I'm currently looking for work teaching training courses and consulting in various areas related to software quality. At the moment I'm focusing on software testing, software inspection, process improvement, and risk management. I am the only employee, but I have a strong network of consultants that I will call upon when needed. That's what I've been up to. How are things going for you? Drop me a line and let me know.
faught@tejasconsulting.com
office 817-294-3998
cell 817-360-1597
http://www.tejasconsulting.com/
The reason I felt that an ongoing part-time gig would be a good idea is because I intend to follow more of a "consulting" model than a "contracting" model. I want to be exposed to a broad section of the industry so that I can bring the latest industry wisdom to my clients, and I don't want to be out of circulation for any large chunks of time. I want to be readily available when called upon.
As I continue to work with StickyMinds, I plan to merge data between the StickyMinds Tools Guide and the Testing Tools Supplier List, to the extent that the scopes overlap.
First was the well-known curmudgeon Bob Glass, whose keynote was entitled "New Software Concepts: Breakthrough or BS?" He made some very good points about recent software fads such as 4GLs, maturity models, and object-oriented development, demonstrating that the published research results are mostly inconclusive and generally hint at only incremental improvements. The silver lining that he presented was that new techniques can give improvements that are worthwhile, even if they're not true breakthroughs.
Bob indicated that the big theme of the 1980's was productivity improvement, and in the 1990's, it was quality improvement. Now in the naughties, he says we need to "Cut the BS, quit hoping for breakthroughs, [and] start making the modest but valuable progress that is achievable."
Later Mike Epner of Teraquest presented some of the data from a recent Cutter Consortium survey. The top reasons cited for software project problems were "Inadequate project management by the vendor," "Poorly understood requirements," "Inadequate internal project management," and "Lack of vendor domain experience." These are all classic problems that we've known about collectively for a very long time, yet they're still the most persistent problems that need attention. Mike said it's time for a return to fundamentals.
I asked Bob whether he could predict what this decade's fad would be. He said he didn't see any fads forthcoming, and then asked if I had any ideas. I said that perhaps it might be risk management. I recently gave a talk on the subject of risk management where I discussed how risk management can be integrated throughout all levels of an organization. On the way to the talk I stopped by to talk to a kindred spirit, Stiles Roberts, at Ciber. I asked for his perspective on this topic, and his answer went something like "Good grief, let's get companies doing any sort of risk management at all before we worry about integrating the process across organizations." Bob's reply to me at the ASEE workshop was similar, so even there we're back to fundamentals.
So instead of searching for silver bullets, let's be happy with a handful of BB's. This is not to say we should ever be happy with the status quo, but let's also not hang our heads when we "only" achieve improvements of 25%. After all, consider Jerry Weinberg's sage advice in The Secrets of Consulting, talking about how you can't make a client admit that they have any problems:
Never promise more than ten percent improvement. Most people can successfully absorb ten percent into their psychological category of "no problem." Anything more, however, would be embarrassing if the consultant succeeded.
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