Month: August 2012

As the defending number one of last year's club matchplay championship, I will be going into the weekend with high hopes of defending my title with flying colors.

For the last couple of weeks my game has been steadily improving, and I am mentally fit as well, feeling exceptionally confident that I'm going to make it two years in a row.

The weekend will be busy for me over both days with two matches per day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, as long as I keep winning. That means that it will be a fun-filled and action-packed adventure for me, so I am planning on making the best of it and enjoying myself as much as possible.

This evening I will be sure to go to bed in time to be up and ready in time for the early morning eight o'clock start.

Wish me luck, though hopefully I will probably not need it.

(Turns out that I won my first match 8-6. However, in the second match, after coming back from three down and surviving the turn all square, I lost four holes in a row, and ended up losing 4-3. Oh well, better luck next time.)

During the final round of the Rijnmond Open 2012, I played with these two younger whipper-snappers whose combined age (22+23) was ten years less than my age.

Also, their combined height was about three times as much as mine, mostly because I have stumpy legs and am not very tall.

Nonetheless, I proved that you are never too old to be a winner, by placing 8th in an original field of 120 contestants.

My final score was: 75 + 82 + 80 = 237.

Too bad that on the second day I shot a quintuple-bogie ten and a triple-bogie seven on the back nine, otherwise I could have easily been in 5th place.

Seems like my golf game is suddenly getting better for some reason. I open the club face ever so slightly when I address the ball, and my back swing arcs out a bit as if I am trying to fade the ball slightly. The trick is to accelerate though the ball and finish my follow through high in the air.

Just like Ben Hogan used to do in the good old days. I think that if he could see me now he might just be a little bit proud of me.

This has been the wettest summer in years, and just about every weekend it has been raining. Not good for golf, not good for anyone. All of a sudden we have the first tropical weekend, it's about time I would say. The summer is nearing it's end so this has come just in time. Let's celebrate and enjoy.

I'm loving the heat and soaking it in. All the boring Dutch people should also be feeling as thankful as I am, but most of them are just complaining. Too hot.

No need for me to hang around at a crowded beach, I think I'll stay at home and read a good book in the garden.

There are a number of practical techniques to consider in order to run successful software projects, and one of my favorite principles from lean software development is the following:

"Decide as late as possible and keep your options open as long as practical, but no longer."

The trick here is to postpone a decision until it's still possible to make such a decision without it being forced upon you.

This is opposite to the traditional approach of project management. In this domain, everything has to be known with absolute certainy in advance. That way, the future deadlines remain fixed despite many risks and unknown factors which may get in the way. Risks have to be known in advance and tackled appropriately.

For especially high-risk projects, this traditional approach is not feasible at all. For these projects, delaying decisions is a must since decisions based on empirical observations is much more valuable than those based on theory and speculation.

Delaying commitments means that flexibility and capacity for change need to be designed into the system from the very beginning.

See the book Lean Software Development by Mary and Rom Poppendieck.