Implementation Complexity, Part II: Catastrophe, Dear Liza, and the M Word
In my last post, I talked about the Tower of Babel as a warning against implementation complexity, and I mentioned a number of issues that can occur at the time of design or construction of a project.
The Tower of Babel, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c. 1563 (from Wikipedia)
Success and throwing it over the wallOK, so let's say that the right people get together into a well-functioning team, and build our Tower of Babel, whether it's the Empire State Building, or the electrical grid, or...
Implementation Complexity, Part I: The Tower of Babel, Gremlins, and The Mythical Man-Month
I thought I'd post a follow-up, in a sense, to an older post about complexity in consumer electronics I wrote a year and a half ago. That was kind of a rant against overly complex user interfaces. I am a huge opponent of unnecessary complexity in almost any kind of interface, whether a user interface or a programming interface or an electrical interface. Interfaces should be clean and simple.
Now, instead of interface complexity, I'll be talking about implementation complexity, with a...
You Will Make Mistakes
</scorpion>: FAILAnyone out there see the TV pilot of Scorpion? Genius hacker squad meets Homeland Security in a fast-paced thriller to save hundreds of airplanes from crashing after LAX air traffic control software upgrade fails and they didn’t save a backup of the old version (ZOMG!!!) so thousands of people are going to die because the planes… well, they just can’t land! They just can’t. Even if the weather is sunny and calm and there could quite possibly...
Requirements, Specifications and Tests
As a freelance developer of all things embedded, it's important that right through a project everyone involved knows what is expected, who is responsible for delivering, and how to confirm that what is delivered meets the customers expectations.
I have a tried and trusted method that works for me each time, is flexible enough to deal with feature-creep and solid enough to give the client that warm fuzzy fealing that they crave.
I've dound that this method of working has in the past been...
Review: Project Management for the Unofficial Project Manager
Software development projects are notorious for having problems. Late, over budget, not working properly, making people's lives miserable all around. Embedded systems add the further complication of hardware to that.
How many of us have lived through problematic projects? Hopefully some of them have at least been ultimately successful to make all the suffering worth it in the end, but there are plenty that haven't.
I don't consider myself a project manager, or a manager...
Requirements, Specifications and Tests
As a freelance developer of all things embedded, it's important that right through a project everyone involved knows what is expected, who is responsible for delivering, and how to confirm that what is delivered meets the customers expectations.
I have a tried and trusted method that works for me each time, is flexible enough to deal with feature-creep and solid enough to give the client that warm fuzzy fealing that they crave.
I've dound that this method of working has in the past been...
