Last week I held my first meeting at NetDoktor, introducing the rest of the company to both what I'm doing and how I organize my work. Of course, I'd dropped the 'agile' word around the office from time to time and, suprisingly, most everyone had some idea of what it meant. Sure, it was some … Continue reading Introducing Your Team to Agile Using Pivotal Tracker
Author: Dan Ackerson
Memcache for Dummies
I mentioned last week that compromises suck. The first step to a win-win situation for everyone is to grab memcached and get it up and running. And don't let the title insult your intelligence - it's more of a warning to those that have decided memcache is just a fad which will soon pass. Memcached … Continue reading Memcache for Dummies
BREAKING: Caching Saves Server Lives!
I know, I know - last week, I promised a post about hooking up Xdebug to Eclipse along with some nifty profiling howto. But, unfortunately, real life managed to intervene again! Every site has its peaks, and every knowledgeable sysadmin automatically keeps an eye on the server farm during this time. Let's face it - … Continue reading BREAKING: Caching Saves Server Lives!
Configuring MAMP for Development
With all the LAMP stacks in the world, its hard to imagine we need yet another howto blog post. But I did have some trouble getting things running smoothly on my Mac and I'd like to share my experiences with you, the gentle reader. Living-e bundles Apache, MySQL and PHP stack for the Mac called … Continue reading Configuring MAMP for Development
Agile is not Ad hoc
Last week I made an honest mistake that caused severe downtime on our website. Of course, I spent a lot of time thinking about all the contributing factors which ultimately caused such a nexus in the space-time continuum to appear over my keyboard at that crucial moment when I hit the enter key. It didn't … Continue reading Agile is not Ad hoc
Getting a Grip on your Operations with Munin
Ever taken a midnight drive down a dirt road without any headlights on? While it's certainly a thrilling (and stupid) thing to do, you shouldn't do it with your data center. But do you know what the load of your web servers were this morning? Could you tell me how many MySQL "slow queries" were … Continue reading Getting a Grip on your Operations with Munin
Limiting Access to Test and Production Systems
How do you decide who in the company should have access to the test and production environments? Opening it up to everyone is one extreme which in today's security sensitive world is no longer an option. At the far other end, granting only one person access, while perhaps more secure (depending on who you've entrusted … Continue reading Limiting Access to Test and Production Systems
Leveraging Subversion Hooks for Fun and Profit
Last week, I showed you how to setup a secure subversion server. Today, I'd like to show you how to technically accomplish a couple of development themes that are near and dear to my heart. The first is creating a quality gate with a release branch and creating a team of committers who are the … Continue reading Leveraging Subversion Hooks for Fun and Profit
Setting Up A Secure Subversion Source Code Repository
Our source code repository is currently hosted at the offshore development site and there is no external access to it (neither through the Internet nor a VPN). While this is certainly desirable from a security standpoint, I'd really love to see what the developers are actually working on. I asked the director there to put … Continue reading Setting Up A Secure Subversion Source Code Repository
Recession Spells Doom for Gantt Charts
This week I had the pleasure of seeing an actual, honest-to-goodness Gantt chart clutched in our boss's emphatically gesticulating hand. I actually did a double take to verify what I was seeing and shook my head in disbelief. OK, so we've quite a way to go before we'll be able to call ourselves agile. But, … Continue reading Recession Spells Doom for Gantt Charts
