Planet SCM

In a blog, I read how IBM enters the gaming world and this brought me the idea that there may be more commonality between software development and online gaming then we might expect, such as

• Team game
• Strategic approach
• Online community
• Common goal
• Common set of rules
• Computer infrastructure
• Continuous learning

One of the nice things about strategic games is that the game vendor has created a virtual world that contains almost every capability to face the game challenges in order to achieve the ultimate goal of the game. You can give instructions, set assignments, get status report of all kind of aspects, do what-if analysis, and much more. Everything is represented in colorful, 2-D or 3-D graphics, accurate reposiories of artifacts, drag-n-droppable, interactive, on-line multiplayer and joyful to do. And how much does this game cost? A few dollars or euros. How much time to install it, get it working, learn it? A few hours, or may be a day or two.

Compare this to the software development environment that an average software development organization provides to its developers and the costs and efforts that are involved in setting this up, determining the rules of the "game" (procedures, practices, workflows, quality criteria, etc.). Expensive CM systems, SDE tools, a lot of in-house made scripting to achieve automation and reporting in spreadsheets and intranet sites.


What if we would create a software development environment à la Command & Conquer or Pharao? What if we would make an interactive, on-line multiplayer game for software development? My first intuition says that it can't be done or else it would have been done before. My second intuition says that if we spend billions on movies and games in the entertainment industry and find millions of people enthousiastic about it, then apparently that's the way to get people moving.

There is a new talk of the town, the Waterfall Conference 2006.

Technorati tags: Waterfall, Software

For some time now, I have been watching the amazing photos from nature by Remo Savisaar on his blog. This guy must be wondering around in nature with his camera every day. How can he capture the moments with his camera so often, that I cannot even see more than once in a few years, let alone being able to freeze it in a photo.

This for example is very nice shot!

For a long time I though that being present on discussion forums and weblogs, being able to be a though leader on a particular subject, being able to write great articles, give excellent presentations, being involved in everything that is important to the business and to my profession, and also being excellent in your day-to-day work and life,

is necessary to be successful.

Well, it is not. It is fun to do it all, but being excellent in your day-to-day life is hard enough and sufficient. All the rest is the cream on the pudding.