Nosce te ipsum

Tom Evslin has written an interesting short series entitled: Managing Programming for – Decompiling Programmer-Speak which is something that I truly wish all managers who deal with programmers understood. This is definitely something that I intend to use with future project managers that I work with.

A few highlights from the entries:

As a CEO or hope-to-be CEO of a technical company, it is essential that you crack the code.  Otherwise you will have no hope of knowing when any particular piece of essential development will be done or even what it will do if it is ever finished.  Today’s blog is a phrase book of programmer-speak.  Soon I’ll blog some secrets on actually managing programming projects.

“It’ll be done ASAP.”
Translation: There is no schedule yet.

“It can literally do anything you want it do.”
Translation:  There is no spec yet.

“It’s ninety-five percent done,”
Translation: The remaining five percent will take ninety-five percent of the elapsed time.

“Ship it!”
Translation:  The Development team is sick of this and wants to move on to something else.  The customers will test it.

Life Hacks Live: Cory's Notes

I've been a huge fan of Danny O'Brien's most excellent site 43 Folders and I really appreciate all the effort he's putting into helping us all figure out interesting ways to organize our lives.

Live from O'Reilly's Emerging Technology Conference:

Cory has posted his excellent notes from our talk at ETech today.

Give it a look, it's worth the read and when you're done, take a trip over to 43 Folders and see what you can find of value for your own life.