Learning Is The First Step
Over a year ago I stated that there were programming process artifacts coming soon. Well I’m happy to state that the first two such documents are available here. One is a development workflow standard operating procedure for enhancing standard agile scrum practice. The other is some basic code style rules. Notice that these are contained … Read more
I’m trying to estimate the after repair value (ARV) of a home I own in Alexandria, VA. This article show initial steps in doing that. My basic approach to ARV estimation is to comp the target house plan. While I’m at it, I also comp my current house as a validation approach. I use five … Read more
This article quickly notes a few reasons why you, as an employee or an employer, will want the full hours of work recorded on any project, even for salaried employees. Some firms have a practice of limiting the hours recorded for salaried employees. These firms want to ensure that the employee works 40 hours, but … Read more
I’ve often been asked to map points to hours as part of an estimation process. This kind of works and kind of doesn’t. I’ll give my rule of thumb at the end, but first I want to defend the use of story points qua story points. If the only purpose of story points is to … Read more
There is a minority practice in Agile Scrum sometimes called Repointing. This article describes the practice, compares it to the usual practice, and concludes by recommending that teams do not engage in Repointing. The usual Agile estimation procedure for an existing issue is as follows: Optionally create a tentative story estimate during release, multi-sprint, or … Read more
One of the major Austrian critiques of certain kinds of analysis focuses on uncertainty. You can make a forecast based on certain data, but something unexpected might come along and muck everything up. In the past I have described ways of overcoming this issue. These article contains 3 sections which do the following: Argues for … Read more
This article outlines some skills in overcoming uncertainty. It’s heavily biased toward software engineering. I also talk about environmental variables which help overcome uncertainty and risk in software development. Tldr: Skills include the ability to research, the ability to trial and error, and the practice of regularly learning, each of which have generic and project-specific … Read more
This article talks about ways to deal with uncertainty, and I will also briefly define the concept in contrast with simple risk. Definitions: Uncertainty vs Risk Rational Estimation without Uncertainty Rational Estimation with Uncertainty 1 – Definitions: Uncertainty vs Risk Uncertainty and risk are both not simple economic phenomena. They are generic elements of complex … Read more