Thoughts on Software and Technology
I am certainly not the only one observing that the workplace has a tendency to make any word that described an interesting or innovative concept almost meaningless over time. The word “Agile” is an often cited example of a concept that has taken on so many different meanings over time that it’s information content has... Continue Reading →
The proponents of DevOps (myself included) usually bring forward arguments that evolve around breaking silos: “You build it, you run it”. This, according to the philosophy, leads to deliverables that take operational concerns into account, more automation and less finger-pointing. Many of these same arguments could also be applied to some of the other organisational... Continue Reading →
Estimation exercises that require the team to come around a table and discuss whether a task is a three or a five are a typical component of today’s software development rituals. Do the benefits of this process outweigh its cost? I have worked in teams with and without this process and I have found myself... Continue Reading →
I have noticed a fairly anecdotal negative correlation between the effectiveness of the interactions between a product manager and the engineering team and the frequency with which either party uses the phrase “gathering requirements”. As I am generally curious about how language determines our understanding of the process of software development, I would like to... Continue Reading →
I am a fan of setting stretch goals that are just a little bit beyond what seems realistically achievable. They are motivating and communicate a certain optimism about the capabilities of the team. However, not all dimensions of a project lend themselves to ambitious goal-setting. We should be particularly careful about goals that affect technical... Continue Reading →
The newly formed German government has recently signed a coalition agreement that emphasizes a new digital agenda. One of the proposals is to investigate the use of blockchain technology for land title registers and priorities of the digital strategy include AI and quantum computing. At the same time, we observe that for contact tracing during... Continue Reading →
It almost seems like a rite of passage: Every company sooner or later discovers they need to build a “platform”. The idea is simple: If you find the common denominator behind the company's development activities, you can build the tooling that allows future projects to be more cost-effective provided they make use of the same... Continue Reading →
An extremely fundamental concept that is influencing most of my thinking around software projects is the distinction between the problem space and the solution space. It is one of the best models that I have found so far to think about the software development process on an abstract level. In this article, I would like... Continue Reading →
The Solution Space 