Starting a job with a running system and real users is a nice "problem" to have but it presents some unique challenges as well. Especially if server monitoring isn't robust and there are absolutely zero automated tests. Without these two critical components, you're both operating and developing completely blind. Without monitoring, server changes can't be … Continue reading Initial Test Points for Getting Your Environment Under Control
Month: July 2011
DevOps Q&A with Kevin Parker
This is an interview with Kevin Parker (@kevinparkerusa) about DevOps How do you see agile affecting application development and delivery? The biggest impact is that application development teams are using agile to speed up their delivery of software changes and updates. This makes the developers happy as they can get through requests faster. However, releasing … Continue reading DevOps Q&A with Kevin Parker
Why Excel Spreadsheets Hurt Project Management
Today was a great day. I helped import our entire "roadmap" of functional requirements from an Excel spreadsheet into Pivotal Tracker. Even though we allocated almost a half-day to accomplish this, it was done in less than two hours (including in-depth descriptions and backgrounds on many features I hadn't yet seen). The product manager's eyes … Continue reading Why Excel Spreadsheets Hurt Project Management
Lifecycle of a Click – Improving Web Page Speed
This is a guest post by Brian Doll, Application Performance Engineer at New Relic Six seconds can be an excruciatingly long time to wait for a single web page to load. Why does it take so long? Let's take a look at each step of the timeline and see how we can make it faster. … Continue reading Lifecycle of a Click – Improving Web Page Speed
Stabilizing Application Architectures Through Simplification
Consider the following: People are complicated and companies are run by a lot of people. A relationship between two people is complicated. Relationships between companies? Well, you see where I'm going. Outsource a software development project requiring 10 developers, an on-site team of 3 managers and 4 developers, involving a total of 4 external companies. … Continue reading Stabilizing Application Architectures Through Simplification
Ground Zero: Starting Agile Development from Scratch
One of the most challenging things about introducing Agile in the workplace is that it's not very widespread. People have heard mixed reviews about it's implementations, and are hesitant to exchange the known (no matter how bad it may be), for the unknown. More and more companies, however, are adopting Scrum for their project management. … Continue reading Ground Zero: Starting Agile Development from Scratch
Scrum Meetings – Relief or Burden?
Scrum defines a set of required meetings: Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Scrum Review, and Scrum Retrospective. Additionally, there might be a Scrum of Scrums, if you're running multiple Scrum teams in parallel. If you're doing two week sprints you spend at least half-a-day per week in Scrum meetings. Isn't that a lot of additional overhead? … Continue reading Scrum Meetings – Relief or Burden?
