August 25, 2014
Thoughts on Tradition, Appreciation and Teamwork
I believe work should be fun. And I think I can prove it. Some of you may have heard of the trend towards gamification in day-to-day project management. Following on that trend, here are some battle-tested tips that you can use as-is or modify as you like, Creative Commons, I wouldn’t get offended, promise: Make…
July 14, 2014
Building Scalable Systems
With this article I want to shed more light on a vital aspect of any computer system: scalability. Why scalability is important? The answer is very simple – it gives the business which is based in or supported by the system freedom to grow. An unscalable system is like a tree with very weak roots –…
February 4, 2014
User Manual for Distributed Software Development
Having worked as an offshore software development team leader for ten years I’ve often seen the same situation arise when engaging with new clients, and it’s no different at Waverley. It goes like this: a company (client) decides to hire an outsourcing company to help their internal team with product implementation. As business terms are…
September 13, 2013
Effective Management – the Carrot or the Stick?
I’ve always believed that there are three vital components to the running a successful software team -obviously the talent of the developers is critical, but process and management are also essential. So what makes for effective management of a software team? There are many attributes, but here’s what I think is most important Motivation. Although both…
August 27, 2013
Google engineers not smarter than Vietnamese 11th graders
A recent article about computer science education in Vietnam caught my attention, having invested a lot of effort in the last year to ramp up our office in Ho Chi Minh City. In addition to Vietnam’s commitment to produce software developers with a high level of skill, I think a critical reason for sourcing developers…
