Here is a list of 7 things you need to know, in order to be a manager of software developers, within any significant modern company. See how many you already know. Beauty = Value Functionality = Quality Quantity = Usefulness Physical Labor = Knowledge Genetic Makeup = Technical Literacy Hype = Skill Results = Magic Details: Beauty = Value Technical competence is not necessary to judge software quality Always attribute inherent value to software with a cosmetically appealing presentation Applying hype makes software more valuable If hype is present, so is the associated value Functionality = Quality If it seems to work how it should, then it really does People who have been doing it longer must be better at it Quantity = Usefulness Usefulness can be measured by quantity of output The more people working on software development, the faster it will get done Physical Labor = Knowledge Expect workers to create a comprehensive, accurate, detailed plan befor...

How to Measure the Quality of Software Development Work ...Without Being a Software Developer (Or, "3 Things a Developer Wishes His Manager Understood") There's a great difficulty in managing software . This is because many organizations call on non-developers to make decisions impacting software development. But non-developers do not have the qualifications to understand the underlying software. So, if you do not understand software, how can you make a good decision related to it? The easy answer is--you can't. But, if you don't like easy answers... You need to break through the masked complexity and gain a shared understanding . Masked Complexity The challenge is in the masked complexity. The great thing about software is that it masks complexity. The terrible thing about software is that it masks complexity. Software is made of stuff that is not readily understood by most people. Yet, to be useful, it is always applied to things that are unde...

The Need For a Better Way It's a real problem.  It happens in governments, non-profits, and in the powerful enterprises that control our private industries. Every day, authority figures are forced to make decisions that directly impact software development. These authorities include leaders, managers, and business people, many of whom are clearly not qualified to understand how computer software works. To make things worse, many workers rush in purporting to understand software, yet have, at best, mediocre competence in it. How can non-developers, or mediocre or poor developers, successfully make good decisions that impact development? Many workers with a mediocre or poor understanding of software even end up holding positions directly responsible for software development. An admitted non-developer may look to a purported developer to help inform their decision. This includes decisions about what worker should be in what role. But how can the non-developer tell whic...

Seven Steps to Prepare to Launch I. First Things First Before you dive in to creating a startup company, you should determine what is really important. And one of your first priorities should probably be: setting priorities. You don't want to register a trademark of a name you will change, hire an employee you'll need to fire soon, or rent an office space then decide it's more efficient to send the workers to work from home. So what do you do when a number of factors seem a bit like the chicken or the egg? You might think, " we need all of them to be in place before we can start, but we need to start before we can get any of them into place." I would recommend you take some time to prioritize before you put any other big things in motion that will cause significant waste if you end up needing to change them soon. After your initial priorities, you can keep refining them as you go. And, it's probably going to be a little bit different for each compan...