In the June 15, 2009 issue of SD Times, David Rubinstein writes an article called “Agile development: Built to scale”. Link. In the article, he quotes Robert Holler: “Scaling is just tough. Sometimes agile gets a black eye for not scaling, but it’s more like, ‘Development doesn’t scale.’” Agreed. But isn’t this what Frederick Brooks said in The Mythical Man-Month? And that was written in 1975! So why does even the software development industry still have a hard time believing that this is true? Just curious.
Archive for June, 2009
Development Doesn’t Scale
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009iTunes University
Friday, June 19th, 2009The iTunes store has a university area, including a bunch of Engineering classes. I’ve been going through the programming for the iPhone class from Stanford University. Very cool idea. I wish I had more time to explore more of these.
Click here to open the Engineering area in the iTunes store.
Mobile Web App
Friday, June 12th, 2009I’ve just launched a new project at work to build a mobile web application for smart phones. I’m excited about it, but also realize that I have a lot to learn in the next few months. Here are a couple articles that have helped me get started:
Developing Web Applications for the iPhone
Develop iPhone Web applications with Eclipse
and the Safari Dev Center.
Risk Aversion
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009I was recently accused of being risk averse. I would readily concede that I am more risk averse than many. But the accusation has given me cause to reflect. I started by looking up a definition of risk averse:
Wanting to avoid risk unless adequately compensated for it; the attitude of most investors. For example, if two investments have the same expected return, the one with lower risk will be preferred. A riskier investment has to have a higher expected return in order to provide an incentive for a risk-averse investor to select it.
I don’t think that when I was accused of being risk averse the statement was intended to be quantitative. Rather I think it was a qualitative statement. I understand that the usage as a qualitative statement is a popular one that has something of a negative connotation. I can certainly see how never being wiling to take a risk is a problem. But I don’t think that’s me. We should be clear about the distinction between not being able to take risks and the desire to understand risks and make decisions accordingly. Not paying attention to risks seems reckless to me. This is particularly true when making decisions about a project and managing that project. From a project management perspective, understanding and mitigating risk is usually seen as a necessary part of the process.
I think of risk this way:
1. Understand the risk.
2. Make the best decision about the risk (the unknown) based on the things that are known.
3. Take precautions and monitor the risks.
If I go back and try to evaluate the original statement, that I am risk averse, I’m no longer sure I agree. I think that if I saw sufficient return for the higher risk I would not hesitate to take the risk. It pushes the whole thing in the direction of values. I suspect the person who made the accusation had very different values (and hence different understanding of the expected return) than I did.
The one thing that I can definitely say that I have learned through this thought process is how to communicate risk. I have found that rather than putting it in negative terms, it is better to put it in positive terms in the other column. In other words, rather than a list of pros and cons for two sides of a decision, I’d now rather put only pros. A con is essentially a pro in the other column. And wouldn’t we all rather be a pro than a con?