Presentation

Presentations exploring STEM and other topics of interest.

Chasing the Mythical Unicorn

BY: Mark Shaffer / PUBLISHED: 2023-01-29

In every software engineering career you will encounter a job that leaves a lasting impression because things went well or you had good teammates. You will also encounter jobs where nothing goes right, the manager is a pain, and nobody on the team pulls their wait. Then there is the mythical unicorn. A beast that does not exist in software engineering but I got to experience one time. Where the project was delivered ahead of time, hit all quality metrics established by the contract, and under budget. You never get all three. You typically on a good project will get two out of the three. The presentation below is a presentation I gave at one of my jobs documenting this unicorn and the things I believed were the reason for this encounter.  Enjoy.

Bringing an Idea to a MVP

BY: Mark Shaffer / PUBLISHED: 2023-01-22

Before COVID I had a plan with my 2005 Jeep TJ to make a trip to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska.  Unfortunately we all know what happened with that.  But the idea spurned a fun project I did for work that is carrying over into a new design with a hopeful new trip in 2023 or 2024 time frame.