Last week, I suggested that SysAdmins are much more agile than we give them credit for. But, when it comes to organizing their day-to-day work they need just as much help as the rest of us. Today, I want to talk about how agile methodologies work just as well in operations as they do in … Continue reading Improving Operations with Agile
Month: November 2008
Stop Being Busy. Get Productive!
You are busy. Your task list is growing so fast that if you wanted to print it out you'd have to use old-fashioned, continuous listing paper just to keep up. Sometimes you get in the zone checking off task after task, and feeling tremendously productive. Other times, you just sit there immobilized by the sheer … Continue reading Stop Being Busy. Get Productive!
What do Sysadmins really think about Agile?
Every workplace has one, and even if you contract it out, you still have to interact with a System Administrator to get important IT work done. If you're introducing Agile methodologies at your company, you might have run into a brick wall of sorts back there in that corner room - the Ops guys. They … Continue reading What do Sysadmins really think about Agile?
The Curse Of Agile Project Management Tools
Index cards and a story wall are my preferred agile project management tools. They force you to keep things simple due to limited space on index cards and you get optimal visibility through the ubiquitous story wall. Software tools are usually inferior in terms of simplicity and visibility. Most agile project management tools provide you … Continue reading The Curse Of Agile Project Management Tools
Pimp my Website: Downsizing your Web Pages
In the current economic downturn, everyone's keeping an extra close eye on the bottom line and looking for ways to save money. Let's compare the bytes of data on your network to water droplets and your website to a leaky faucet. You know you should take an afternoon and fix the damn thing, but something … Continue reading Pimp my Website: Downsizing your Web Pages
I want to start agile, how can I do that?
Last week a new colleague of a former colleague of mine 😉 asked me: "How can I get agile started? I really like the ideas but don't know where to begin or how to convince others around me to try it out. What should I do?" Getting started with agile is not easy. First, you … Continue reading I want to start agile, how can I do that?
Pimp my Website: Streamlining Your Content
Hopefully, you have a better idea about how (un)performant and (un)optimized your website is after going through some of the tools I introduced you to last week. You've made the first step in getting to know more about how your site is really served to your users. Now, I'll start walking you through some of … Continue reading Pimp my Website: Streamlining Your Content
Website Performance Optimization
Since Steve Souders's published "High Performance Websites" back in September 2007, a lot of people finally sat up and took notice of front-end web performance optimization techniques. Over a year later, you'd hope that most folks had figured out the basics like compressing content, using expires headers and reducing requests. Unfortunately, it seems that multi-core … Continue reading Website Performance Optimization
