Alistair Cockburn on ITConversations.com

If you haven’t heard any of the free (listener-supported) recordings available on http://www.itconversations.com you are truly missing out. There’s a wealth of information in these podcasts. Topics run the gamut from origin stories to the latest innovations.

For just one tiny example, the interview with Alistair Cockburn is especially fascinating. His expertise in software processes started early in his career when IBM assigned him to make up and document the recommended process for writing object-oriented code in Smalltalk and C++. To accomplish this, he flew around the world, interviewing software engineering teams. You may be surprised to hear about the correlations he found (didn’t find) between the processes they used and the corresponding success rates.

Cockburn also explains the origin of the term “software engineering” (as well as just “engineering”) and how they have been routinely misapplied to what we actually do as software developers. He also talks about the common misconception that creating software is somehow like building a bridge, and why that analogy is wrong on so many levels.