software engineers actually perform effective work.”

A redux is an item I posted about once, and more than a year later I still think it is every bit as interesting and relevant. If you missed it then, perhaps you’ll enjoy it now.

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