SW-Improve is a discussion list for how to develop software better. There are many, many ideas of how to do "better software", and ideas have consequences. As such, we seek to explore the benefits, consequences, pros and cons of ideas, using critical thinking and experience as a guide.

We discuss the challenges of software development: How to make good product that works that meets customer needs. How to provide the best return on investment. How to make accurate estimates, capture requirements, and respond to change.

Leadership and dealing with people will probably be major points of discussion. It is people who write code.

Current topics include Context-Driven Methods, Agile Methods, Scrum, Extreme Programming, Waterfall, TDD, CMMI, KanBan, Quality, Project Planning, Velocity, Risk Management, as well as technologies (you might even see some code!) Faith, Philosophy, and Scientific principle are likely to pop up as well.

Simply put, there may be no one silver bullet, but we hope to find a number of little things that can make life in software development better -- and we are inclined to believe they involve people more than buzzwords. (But if we're wrong, we'd like to know)

This is a self-critical community for grown ups. If you don't like having your thinking challenged, this might not be the list for you. It is not a career board, or a career counseling board, but those issues may come up. Active posters looking to hire from a personal perspective (IE: Not recruiters) may occasionally put a short post out, IE: "My team is hiring, see www.mycompany.com/jobs." Long, descriptive posts IE: "I have a client who is looking for MVS/JCL professionals with 3 years of blah blah blah blah blah" are strongly verboten. Over-posting will result in tighter controls on the forum.