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Category Archives: business

In those OTHER multiverses, Oracle already bought it for $500mil

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Strange IM conversation came my way the other night, whilst discussing some code a team I led wrote at a previous workplace, I think it highlights some crucial factors Oracle bring to the Enterprise Java World: anon 9:04PM [about that code] crazymcphee 9:05 PM well, it WAS perfect … CRAZY perfect anon 9:06 PM lol… [...]

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JAOO Brisbane 2009 highlights and thoughts

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

I spent last Monday and Tuesday at the JAOO conference in Brisbane, and I have a couple of things which I want to say I thought interesting. (‘JAOO’ btw, because I see people asking about it on Twitter, is pronounced a bit like “yow” but with the “j” from German/Dutch like “jah”). Firstly, I found [...]

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The realities of ‘ROI’ for developers

Friday, May 1, 2009

Once, the CEO told the software team I was in working on in regards to a proposed feature … “Basically the feature’s ROI has to beat the cash rate. If I can get a better return by leaving this million dollars on deposit at the bank then I owe it to my shareholders to do [...]

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Oracle to buy Sun …

Monday, April 20, 2009

Yes, it’s true. Oracle and Sun have both announced the marriage. Techcrunch has the full press release. ZDnet some other commentary. A few people seem to be sweating about MySQL. It would not be stressing about MySQL too much. It could get spun off, who knows. It’s even possible, as some commenters on Techcrunch say, [...]

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Are fixed-price contracts evil?

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Alef Arendsen asks ‘Are fixed priced contracts evil?’, especially to the agile process, and summarises there a number of responses that others have had into this question. Especially in the contractual arrangements that consulting companies need to make in the agile development sphere. He points to an excellent post by Seth Schubert on this matter. [...]

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Burning down your value, not your story

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

What’s the problem with reporting the amount of work we’ve completed the last iteration in story points? Story points are a somewhat arbitrary, but consistent measure of the technical complexity to implement a feature. But that’s not the problem with reporting them to management. The thing is, it’s not what management are interested in. Consider [...]

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Achieving high velocity

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Sprint to the lead in your industry – and stay there! So says the back of the dust cover on Chasing The Rabbit: How market leaders outdistance the competition and how great companies can catch up and win by Steven J Spear (McGraw Hill, New York, 2009). I referenced this book last week in my [...]

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The rewrite will be ready shortly

Sunday, February 1, 2009

You might have seen the following cartoon before: It’s from a site called The Project Cartoon. What I didn’t know was the site allows you to use the little cartoons to make your own version. You can caption and re-order the panels. For your amusement, and perhaps your edification, I present “The Rewrite Will Be [...]

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Open source and profits

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Sun’s sales topped estimates, according to Bloomberg, and this was all thanks to its open source software strategy, according to Matt Asay at CNET: Sun Microsystems is getting some love from Wall Street after its sales and earnings topped estimates, as detailed by Bloomberg. Software sales jumped 21 percent year-over-year. What is fueling the growth? [...]

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