Writing blog entries is no different from managing software projects
Actually most things in life are like managing software projects: you need to understand how much time (or any other resources) you’ll have for the tasks you want to perform, what’s the priority of these tasks, in what order they need to be performed etc. To set myself into the habit of writing at least two posts during the week I finally decided it’s time to publish the schedule for upcoming posts. Most human beings have different kinds of fears: some people are afraid of dark, some people are afraid of flying etc. One of the things I’m always afraid of is not meeting any of the dates I promised to meet (feel free to analyze me now) ;-) So, hopefully publicly telling that by date D I’ll post blog entry on subject S will force my subconscious to schedule my time better. Here are the subjects I plan to write about with the date, short summary, and title:
| Date |
Title |
Summary |
| 03/27/2004 |
How to Shoot Yourself in the Foot with Code Coverage? (Part II) |
I'll describe a number of things I would like to see both our development and test organizations to be doing during the next version of our product in regards to code coverage: a) definition of “honest code coverage“; b) how to make sure that before the feature is added to the code base it'll have already certain amount of code coverage; c) how to deal with the code paths which aren't covered during the daily automated test runs etc. |
| 03/31/2004 |
Punch it in the nose - if it stops bleeding, punch it harder |
This quote is actually from one of the internal presentations about the quality, but it just sounds so right while describing the desired attitude ;-) There are a number of things I would like to cover: a) the right attitude towards the product quality and how it's different from the strive to the perfection; b) what are for me the signs of the right attitude in STE-s (Software Test Engineer), SDE-s, and SDE/T-s (Software Design Engineer (Test)); c) some of the success stories we had while working on the Speech Server during last 3 years when people showed the right attitude; d) general rambling about Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice. |
| 04/05/2004 |
Why reporting every single bug is so-so-so important |
This post will exist mainly because I give the similar speech at least once a day to somebody. We'll see why bothering to take the time to report bugs is extremely important for: a) product quality in general; b) planning the next version; c) doing root cause analysis and looking at the bug trends; d) helping our customers with their problems etc. |
| 04/08/2004 |
How to cut your couch into pieces? (Part II) |
In second part there won't be any couches to cut into pieces, but there'll be one big white couch which we had to remove from the apartment through the second floor balcony. |
March/April 2004
One possible negative outcome will be that nobody will read this blog anymore because the excitement á la “I wonder what this crazy guy will write about next time?” is gone. On the other hand the possible positive outcome can be something like - “Today I'll get up earlier because this is the day when I'll hear the story about how Gunnar was helping to move out the big couch through the balcony of his friend's second floor apartment.” We'll see. OK, now I need to stop flattering myself and do something useful!