With the advent of the "App" and their associated distribution stores (Mac, iPhone, Android etc.)  the act of developing software has never been more popular or more accessible. The opportunity to create the next "Angry Birds" in your bedroom or living room and become an overnight millionaire is clearly very enticing to many individuals. Before I became involved in Quality and Process Management,

I've been having some pretty restless nights since I came back from Switzerland and last night was no exception. I woke up at 04:45 clutching at some snippets of a rather bizarre dream, but sadly wasn't conscious enough to jot them down. The gist of it was that I was in a war zone with some close friends from both work and personal life and I was questioning some of the decisions that were being taken,

There's an English Bookshop on the main shopping street in the centre of Zurich. It's quintessentially English and apart from books you can purchase such goodies as Marmite and Coleman's English Mustard. I always wander in to browse whenever I'm in town with a few minutes to spare even though the prices here are astronomical so I have to demonstrate a huge amount of self-constraint. There isn't a great

I've worked as a "management" consultant, either internally or externally, for the best part of 20 years now, and I've often heard people say that all consultants should occasionally step down from their ivory towers, and go back to their roots. It's not very often that I've heard of any consultants taking their own advice, unless it's a career move, but recently I did just that, although not through

If I take a look at the people I follow on Twitter (currently about 1100) they fall into roughly several main categories listed here but not in any specific order:- Process and Quality Experts (including CMMI, ITIL and ISO specialists) Apple technical experts (including magazines and developers) Apple fanboys and girls Business leaders (non-IT) Musicians and other "celebrities" Journalists IT professionals

Fifteen or more years of software process improvement efforts have not lead to the remarkable changes that people like Watts Humphrey may have envisaged when he wrote "Managing the Software Process". The reality is that despite our efforts software development projects continue to fail either completely or to meet their intended budget, time and quality objectives. Even high maturity organisations

No-one ever said that Process Improvement was easy but there’s no reason why we have to make quite so hard. By understanding some basic principles it is possible to give ourselves a fighting chance of success. Gerald Weinberg famously said: “No matter what the problem is, it's always a people problem”, so it might make a bit of sense to start looking at some fundamental people problems which

Over the years I've heard numerous references to "Process Improvement by Stealth". The New Oxford American Dictionary defines stealth as "cautious and surreptitious action or movement". Neither cautious or surreptitious are words that should be associated with process improvement or indeed any change initiative where the first three laws for success are Communicate, Communicate and Communicate. Stealth

This is the final blog entry for this year’s SEPG Conference in Europe, albeit a few days later than intended. In my blog from 16th June, I suggested that there were two underlying themes to the conference, namely multi-model synergies and people and culture. So what about people and culture? Previous conferences have had their share of presentations on Change Management, People-CMM and other people