Never Make a Commitment You Can't Fulfill

“A way to boost productivity is to create high-quality software from the outset, so that teams can spend less time on rework, both during development and after the release."

Karl Wiegers is the author of “Software Development Pearls” and the Principal Consultant at Process Impact. In this episode, Karl shared some lessons he has learned over the past five decades of his career. We first discussed software requirement, its role for communication, and the importance of defining the right requirements. Karl then touched on the reasons we can’t optimize all desirable quality attributes and instead advised how we should define the quality attribute requirements. Next, Karl shared some project management pearls, related to work planning and dealing with estimates. Towards the end, Karl explained the relation between quality and productivity, using pain as a driver for improvement, and his ultimate pearl of wisdom.

Listen out for:

• Career Journey - [00:05:46]
• Requirements for Communication - [00:08:07]
• Importance of the Right Requirements - [00:13:49]
• Importance of Definitions - [00:16:23]
• Optimizing Quality Attributes - [00:18:48]
• Specifying Quality Attribute Requirements - [00:21:59]
• Work Plans & Friction - [00:24:48]
• Giving Estimates - [00:31:03]
• Pressure to Making Commitment - [00:35:19]
• High Quality & Productivity - [00:39:38]
• Pain as Improvement Driver - [00:45:16]
• Ultimate Pearl - [00:50:25]
• 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:54:09]

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Karl Wiegers’s Bio
Karl Wiegers is Principal Consultant with Process Impact, a software development consulting and training company. He has a PhD in organic chemistry. Karl is the author of 13 books, including Software Development Pearls, Software Requirements, The Thoughtless Design of Everyday Things, Successful Business Analysis Consulting, and a forensic mystery novel titled The Reconstruction. You can reach him at ProcessImpact.com or KarlWiegers.com, where you can hear more than 50 songs he has recorded just for fun, including 18 originals that he wrote.

Follow Karl:

• LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/karlwiegers
• Website – https://karlwiegers.com
• Process Impact – https://www.processimpact.com
• Medium – https://karlwiegers.medium.com

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For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/103.