In the mailbag I found this nonsense, doomed to inevitable failure:

"As I get more serious about this data science stuff, it has become obvious that a windows machine is not the way to go. ... Q1: What other things should I think about and consider while shopping for a new …

After talking about some experience with legacy modernization (or migration), I received information from Blue Phoenix about their approach to modernization.

Before talking about modernization, it's important to think about the following issue from two points of view.

Modernization can amount to nothing more than Paving the Cowpaths.

From a …

Here's an object lesson in bad requirements writing.

"Good" is defined as a nice simple and intuitive GUI interface. I would be able to just pick symbol from a pallette and put it somewhere and the software would automatically adjust the spacing.

Some problems.

1. Noise words. Phrases like "'Good' is …

I don't want the spamilicious email. I'm trying to actually unsubscribe. The footer says "If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of any information contained in or attached to this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message …

I've been unsubscribing from some junk email recently. The user story is simple: As a not-very-interested person, I want to get off your dumb-ass mailing list so that I don't have to flag your crap as spam any more.

The implementations vary from good to evil. Here's what I've found …

First, the definition. A use case describes an actor's interaction with a system to create business value. There are three parts: Actor, Interaction and Business Value.

1. Not Interactive.

1.1. The use case is just features and technical attributes with no actor interaction expressed.

1.2. The use case is …

Here's a lack of a use case for you.

Someone -- fraudulently -- used my email address to subscribe to XBox live. I cannot remedy this. Apparently, neither can Microsoft.

I get spam from XBox. I change my passwords all over the place.

I go to the XBox live web site to …

I read a 482-word treatise that amounted to these four words "sales and delivery disagree".

A more useful summary is "Sales and Delivery have different views of the order".

It started out calling the standard sales-delivery differences a "Conflict" requiring "Resolution". The description was so hopelessly enmeshed in the conflict …

Consider this dialog box.

• The application was modified.
• It can't be updated.

Why not just replace it? Replacing a modified application seems to be a perfectly sensible use case.

But no, rather than doing something useful, it shows a dialog box. I guess no one thought through this use case …

It's easy to prevent successful use case analysis: make it into an exercise of defining lots of "processes" in excruciating detail.

First, ignore all "objects" definition. All business domain entities -- and actors -- must be treating as second class artifacts.

Second, define everything as a process. A domain entity is just …