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Priority - how sensitive the profit is to changes in schedule.

Do we want to apply effort in testing (More time)? or Do we take the risk of rework (More Money)? 

To be able to compare we need to use the same unit of measure to take an informative and intelligent decision..... sometimes the Cost of Delay is so high that you must take the risk of rework. By understanding the cost of delay you are able to take and make the correct economic choices. You are able to prioritize because you know how sensitive the profit is to changes in features and schedule.

Don Reinertsen at GotoConference - The Tactical and Strategic Art of Economic Models. 

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Economic-Models 

Some Key points in the presentation:

• We are ignorant about our economic models and unaware of our ignorance - we need to learn more to take better and faster decisions.
• If you ask people who can delay a product, what they think it would cost to our stakeholders if this product is delayed by sixty days? You would get 50:1 responses...... someone saying 1000 to someone saying 50000. The problem is that If you dont know the Cost of Delay, you would do different *choices* if you think the number is different.... 
• If everybody understand the cost of delay they can take and make the correct economic choices at all levels - not only product managers. 
• Priority - how sensitive the profit is to changes in schedule.

The Power of Curiosity and Inspiration

"One thing that you have to do well to succeed: Make every single detail perfect and limit the number of details." - Jack Dorsey, the creator of Twitter

5 minutes video by Jack Dorsey. A must see! Here are my notes:

 Why does Square call their product managers "Editors"? Editing Ideas: Select the Ideas; Avoid Flood of Ideas. 

 Pay attention in particular to:

1. Editing the team, Bring the best people in and edit away any negative elements.
2. Editing the communication: Internal - This is the vision, help set the priorities to do the right thing. External - the product, the story we are telling the world 
3. Editing the money - investing and revenue.

Clean Architecture.

Well last night I found out that the videos from NDC 2012 were available - I hate when this happen to me, especially late night. I couldn't resist and I saw a couple of presentations :D

Here is one from Uncle Bob. I strongly agree with the following quotes in his presentation:

 “an architect’s job is not making decisions, but delaying them as much as possible (ideally when we know more about the problem being solved)”

 “A good architect maximizes the number of decisions not made.” 

Robert C. Martin - Clean Architecture from NDCOslo on Vimeo.

 Enjoy

How can you create a computer program with no assignments....

How can you create a computer program with:

• No control Flow
• No assignment
• No Arrays
• No Strings
• No Numbers
• No Booleans

 This is what lambda calculus is about. The following presentations are the best explnations I've found about Lambda calculus. The first one is Jim Weirich explaining lambda calculus and Y-combinator using javascript.


Jim Weirich: Adventures in Functional Programming from Edge Case UK on Vimeo.

Jim will be presenting this talk in this year StrangeLoop conference. The second one is Tom Stuart presenting how he transform a Fizzbuzz program in ruby to a implementation using only procs. 

http://rubymanor.org/3/videos/programming_with_nothing/

Jonah Lehrer: The Origins of Creative Insight & Why You Need Grit

 

Jonah Lehrer: The Origins of Creative Insight & Why You Need Grit from 99U on Vimeo.

Awesome talk about creativity

On Pursue a Dream.

‎"Dreams do come true, but first we must pick the right ones" Be honest about your limitations.

Time will prove everything. Pursue dreams that not bore you, even after thousands of hours. Do the thing you love, love is just another name for "it never gets old".

http://t.co/SBZY2mWu

On Hitting the wall.

When you hit a wall while fixing a problem, focusing in the problem would be a waste of mental resources, the most productive thing you can do is forget about work. But if you have the feeling that you are getting closer you should continue with full charge.

http://vimeo.com/45162748#t=1526

On Cities and creativity

Awesome comperation between Cities and Companies. The difference between them, and why cities make us more productives and companies restrain our creativities .

http://vimeo.com/45162748#t=1737

"A happy grain of sand" - UX is part of your job as a developer

“If you are a developer you are a designer, you affect how people feel about the product you are building, the sooner you realize that the better” - Aral Balkan at NDC2012 - Opening and Keynote "A happy grain of sand" http://vimeo.com/43524962

Aral delivered a great keynote about User Experience Design - you can see it here. Warning: he sang in the first minutes you may want to skip that part. One interesting point that he made it’s that the vision for simplicity must come from the higher level, from CEO to dev, but that everyone must guard the vision.

He said that:

“Great design is a symptom of a design-lead organization structure and development process” - Aral Balkan

And this is why apple won't need Steve, because the focus on user experience is now embedded in the organization structure.

I have extracted some more nice quotes:

“Proximity implies relation, out of sight out of mind” - Aral Balkan

“Your app shouldn’t look like your database just threw up”- Aral Balkan

“Focus on deliver quality not quantity”- Aral Balkan

“Great Design is about saying “NO” way more than “YES””- Aral Balkan

“Focus on your user needs, not your own”- Aral Balkan

“Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add but when there is nothing left to take away” -Antoine de Saint-Exupery