As a desktop application business, you decide to take a chance and jump onto the "Web" bandwagon. Sure, this whole Internet thing has been hyped for a decade, but maybe there's something to it after all? Your first idea is to tackle that old workhorse called E-Mail. Pictures are only getting bigger and you just … Continue reading Growing Pains: Adding Web Services to Legacy Desktop Applications
Author: Dan Ackerson
Code Inventory and Tracking Releases
You know by now that Code Inventory is something of an obsession with me. Like it or not, most of us, whether developers or sysadmins, work in a service industry. It's fast and furious, and we don't have time to build features that nobody wants. With sufficient test coverage, there's no code that can't be … Continue reading Code Inventory and Tracking Releases
Forget Trains. Take off on a Release Plane!
This is a guest post by Kevin Parker, VP and Evangelist, Serena Software For those that have to deal with release management, release train is a well-understood term. It refers to a software development schedule where multiple products are released as a part of a single ‘train’ on a regular, pre-planned schedule. But just as … Continue reading Forget Trains. Take off on a Release Plane!
Good Communication as the Starting Point of Change
I'm an OK speaker and a better listener. I tend to passively engage in regularly scheduled meetings (you know which ones I mean). When some interesting points arise, my radar lights up and I lean forward. When some of those points turn into horrifying half-truths, I gasp inside my head and wonder what in the … Continue reading Good Communication as the Starting Point of Change
How to set up wordpress on ec2 using puppet and git
Having started out on a Joyent appliance, migrating to Linode, and, finally, to Amazon with a Bitnami stack, we noticed the common pain of manually configuring each of these environments. Bitnami caused us an even bigger headache by being very difficult to update (apt-get doesn't update the bitnami wrapped AMP stack). We decided to get … Continue reading How to set up wordpress on ec2 using puppet and git
The Daily Standup: One step closer to the goal
Almost 9:30am. Time for our stand-up. What did I finish yesterday? What do I plan on finishing today? What's stopping me? The daily routine of the morning stand-up is so ingrained, I go through the above liturgy without conscious thought. For me, the stand-up provides a focused center for the team, our morning huddle. We … Continue reading The Daily Standup: One step closer to the goal
Optimizing Offshore Software Development with Agile
This is a guest post by Prasad Chaudhari, freelance java consultant. He was appointed as a project manager for the project mentioned below and played a role of ScrumMaster. The first prerequisite to going agile offshore is a mature and realistic understanding of agile at home. We've been practicing scrum on-site for several years including … Continue reading Optimizing Offshore Software Development with Agile
Cross-dysfunctional Teams and the Story Point Fight
Agile developers know how to estimate story points for customer features. And while transferring this knowledge over to the project team can take a few sprints, it is speedily adopted and velocity becomes a focal point of the sprint planning games. But, if the all the project participants aren't officially on the team, a growing … Continue reading Cross-dysfunctional Teams and the Story Point Fight
Your Code is NOT Somebody Else’s Problem
Imagine an ant working at the top of a mountain. Next to it, there's a sluice of melt water running and, at that moment, the ant removes a tiny particle from the rock face. A few hundred molecules of water quickly seize upon the shortcut, and gravity takes care of the rest. The individual rivulets … Continue reading Your Code is NOT Somebody Else’s Problem
Getting Lean with Weekly Sprints
In Scrum, sprints are time-boxed delivery cycles that help keep the team focused on the goal. If you don't know which goal I'm referring to, check out Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt's novel "The Goal" (hint: I think it's something about making money). For web development, I run weekly sprints and this surprises a lot of … Continue reading Getting Lean with Weekly Sprints
Agile Web Operations 