Charles Cain's Blog

What happened to Check?

The end of February we had some plumbing work done at the rental house we own. The primary problem was a leak outside the house. The plumber came out to the house, found the leak, fixed it (more on that), found that the flapper valve in the toilet was slowly leaking, changed that, charged us and left. Fast forward to today. Read the rest of this entry »

It all starts with Communications

How many of you have seen the movie Cool Hand Luke? Great film that I could watch over and over except for the ending. My favorite line in the movie is when the warden says “What we have here is a failure to communicate”. Of course, failure is drawn out (f-a-i-l-u-r-e) in the movie.

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By-products of Passion

Lately, I have been listening to Dave Ramsey’s Entreleadership audiobook. Each time I listen to it I find more great information. This morning was no different. Read the rest of this entry »

Improving communications and reducing team conflict

One of the things that I enjoy about my job is always trying to improve the status quo. Be it a feature on the website or a process that we use, I’m always looking for a way to improve. This is at the heart of the Agile Manifesto. Read the rest of this entry »

Do I matter?

I have been contemplating the above question for some time, and since I recently celebrated another personal birthday, I thought it was time to take this public.

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Do the right thing

I’ve always held the belief that doing the right thing is the first step to improving self esteem, becoming better at leadership, and even improving society in general. Too often we choose to take the easy road to something or try to avoid the political battles that always come with doing the right thing. Read the rest of this entry »

Website development revision part 2

In my previous post, I put forth that it is time for a revision to the website development process. To be honest, I thought that I would have at least one or two comments at this point.  Read the rest of this entry »

Time to revise the website development process

In the Agile world, you are encouraged to work on continually improving both the quality of the product shipping as well as your processes and ceremonies. Daily Scrum too long? Introduce a buzzer to cut off the speaker or pass around a gavel to signify who has the floor. Too many QA defects? Perhaps it’s time for Test Driven Development. Read the rest of this entry »

One word can change your life

Over the Christmas break I took some time to read a few books. So far my favorite one is called One Word that will Change Your Life. It’s a very short book (82 pages!) which is very good for the audience it needs to reach. Read the rest of this entry »

Responsibility

When I was growing up it was hammered into me to be responsible for my own actions. If I didn’t do my homework in school, I didn’t pass a class. I refused a lot of times to do my homework in the elementary school and of course I got into trouble for that. My mother used to get after me for not doing the homework until she finally said if you have to repeat a grade then so be it. It wasn’t her responsibility to do my homework, it was mine. Read the rest of this entry »