Signet Medical Systems — From the CEO

OK, I get it. It is getting harder to find a job, even for those workers who were previously protected by a tough to surmount barrier like advanced education. The previous workers that were out-innovated out of a job or undercut by lower wage earners in other parts of the world are having a tough time of it. Even now, knowledge workers in the US are seeing a tough time of it too. Globalization is a bit scary. But, it is also filled with opportunities too. Continue reading →

I know this might sound heartless, but companies have never been in the business of providing jobs. They are in the business of making money. Always have been. Always will. The fact that they have been providing jobs in the past is only serendipitous. Continue reading →

Because software is so intangible it tends to take on a mysterious air. Uh oh! nothing to see. Scary. Must be difficult. Only a very knowledgeable person should have anything to do with it. Software developers are not like the rest of us.

Don’t let anyone fool you. From a design perspective, software is just a machine. Maybe a complex machine. But, at its elemental level it accomplished a task that adresses a problem. Continue reading →

“How can I possibly tell you what the product is going to look like until I have developed some/most of it.” “I don’t know how to design it or what it is going to do before I code it.” “Doing a Requirements Specification is a waste of time because it will change anyway.” “I hate doing them so I am not going to do it.”

Do any of these statements sound familiar to you? Have you even found yourself saying them too? Continue reading →

…very agile if all of your stakeholders do not have the information they need in the most efficient form they need it and at the time they need it. Look, I don’t pretend to be an Agile guru. I am not that enamored of the mythology that Agile is something new or even exciting. To me it is just seems like a set of mini-waterfalls no matter what all the gurus say. Continue reading →

I don’t want to waste all of that money and time on useless paper. Just give the dev team a couple wireframes or a screenshot mockups and and a few general ideas of what should happen. That should be enough to build the product. But, what about the dialogs that should accompany the application. I am talking about the lower layer dialogs, such as Error dialogs, Add User dialogs, etc. Oh the developer will figure it out eventually.

But this is exactly how to just about guarantee software project failure right from the beginning, especially if it is a complex software system like most medical products are characterized by today. Continue reading →

I often get the idea that most companies don’t really want to release their software products. Maybe they are worried that potential customers out there will find it wanting and will criticize it unduly or worse, never buy it.

I have worked on a projects in my career where it is difficult to conceive of this product reaching the market in my lifetime. What is really scary is that the company and their venture partners still think it is going to be released in the next three months. How can I see a disconnect?

Continue reading →

I once heard an young and not too experienced engineer comment that requirements specs and design documents shouldn’t be boring. They should read like a novel…be engaging…be interesting to read. Then I got a copy of his “War and Peace” version of his latest requirement specification and had to translate it into a test plan. Continue reading →

I was driving in to work this morning trying to think of how to help a particular company that I working with, who just can’t seem to nail down the design for their software. Every day the developers would come up with some new, neat idea and whammo, months are added to the development cycle, the whole software requirements and functional specs require major revisions, and feature creep starts reaings its ugly head. Continue reading →

Do you find yourself saying this as a Manager…”I can’t get the software engineers on the project to write the specs to save my life!”? Well, they are going to write the specs that they consider to be valid…the actual software. Continue reading →