mike.mainguy

Had an interesting conversation today and thought I'd share some insight to business people dealing with technical folks The crux of the question centered around a request we were making for "read only access to a staging environment". I pondered why that line item was there because from a technical perspective what we needed was access to the source code for a web application, we really didn't need access to anything in the environment (though it wouldn't hurt). Moreover, with only access to the environment, we wouldn't necessarily have access to the source code so the actual need wouldn't even be met. In conversation, a light began to come on in my head realizing that "source code" and "environment" are almost meaningless to many non-technical people, and in todays "As A Service" world, sometimes they get mingled together. Brief Overview Sourc Code is essentially the instruction that tell a computer "what to do...

I read with interest an article about picking the right metric to incentivize desired behavior and thought I would add a little of my own personal insight. One problem with many (maybe most) software development organizations is that they inadvertently create perverse incentives , rewarding undesireable behavior and creating confusing and chaotic environments that, despite best efforts of all involved, seem to only on a hit or miss basis produce the desired result. Just as important, often the rewards are implicit and it isn't obvious that developers are actually being rewarded for the errant behavior. Some short examples of widely used, but poor metrics I've observed as well as some simple and arguably better alternatives follow. For example: Rewarding developers for "count of bugs fixed". Without accountability for who created the bug, this simply incents developers to release buggy half finished softwa...

For folks employed in "traditional" jobs, there is a common event in the modern age that raises collective blood pressure. It's know as "annual enrollment" and it is a period of time where most employees change/adjust various benefits offered by their company. In particular, medical insurance is a common thing to adjust. While this is normal a cost of doing business, I think many folks underestimate the real costs of switching. Sure, there's the cost for the HR department to go out to 20 different brokers and try to get the "cheapest/best" plan for their employees, but there're also a number of hidden costs. For example, every year my health plan changes, I spend at least 5-10 hours futzing around with various billing changes as well as filling out forms etc. When I quote 10 hours, many folks say "you're crazy, it only took me 15 minutes". I think these folks, greatly underestimate the amount of time spent because they...