Brulog

sa vs aussies - oh dear 4 in a row

being a saffir rugby supporter i find it quite hard to watch my side lose and today we played the aussies and lost our 4th game in a row! I think most people (besides some aussies i know ;-)) would agree that while both sides were poor, in the second half south africa were the better side and possibly deserved the win more.

In the last 6 weeks we have: lost to france (after being 27-12 up) by 10 points; lost to the aussies (massive hiding 49-0) by 49 points; lost to the kiwis (after being 17-17) by 12 points; and lost to the aussies again (after being 5 points up with 2 mins to go) but only by 2 points.

before this game there was much talk of jake white and the springboks having lost the plot, which I cannot argue with, however there are other forces at play. We have lost 4 key players to injury and this combined with selection quotas means we do not have the best squad to choose from. No where was this more evident than the 1st 2 tests against the aussies & the kiwis.

Be that as it may the springboks under jake white have performed better than many previous saffir coaches since our inclusion back into the international game 15 years ago. In the past 3 years since our disastrous Camp Stalingrad and World Cup campaign, we have won 1 tri-nations, narrowly lost the last tri-nations to the kiwis and while we appear to be completely out of it this year, I saw enough good work today and in the second half of the kiwi game 2 weeks ago to suggest that we could still get a few good results back in the next 3 home games.

Sometimes the saffir public are too quick to point fingers and lay blame when we get a few bad results in a row, lets show some support for a change and give the coach and the team some breathing room to deliver the goods in the last 3 tri-nations games and finish the year as contenders for the world cup next year.

If they do fall short of the mark in these next 3 games and the end of year games, then perhaps something needs to change, but getting rid of a coach less than a year before a world cup is a big risk!

I think there are other options....

software developers adding value through the project lifecycle

When software developers work within an environment that encourages them to question/validate requirements, be involved in the creation of the specification as well as the actual development of the software, I believe it has a really positive impact on the end product.

This may seem to some people like standard practise, however I find when managing off-shore teams it is a discipline that can be easily lost. it is allot more difficult and tempting to do all of the requirements gathering and specification on-shore and then push a document across, have a quick chat about it and let the dev team get on with it.

Sometimes one can get carried away with the making sure you are getting maximum value out of the development team by making them spend most of the time coding, rather than reading/writing documents, participating in discussions and so on.

Freeing up the development team to spend the time needed to engage early on with the project allows them to: understand the wider goal; become more involved through the lifecycle; have more sense of ownership for the end result; and ultimately develop better solutions.