Software is not Shake & Bake…

Projects are continually plagued with poor choices due to something I have just now coined – Shake and Bake Syndrome.

Every single individual involved in a project sincerely cares about the best possible outcome; however as a result of caring – we pollute the purity of designs and implementations by adding a small amount of our personal opinions to the project.

Here are a few common examples of this in action:

• Feature lists driven by a committee of people
• DBAs enforcing their application database schema
• Non-UI developers making UI
• Customers modifying professional designs
• New feature creep labeled as bugs by QA personal
• Developers assuming they understand the domain

So in short, here is what happens – everyone wants to help, everyone throws in their 1 big idea, the project becomes a mashup of disjoint ideas.

Seriously, what would a Frank Lloyd Wright house look like if he gave into the “design by committee” mentality? I guarantee that it would have not had the same artistic beauty.

Since we could (and have) debate whether software is a science or art, the question comes to mind – are the only pure pieces of software art those done by a single person? Or, is the single developer always doomed to imperfection since we can never master everything?

Regardless, I highly value my teammates because I know that they compliment me in my weaknesses; however, I am growing ever-so-more tired of the non-stakeholders adding in their 2 cents.

It’s time to make some Scrum chicken Shake & Bake…and no, you can’t help.

The ability to get everything on your task list done becomes less and less probable with the number of tasks and you load into your week or iteration. The simple math of compounding probabilities is a good analogy to prove this point.

At the end of this video, what I should have said (for clarity) was that you should under promise and over deliver. Accomplishing that alone, there is no need for fancy math as you have already learned the lesson that the analogy is attempting to deliver.

Like I said in the video, please check out Leading Answers as it is a great website with a lot of great information.

A few weeks ago, I noticed that Google finally gave me an authority hub listing for the keyword search “codesqueeze”…but then I noticed something a little out of place…

…that’s right people…

…we all knew this day was going to come…

…Phil Haack has finally started his world domination plan by stealing my thunder and using Codesqueeze Google SERPs as his launch pad.

As a result, I emailed Google support this mockup of what I feel the reindexing of haacked.com should appear as. Via la Resistance!