Searching for causation
Reblogged from Algorithms in Real Life: If you are an author, there are three things you worry about. How many have purchased the book? How many have read the book? How many have understood the book? If you have written the book with the aim of making money, then asking the first question is sufficient. … Read more
Ant Colony Optimization
Reblogged from Algorithms in Real Life: Many interesting meta-heuristics have been bio-inspired. Some of them are: Ant colony Optimization Cuckoo Search Genetic Algorithm Ant Colony Optimization This technique has been adapted from the studies carried out on the behavior of ants. It was observed that foraging ants quickly traversed the shortest path from the anthill … Read more
Introduction to Algorithms, Heuristics and Meta-heuristics
Reblogged from Algorithms in Real Life: At school I was always confused between Algorithms and Logarithms…Anagrams were meaningful later. Then I encountered heuristics and lately meta-heuristics. I tried to differentiate algorithms, heuristics and meta-heuristics. Additional words such as methods, steps and instructions also joined the fray. A simple definition of algorithm – Wikipedia defines it as … Read more
4 Prerequisites for Reducing Sprint Duration
Agile manifesto has explicit stated preference for shorted sprints. Shorter sprints can ensure that: “Parkinson’s Law” does not set in, that is work does not expand to fill the available time “Understanding gap” between users and developers gets ironed out quickly “Quick response to change” becomes possible However, there are other factors which may make too … Read more
Distributed team in different timezone and Product Ownership
How do you work with a remote product owner who is in a different time zone with very little overlap of normal working hours? An agile puritan would have a simple answer – Don’t. There is an underlying assumption behind this statement. The assumption is that the product owner can provide an instant clarification and decision to … Read more
Evolutionary Architecture and Conway’s Law
Way back … in 1968, Melvin Edward Conway, an early computer scientist, computer programmer, and hacker postulated that… Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations. Or more concisely… Any piece of software reflects the organizational structure that produced it. For example, if you have … Read more
Are Large Software Projects like Eating an Elephant?
How do you eat an elephant? Simple – cut it into small pieces at eat one piece at a time. BUT… …is it really that simple? When you have a large software project it is too simplistic to assume that all you need to do is to decompose the problem to individual manageable chunk which … Read more
How do you think?
How do you go about writing you program? Do you think in terms of: Programming construct Database design Abstract algorithm User interaction Looking back Way we think about writing a program has undergone several phases of evolution. The evolution has a close link with increasing complexity and technological progress. Flow chart era There was a … Read more
Is Agile Elitist?
Best way to do software development is to get hold of master programmers. Get them to form a self organizing team and do the development in short increments. That is agile. What happens if you cannot find sufficient number of master programmers? Get as many master programmers as you can. For the rest of the … Read more
Agile, Offshoring and Dreyfus Model of Learning
Agile works! If you have any doubt about it just look at the adoption rate … look at the study results published … or just try it yourself. Offshoring also works! Again, if you have any doubt, just look at the growth of offshoring … look at the success of the success of the India … Read more
