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Tech Speak

Well known as a tester, speaker, and storyteller, Lee Copeland has also been the author of the Better Software magazine Tech Speak column for many years. This blog features some of his wisdom, insight, rants, and curiosities.

The Optimists Don't Make It Out

Blog Post

by Lee Copeland

Dec 26 2011 - 10:00am

There’s only one advantage to delayed flights, missed connections, and extra nights stuck in hotels far away from home—you can catch up on your reading. The book at the top of my “to read” list was Making it Big in Software [1] by Sam Lightstone. It’s a collection of interviews with various “biggies” in the software field mixed with good advice from Lightstone in the areas of education, getting...

Goodhart’s Law

Blog Post

by Lee Copeland

Dec 19 2011 - 10:00am

For many years, I have argued against the poor set of metrics we use in IT. Recently, I came across a reference to Goodhart's Law, which explains our problem. Proposed in 1975 by Charles Goodhart—a former advisor to the Bank of England and emeritus professor at the London School of Economics—the law states that once a social or economic indicator is made a target for the purpose of guiding policy...

Oh, When Will They Ever Learn?

Blog Post

by Lee Copeland

| Comments: (2)

Dec 12 2011 - 10:00am

I’d like to be a voracious reader, but I rarely have uninterrupted time to sit down with a stack of good books. Luckily, every so often, I take very long airplane rides and have a chance to read. Recently, I finished The Day the Phones Stopped by Leonard Lee. It’s a layman’s introduction to the world of software and its disasters, and an interesting read.

Predicting the Past

Blog Post

by Lee Copeland

Dec 5 2011 - 10:00am

As a parent, you’ve probably heard, “Oh, I’ll bet he’ll look just like you when he grows up.” Recently, I found some “face aging” software on the Internet and decided to give it a try. After paying a small fee, I loaded a photo of my five-year-old grandson and moved the age slider bar from five to ten and then to twenty and thirty. I was disappointed with the results. The program appeared to...

All Models are Wrong

Blog Post

by Lee Copeland

Nov 28 2011 - 10:00am

For centuries, people have developed models of complex systems. Some models are physical—sailing ships, houses, bridges, and cars. Some models are intellectual—the Bohr atom, the Copernican solar system, Freud’s psychodynamic model, and trickle-down economics.Physical models help us answer appearance questions ("What will X look like?”) and operational questions ("How will X behave?)....