Jarrett House NorthSecond verse, same as the first.

One of the things that makes me nuts is when a product gets the default settings wrong and makes me do work to make it do the right thing. This happens more often than you’d think. Example 1: the stereo in my new car. I love the GTI for a lot of things, including the [...]

On the Veracode blog (where I now post from time to time), we had a retrospective on the Microsoft Trustworthy Computing memo, which had its ten year anniversary on the 15th. The retrospective spanned two posts and I’m quoted in the second: On January 15, 2002, I was in business school and had just accepted [...]

Last night’s news about Steve Jobs hit me hard. Not that it was a surprise; Steve was the one CEO I know who was most in touch with, and open about, his own mortality. Of course that was out of necessity; it’s hard to sweep pancreatic and liver cancer under the rug. But Steve’s response [...]

Part 1 of an as yet indeterminate number of posts about why application security has historically been broken, and what to do about it. Software runs everything that is valuable for companies or governments. Software is written by companies and purchased by companies to solve business problems. Companies depend on customer data and intellectual property [...]

I’m starting to become that guy that I always laughed at at the office–staying up late working while the wife and family go to sleep around him. It isn’t that funny when it happens to you, though. We’re in the final run to a big release, coming out in a week, and the days are [...]

My software development lead and I are doing a webinar next week on how you do secure development within the Agile software development methodology (press release). To make the discussion more interesting, we aren’t talking in theoretical terms; we’ll be talking about what my company, Veracode, actually does during its secure development lifecycle. No surprise: [...]

I work with iPhone users and Android users. I see no end of technology demos from both. It’s clear both phones are wonderful devices capable of doing amazing things. So why do iPhone reviews make it sound like the device can walk on water, while a lot of Android reviews sound like this? Unfortunately, these [...]

We’ve been working on hiring a product manager here at Veracode, and it’s gotten me thinking about technical literacy. The one thing you don’t want in a product manager is someone who thinks he can write the code better than his/her developers. That sets up a major problem with boundaries–you want the product manager to [...]

Four reactions that I agree with (parts of) in response to Apple’s iPad announcement yesterday: Doc Searls places the iPad in the context of vertical integration (apps all the way down to CPUs) and horizontal playing fields and says, “What you have to appreciate, even admire, is how well Apple plays the vertical game. It’s [...]

I just got back from the craziness that is the opening week of the new H Mart in Burlington, MA. It was instructive on several levels, not least of which was the personal (note to self: wait three weeks after the opening of a new highly hyped destination before attempting to visit). But there were [...]

The recent flap over the impending death of tr.im reminds me of a discussion I had at the Berkman Center when I crashed one of their meetings back in 2004. The question was, do you use external services with your blog? That is, do you host your images on Flickr or a related service? Do [...]

If there’s any doubt that management skills are portable across industries, consider this: one of the most valuable organizational traits that carried the Obama team to victory in 2008 is one of the most valuable factors for success in product management. I’m talking about the ability to create a “drama free zone,” and the ability [...]

I apologize for the plethora of linkblog posts here over the past little bit, and for their relative paucity. It’s been a busy few months. I got a new boss and transitioned from a “second product manager” to more of a lead role, at about the same time that we launched a set of significant [...]

I thought I had seen every possible permutation on the problem of how to prioritize requirements. Then the engineers at my company came up with a new one: the pony priority. Is “pony” an acronym? Nope. It’s the lowest priority there is. It’s the “I want a pony! No, you can’t have a pony” priority. [...]

As a product manager in an agile development model, one of the most difficult things to do is building a roadmap. This is because making feature commitments for six to nine months out feels contrary to the spirit of being “agile” and maintaining flexibility to change course to support the needs of the business. Why [...]