Folks like to say that there's a "Software Crisis". We can't build software quickly enough, cheaply enough or well enough.

I agree with EWD -- software is really very, very complex. See EWD 316 for more justification of this position.

Is my conclusion is that the cost of software stems from …

Got this question recently.

"Any suggestions on PM tools that meet the following considerations

1. Planning
2. Estimating
3. Tracking (allowing both PM input and developer input)
4. Reporting
5. Support both Agile and Waterfall projects
6. Releases
7. Bug fixes (probably just another type of backlog)"

Agile PM requires far less planning than you're used to …

See Joel On Software: The Duct Tape Programmer: he lauds the programmer who gets stuff done with "duct tape and WD-40".

Here's why: "Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your product must have it."

Dave Drake sent the link along with the following:

This "speaks of coding for …

I've got a ton of exercises in the Building Skills books. Specifically, my OO Design book is based on my own personal Code Kata exercises.

Plus there's the established Code Kata resources. The CodeKata page, Mark Needham's blog posting on code-kata, Rizky Farhan's Collection of Software Projects, jp.hamilton's Code …

I found this note while cleaning up. I think it's a summary of John Cleese's short movie "Meetings Bloody Meetings".

1. Plan. Why are we meeting? What's the purpose? What are the subjects?
2. Inform. Tell the attendees what, why and the expected outcome.
3. Prepare. Create an agenda, with a time line …

The E. W. Dijkstra Archive is a collection of over 1,000 manuscripts that EWD sent around during his career.

This Stack Overflow question ("explaining software development to management") had a really brilliant comment on one of the answers.

Analogies are always leaky, and you will end up with proposed …

My son's a musician, and one of the standard jokes boils down to the phrase "no brown M&M's". They use it as a catch-all phrase for people being fussy to a level that's senseless.

Then BoingBoing pointed me to the Van Halen Brown M&M story in snopes.com …

Yesterday, I looked at some marketing material on SPI (Software Process Improvement). It was quite good. The approach was very pragmatic, the deliverables very sound.

The hard part is connecting with customers.

I've only worked with a few customers who were actually interested in process improvement. I've worked with close …