Photo by Pixabay from Pexels The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity. Douglas Horton The story of Team Member licence The Team member licence has had a roller coaster ride with Dynamics 365. As soon as Microsoft released the generous first Team Member licence they realised they had made a mistake because it let users too do much. This lead to a stampede of users buying team member licences and with no enforcement it was happy days and business saved themselves money on licences. Microsoft quickly plugged the dam and updated the Teams Member licence to be more restr ..read more

The ability to deliver software fast and by citizen developers is changing the software development world Photo by Porapak Apichodilok from Pexels Low code is eating the world, developers have a choice joining the feast or getting eaten  Low code developer is like YouTube to television or twitter to blog posts. It’s growing fast because you can create solutions without code and deploy to production in days. This type of functionality needed multiple developers and weeks of development, particularly with integrations. Low code is exploding and leading to a Hyper Growth and ..read more

Development does not move forward with purpose like a marching band. It weaves, stumbles and staggers like a drunk heading towards the kebab shop #HoskWisdom Projects don’t move in a straight line and project plans are rarely accurate. Software development is full of surprises, new requirements and changes no one ever predicts. It’s only the simplest projects with a clear scope and less than 5 people involved that go to plan. They are as a common as a 5 leaf clover. Why are they wrong? Recipe for success: under-promise and over-deliver. Kevin kelly Projects do the opposite, they over ..read more

Pascal Habermann “Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted” ― Randy Pausch Development experienced is earned the hard way by trying, failing and trying again until you get it right. Developing isn’t easy and anyone who says it is will soon be humbled by the process. Senior developers are expensive but inexperienced developers will cost you more with late projects.Not all experience is equal and when you get to lead developer you need standards and leadership (values which are also learnt) Experience is what you get when development didn’t work as planned or when so ..read more

hai-sharks “the greatest danger you face is your mind growing soft and your eye getting dull.” ― 50 Cent, The 50th Law The greatest danger to developers is to stop being curious, stop learning and stop keeping up with new technology. The day you stop learning is the day you start your journey towards retirement. Slow death How do you slowly make development harder? falling behind the latest changes one day at a time. The environment evolves and your skills need to change with it. I worked with a Java developer who stopped taking an interesting in new versions of Java, new frameworks, new bes ..read more

Egg Hammer Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine. Jack Ma Douglas Adam the brilliant writer of the awesome — Hitch Hikers guide to the galaxy at times felt writing a torturous process, to the extent he wrote himself a note to pick himself up, featured in this article in the Guardian. “Writing isn’t so bad really when you get through the worry. Forget about the worry, just press on. Don’t be embarrassed about the bad bits. Don’t strain at them,” The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy author wrote to himself. “Writi ..read more

Evolution “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains” Rosa Luxemburg Dynamics 365 professionals see every problem as something to be solved by Dynamics 365 plugin or workflow. The environment has changed and now the best solution might not need Dataverse database but just a Canvas app. This article — Aliens in our midst made me think about how we think about solutions in Dataverse/Dynamics 365 and how new functionality can change the way we view the problem and solution. Thoughts change the way you look at and understand life. Once your brain has been stretched it can never ..read more

“Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted .” ― Randy Pausch Development experienced is earned the hard way by trying, failing and trying again until you get it right. Developing isn’t easy and anyone who says it is will soon be humbled by the process. Senior developers are expensive but inexperienced developers will cost you more with late projects. Not all experience is equal and when you get to lead developer you need standards and leadership (values which are also learnt) Experience is what you get when development didn’t work as planned or when something ..read more

Gladson Xavier “Life is not what you expect: it is made up of the most unexpected twists and turns” — Ilaiyaraaja Projects are fertile breeding grounds for problems. Ingredients such as groups of people working to tight deadlines, using new technology/features with no experience and lots of activities happening at the same time. Some problems go off like a hand grenade, grab everyone’s attention and demand to be resolved quickly. Other problems hide in the background, sleeping, and then when everyone is looking the other way they unexpectedly cause enormous problems. What’s the unexpected ri ..read more

Geralt Most people are expert in a few areas, get overconfident and think they are experts in everything. #HoskWisdom It takes confidence to admit you are not an expert in all areas and you should defer to someone who is. There is no shortcut to becoming an expert, it takes years of learning, experience and practice to have a deep level of understanding on a subject. Don’t tell an expert what to do it in their area of expertise because you become an idiot who over rules experts and in the long term this doesn’t work out well. Admit you don’t know It takes confidence to say you don’t kno ..read more