Maybe it’s my (ancient history) background as an EMT, but I like to use medical metaphors to describe some common themes in software projects. If you liked my post on application guarding you might like this one, too. Many...

There’s a medical term called “guarding” where a patient reflexively (possibly unconsciously) tenses or flinches when touched to avoid irritating an internal organ that hurts or is injured. Guarding is such a reliable reaction that it’s actually used as...

When most people think of the difference between something Tactical and something Strategic, they often think along one of a few lines: 1) Tactical is short-term and Strategic is long-term, or… 2) Tactical is small and Strategic is big,...

When you’re trying to get people to adopt a new technology or process, you’re basically trying to fight millions of years of evolution. You’re paddling upsteam against our basic tendency to (all else being equal) do the thing that...

One technique I like to use is a concept of a Risk Heap. If you remember from your college days, a heap is a data structure that looks like a tree and efficiently keeps the item with the highest...

Since entering managerdom, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how people make decisions and how to figure out the value of those decisions. The way I figure it, any given decision you have to make has a...