Recently finished watching the classic "23.5 Rules of Thumb" video of Jim McCarthy about the rules which each of IT person should follow.  Jim tries to explain what happens in dev world from the pragmatic perspective and his explanations reveal the things which we usually tend to ignore.

Fantastic podcast. Highly recommended

Some cites to summarize his video

• Shoot down all those who dumb and active.
• Software is always late or is nonfunctional... too
• Developers are in dreamland, they are away from reality. You need QA who is pragmatic
• Know what u don’t know
• Learn how to cope with uncertainty
• Deliver everyday
• Work as team and express your ideas
• Achieve the quality u decided to achieve.
• Have a short milestones
• Be accountable for the small deliverables
• User in-out approach, and never trap into out-in approach
• Avoid "software dream syndrome"
• Don't change the release date, concentrate on milestones
• Present the "low tech" to the customer, not your long-term strategic vision
• Design the software to build on time
• Most software sucks
• Software should have a purpose
• Make software useful and usable
• Establish shared vision in your project and company
• Ship quickly in frequent cycles to keep customer happy
• Be in ship mode.

Mirror: 23.5 Rules of Thumb (podcast)