Dave Armstrong

Dave Armstrong (19)

Finding a problem to solve

Software does not hold value in and of itself. This may be an unpleasant truth for those who like to write code, but software needs to add value to the lives of people to use it for it to become a successful software product. There…

Software Sustainability

Sustainable software is software that can continue to operate over an extended timeframe, while running under a profitable business model wherein the fees paid by the customers can fully fund the operation of the ecosystem that delivers the product. Lets break down the pieces of…

Maintainable Software (Or, where the code matters)

Note: This post is half-baked. I wanted to put together a robust article about all the aspects of maintainable code... but instead just spat out some thoughts, got bored of the topic, and decided to leave it at that. Sorry. Hopefully it still has some…

I dislike AI. Mostly.

This is not a fully baked collection of thoughts that I spent a ton of time crafting. It is just a simple list of why I, as a software product professional, dislike the current state of AI (Artifical Intelligence) in the tech industry: 1) It…

Ethical Software Development

Software is pervasive in the modern world, which means those of us who create it have a large impact on our world. But that is easy to forget when your day-to-day life consists of small technical tasks. Many of us do not see the big…

More Statuses, More Success (in Jira)

"OMG, there are so many statuses in this Jira workflow! Dave, what the heck??" There is a method to my madness: I feel that many product managers get too focused on the Scrum/Kanban boards when working in Jira. I can see why - it is…

Software is Nothing More or Less than Communication

Software is complex, and while more people are learning to create it and the tools to create it are becoming more powerful, many software creators see the end result of their work as being about the tech. I disagree - it is about communication. Before…

We're All Doing It Wrong (Software Product Leadership)

As I work in more software shops, I see more and more perspectives on how to lead the product side of software development efforts. And the more I see, the more I think that none of us has it right. We're caught up in processes…