I just stumbled onto this mind map by Kent Beck about energized work at ThreeRiversInstitute.org:

It's a good reminder of the importance of the need for recharging--something that gets often overlooked when we focus our attention and energy on improving the process, shaping the architecture, or just making that deadline.

Speaking of work, I'm not so sure if I'd want to switch places with this guy.

Jim Shore writes about productivity metrics for software development, concluding that dollars per time is the only objective measure of productivity he's found.

He's quite right in that the CEO nor the shareholders really care about whether your software project was delivered on time. They care about the project's influence on the bottom line and share price. The problem is, of course, that some CEO's, some CTO's, some middle managers, and some whatevermanagersyouhave, are in fact more interested about timely delivery, exact fulfillment of a requirement specification, and so forth--even if it would be better for the company to actually ship the product a month later, ship it with a slightly different set of features than was laid down in the spec, or perhaps even cancel the project entirely. CYA is the reality in the majority of corporate world, even if it need not be.

The problem of misaligned priorities between top management, the grass roots, and everything in between is a real one. I'm afraid that aligning those priorities would require more trust, less selfishness, and more common sense than most established corporations can afford.

I just wanted to draw your attention to a quote from Christian Sepulveda explaning why agile is so relevant for successful software development:

...one of the core reasons why agile development makes more sense than waterfall: from a risk management point of view it is foolish to take a "big bang" approach where you have few opportunities to satisfy your market.

Few opportunities to satisfy your market. Surely we don't want that, do we?