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Software Debt – Do you know the health of your ‘Camel”?

 Software Debt, Software Development, Technical Debt  2 Responses »
Feb 262011
 
Software Debt - Do you know the health of your 'Camel"?

In one of my previous blog articles I talked about Software Debt escalating to Technical Bankruptcy, here I will explore more the need for and apparent lack of monitoring of accrued software debt within businesses. The lack of understanding of software debt by business managers, particularly those based on software as their primary product, is a fatal mistake in their business strategy in my view. It is akin to only looking at the sales numbers and not a the operating expense, one day you’ll find yourself paying more for a sale than the revenue from the sale.Recently I used the idiom ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’  to convey this point, I particularly liked it as the original Arabic proverb describes how a camel is loaded beyond its capacity to move, that is exactly what happens with software debt the [Read More...]

Building a scale model of 1903 Kitty Hawk Flyer

 History, Mechanics  1 Response »
Feb 242011
 
Building a scale model of 1903 Kitty Hawk Flyer

It was a fascinating process building this model, the designers of the model held true to almost all of the original design of the Wright Brothers. As I progressed through the building of the model I would compare it to the photo graphs and the literature available, this is why I say the designers appear to have held true. One of the great things that appealed to me about the Model Airways kits was that they left visible the entire construction of the plane. This does present that issue that all my flaws of construction are also visible, so if you decide to take this kind of model on spend time reading the instructions, they are pretty good, and I found that tacking together the pieces before final gluing was very helpful to ensure that correct alignment is achieved. Basically [Read More...]

Book Review: Building Wireless Sensor Networks by Robert Faludi

 Arduino, Books Reviews, XBee  1 Response »
Feb 152011
 
Book Review: Building Wireless Sensor Networks by Robert Faludi

NYU Professor Robert Faludi, has supplied a very easy to follow book tackling the construction of a XBee wireless network, which is not as simple as it may appear. He provides both a step by step guide and a basic understanding/education of the technology involved. This book starts with describing initial choices around hardware and software to construct a XBee wireless network, Professor Faludi also does a quick tutorial on radio transmissions theory and wireless networking. Once you have the bits and pieces set out, Professor Faludi walks through a number of projects helping to build up the readers overall knowledge: 1. A Wireless doorbell 2. Romantic Lighting Sensor 3. Simple Sensor Network 4. Simple Sensor with Sleep Project He then discusses a XBee Internet Gateway (XIG) project ( see his blog), this opens up the borders by allowing the [Read More...]

Collateralized Technical Debt compared with CDOs

 Software Development, Technical Debt  1 Response »
Feb 052011
 
Collateralized Technical Debt compared with CDOs

David  Knootz commented on my recent post about Technical Bankruptcy referring to an interesting thought in his blog “Technical Debit – Collateralized Debt Obligation you should not invest in.” I was just going to reply to his comment but my response got more and more involved . The CDO comparison presents a interesting thought, for me a follow-on question to David’s posting would be are some organizations already making money off of Collateralized Technical Debt – it is less expensive in the short term to miss out that finicky automated testing and unit testing stuff – unmanaged outsourcing, consultants, etc. or organizations that just spend too little time on managing technical debt. Technical debt will happen, I would say if you have removed all debt from your code before releasing it then you have spent to much time perfecting it [Read More...]