Leading DevOps

About 3 or 4 years ago, we decided Use Cases where the way to document system requirements. RUP says to do this so let’s do it. Here are some of the problems. 1. No one knows how to write use cases. They are very difficult to document all the details of the requirements. 2. There were no standard ways to write them. 3. The developers end up providing the content and the analysts become technical writers. 4. They take so long to write. The amount of thrashing over little details, formatting and what the system already does goes on for hours. I have seen 2 hour meetings that completed one use case to only change later or be dropped from scope. 5. Maintenance is almost impossible. 6. On some projects, they actually did Business Requirements Specs first and then duplicated the information in use case format. (Months of requirement refinements) 7. Everyone interprets them differently. QA opens defects because the code is not doing what they think it should. Designers create designs that do ...

I have struggled with this for some time. Some of our projects spend more on documentation than code. One team required "Operation Manuals". (I put this in air quotes because no one really knows what they are.) Every document is different. I asked around and found out that the operations/support team were the audience for these documents. So I set up a meeting with them and asked, what do you really need and what do you use. What we found is they are really training materials. A new support person reads them to learn the product. Ok. If your staff changes a lot, then maybe there is value in this information. Then, I asked what technical information do you need? We need ERDs. Why? You have access to the database. Not really an ERD, we need a data dictionary because you table names and columns do not make sense. We have to research issues and create reports for our customers. Ok. This has some value because lots of times we do not know our data either. We need to know what the ...

2 weeks of planning, 2 months of requirements gathering and use cases, 1 month of creating quotes, Customer's face after getting the quotes, PRICELESS. When a customer is telling the analyst or product manager they need all 10 use cases, you should tell them no. I do not want your money this bad. I want you to have a better product that is a good return on your investment. Your customer wants 10 use cases or features which make up a project or theme. Talk them into only doing the top 3 or 4 features in their priority list FIRST. Only do the requirements for these features. Only do a quote or budget for these features, especially if these features are complex. Stress the point FIRST so they understand, they can do the others next. More often than not, you will not implement most of the remaining features and the first 3 or 4 will be better than originally expected. One project we spent almost 2 months gather and refining requirements. This was for an existing complex system t...

Software development is becoming harder and harder to deliver up to customer satisfaction. We all know the Standish reports from the past. I do not need to repeat them here. Agile development has been around for over 10 years now and waterfall, well I imagine the pyramids were built by a waterfall project plan. Projects today are hard to deliver either way. Clients want everything cheap and fast. Project managers do not like things to change. Developers want to build a space shuttle when an airplane will do. Analysis want customers to make up their mind. Product managers want everything faster. Then, there are testers, designers, server teams, DBA and best of all customers. All of these team members have tasks to be completed to delivery a feature, iteration, release or a complete project. Managers will ask all kinds of questions about these tasks. "How much more time will that feature take?" "You are over you estimate on that ticket, why? "How many bugs...

No!!!!!!!!! A leader can be good at management and a manager can be good at leadership but they are not the same. Many times a great leader is not good at managing task and many good managers are not good leaders. Leadership defined by me: The act of creating change in people. Management defined by me: The act of creating change in things. Leaders manage people and managers manage tasks.