Skip to content

Tag Archives: business

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 [...]

Filed in business | Also tagged , | Comments (2)

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, [...]

Filed in business | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments (7)

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 [...]

Filed in business, professional practice | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments Off

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 [...]

Filed in business, professional practice, technical | Also tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off

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? [...]

Filed in business, infrastructure and frameworks | Also tagged , , , , | Comments Off