Design, Develop, Create

Tuesday 16 November 2010

Software, Systems Development, and Life Cycle Humour

* Anything to do with Dilbert

* A lot of Gary Larson's Far Side.

* Ken Schwaber popularised the idea of chickens and pigs to distinguish between people who are responsible and accountable versus those who have an interest in a project but aren’t necessarily responsible for anything.
“A chicken and a pig are walking down the road. The chicken says to the pig, ‘Do you want to open a restaurant with me?’ The pig considers the question and replies, ‘Yes, I’d like that. What do you want to call the restaurant?’ The chicken replies, ‘Ham and Eggs!’ The pig stops, pauses, and replies, ‘On second thought, I don’t think I want to open a restaurant with you. I’d be committed, but you’d only be involved.’” (Schwaber 2004)


* A "manager's" view of an agile development project. The Downfall of Agile Hitler a must-watch from the Downfall parodies on YouTube. Youtube tells users how to fight The Downfall parody takedown reaction. And a Hitler parody about a take down of Hitler parodies :-) http://bit.ly/acmUtU

* Encountering a new SDLC, methodology, or lifecycle; its terminology, language, practices and norms in different organisations, can feel like waking up on groundhog day. Like Britain and the United States, nations separated by a common language; ' CMMI, RUP, XP, SCRUM, SDLC, DSDM, ISO9001, Spiral, Iterative; they all come down to the same thing, writing software.

* On project management: The newly elected leader of a nation found a note and two sealed letters numbered 1 and 2 left by the recently ousted incumbent. The note said ‘if things get bad open the first letter, if things get bad again open the second letter.’ Six months later things got really bad so the leader opened the first letter, it said “blame me.” The leader blamed the previous leader and the people bought it. Six months later things got even worse and the second letter was opened, it said ‘write two letters.’

References:
Schwaber, K. Agile Project Management with Scrum Microsoft Press, Redmond, Washington, 2004, p. 163.