Subscribe via RSS

Whiteboard Wednesday: Using Your Bug Tracker For Estimation Tracking

Filed Under Estimation, Whiteboard Wednesdays

As I mentioned in the video above, my team does their bug tracking with Jira, and because it is flexible enough to add in custom user defined fields, I added the Points drop down list. After that, I simply created some reports using their pre-canned charts and wam-bam I have my burn up charts.

Just a few additional hints when attempting to leverage your issue tracker to help with estimation analysis:

  • Make sure you keep 1:1 relationships with issues/estimations
  • Split issues into weekly iterations (or sprint)
  • If you cant create dashboards, learn how to export the data so you can still use it
  • Track everything – completion rate, completion velocity, growth velocity, and project completion date

What Your Dog Can Teach You About Building Teams

Filed Under Human Factors

One of the most basic principles of building a team or organization is that there must be a balance of personalities. Without the correct ratio of Type A, B, and C personalities problems may arise. However, I have watched numerous organizations build teams with the wrong ratios of people.

For example, in the book Good to Great it is said to never hire Type B personalities. Type B personalities will only then hire Type C personalities and your organization will be tainted with people who are not driven to be the best. Why does Jim Collins go upstream against age old mantras such as:

Too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the soup.

Too many chiefs and not enough indians.

Too many officers and not enough privates.

In the end, people will always digress into basic wildlife pack behavior. We only need to look at the common house dog (or their wolf ancestors) to view the different personality types and the best blend of teams.

Guard Dog Type A – The Guard Dog

Guard dogs are most associated with a Software Architect. This type of person is the obvious leader of the group, and will protect his team from anything that is not in the best interest of the team or project.

The most important note to make about the guard dog personality is that these people can be very friendly and open-minded, but mess with them and they will bite.

Alarm Dog Type B – The Alarm Dog

Alarm dogs are like Sr. Developers. They are very smart and very aware of what is happening in the project, and therefore maybe acting as a leader in a small niche of the project.

Unlike the Guard Dog, these people will bark at approaching danger but will never bite. This might be because of lack of authority to execute, or just because of a lack of self confidence.

Happy Dog Type C – The Happy Dog

Happy dogs are the Jr. Developers of software. If danger approaches they will lick its’ hand.

Although they may care about the project, these people are generally apathetic to the bigger decisions. Either they do not want the extra responsibility, have a serious lack of confidence, or just lazy, they just don’t care about decision making. They will follow Type A and B personalities without general questioning.

It is completely understandable why people would say they would want a team of only Guard Dogs or of just Happy Dogs, but by not having clear roles within the pack creates either confusion or contention.

Dog Pack - All Leaders
Too many Guard dogs will fight with each other.

Dog Pack - No Leaders
No Guard dogs will lead to lack of direction.

Dog Pack - Sleeping
All Happy dogs will have no discipline.

In the end, you need a well balanced team. Limit the number of decision makers so that analysis paralysis does not occur, and have a good blend of future leaders and newbies to fill in the team. Doing so will allow you to survive in this wild we call software development.

Dog pack - complete

Glump (Just For Fun)

Filed Under Humor

Those who know me the closest know that I often do stupid stuff like superimpose my picture on crazy photos or make stupid videos. A buddy and I were chatting about my last whiteboard and he reminded me that I made this little movie awhile back. Thought everyone would enjoy laughing with at me.

Glump movie featuring Max Pool

« Older Entries Newer Entries »

Max Pool - © 2025 - {codesqueeze}. Sycorr Banking Solutions