One of the analysts at a major customer of mine keeps commenting on the fact that he really likes the checklists, because he can just focus on the current checklist item and ignore everything else. He knows that when he hits a later step, it will probably utilize something he did previously, but he doesn’t have to remember what that future step will require. This goes back to that cliff climbing

Well, it’s done. All the templates have been integrated, all the examples are posted, all the review forms have been updated, the final stage guidance has been posted, and review criteria and guidance have been synchronized with the latest SQAP. This has been one very interesting process. Through this entire effort, the thing I noticed the most was the way that touching any one thing resulted

Wow, has it been more than a month since my last post? Time is surely zipping by for me these days. Got the planning and requirements stage sets out the door, but that's for another entry. This one is about the difference between custom software development and packaged software development. Both Joel Spolsky and Eric Sink have recently written on the subject of upgrades and deciding what

"There comes a time in the life of a project when you have to shoot the engineers and put the dang thing into production." I heard that saying years ago; I can't find the original attribution because it's been cross-quoted all over the Web, but it really applies to me these days. I've been picking away, tweaking this document, then that document, constantly edging toward perfection but knowing

A while back, I was working my way up a climbing wall when I noticed something that I'd missed all the way back to my days on search and rescue teams: I'm not worried about falling when I'm halfway up a cliff. In fact, I'm not worried about much of anything except the bubble of reality starting at my body and extending about 20 feet. Any more than that, and I'm not concerned. I'm not looking down

Every blog has to start with an initial post, and this one's no different. So, I thought I'd start out with a brief history of Shell Method. Shell Method has been a pet project of mine since the mid-1990's. In fact, I did my Master's thesis on implementing a software lifecycle management process. Shell Method was first made available during 2000, but dropped off the radar for a couple of years as