My previous project

Here's a little self-promotion:

Martin Fowler had a very nice write-up about my last project, the one that's still going without me. He said, "It's a favorite of mine because it exhibits an important property of my preferred view of software development: a long term support of a business function enabled by a well-designed code-base. The fact that they are still adding useful business value after ten years is a big dollop of kudos."

He also referenced a podcast about our project, Keeping Grey Code Fit, in which I am one of the panelists.

I didn't have any thing to do with that well-designed code base. We had and still have, a great team of developers. But I will take some credit for ensuring that the stuff we added over the past few years still had business value.

For example, my friend and fellow TWer, Josh Evnin, and I worked with members of the client's staff to do two contextual inquiries with the end users. This research revealed a sizeable list of quick-payoff process and software improvements, and helped the client avoid some expensive decisions.

We gave a presentation about this work at Agile 2008. The experience report is available through IEEE for $19 but if you are a registered user, the .pdf handout of our presentation, Are You Sure, Really: A Contextual Approach to Agile User Research is on the Agile 2008 wiki. Or you can contact me for a copy.