Products that do everything they're supposed to do and offer consumers something they like, but didn't know they wanted, make customers happy. And that is what most of us in software development ultimately need to accomplish. But how do you separate the must-haves from the bells and whistles? And how do you make sure you're including the right bells and whistles? This article gives you clear advice on how to determine which features to include in order to meet and exceed your end users' expectations.

Are you shirking your decision-making responsibility? It happens more often than you think, and quite by accident, too. Read this article to find out why failing to set priorities and assess risk can lead to decisions falling into the wrong hands.

With no land in sight to guide them, it would have been all too easy for early sailors to get lost in a seemingly endless sea. All too often, software projects also lose sight of when and if they'll reach their destination. This article explores what ancient mariners knew about navigation that we can apply to charting software project progress.

Too much work goes into use cases to not employ them to their full potential. By assigning points to use cases you can reliably measure the size of an application and derive an estimated duration for a project. Read this article to find out more.

Projects fail for a plethora of reasons; one article could not hope to address all of them. However, this article does offer advice on how to fix the most common project ailments, ones that seem to affect many projects at one time or another.

Multitasking makes us feel more productive, but in truth trying to take on more than two tasks actually limits our productivity. This article deals with the dark side of multitasking and makes a case for the lost art of focused attention.

Users are often kept at arm's length. We ask them for their input on the design, but then we, as the experts, take it from there. This article asks you to bring users into the design process as participants rather than simply as founts of information. You might be surprised at where it takes you.

We all crave regularity. We want a steady rhythm and a strong downbeat so we know the steps we need to take. This article explains how to give that sense of continuity to your software teams through fixed-length iterations, whatever length that is.

I was honored to be the guest editor of a special issue of Better Software magazine that was focused on agile software development. This is my introduction to the issue (July/August 2004) in which I discuss looking for the one constraint that is holding back your project and how agile has shown us new places to look for (and eliminate) constraints.

Let's face it, most people don't know what they want. Most of us just "know it when we see it." This article gives you the tools you need to elicit real needs and hidden requirements from your customers.