Ten Most Important Ideas in Software Development

Recently (re)read this as I am told I will get to hear Mr. McConnell speak in a couple of weeks.  Good reading.

First post for GZ at work

I have often toyed with posting on my regular training and running blog, Hang Nine, about various things I am considering in my work life.

Now why would I ever want to take a blog that is predominantly about running and pollute it with elements from my work?

Simply, because I often see parallels in the things that I am thinking about in both running and work in terms of behavior, improvement, success, failure ...

That said, I have elected to post these separately. While I often see common themes, there are often enough differences in the audiences that I believe the separate forums are more appropriate.

In any case, for folks who wonder what sort of work I am involved in: at current I work for a software development organization, and have had roles at various parts through development life cycle. Today, I specifically work with development teams in considering how their products stand against various process improvement and regulatory models (like ISO, CMMI, FDA, etc).

So to some, I am a process geek. To some I am a business coach. To some I am a project manager. To some, I am a general pain in the ***. I guess what I am called, depends on what I am providing that audience that is asking for it, and if they like what they are hearing. :)

To that end, some of what I have been considering as of late is the CMMI model, specifically the soon to be released model of 1.3 and across the constellations of both Development and Services. And in Development circles, how these models overlap, support and align with "Agile" practices. Along with this line, I am often considering how the process areas with CMMI could be used for a person engaging in an athletic program. Apparently I am not the only one that takes every day activities and tries to map them back into models /frameworks ...

I have had the opportunity to work with Hillel, and I find him to be a great guy to work with (intelligent and fun).

Also, I stumbled across this podcast recently on the Fitness Behavior blog. While it is focused on the improvement of an individual in terms of fitness, its applicability is much broader than that - meaning it has bearing on improvement as an individual in almost any regard. And, I believe it is also has bearing on organizations.