Evaluating hosting scenarios for our Ruby on Rails based web application, I finally had a good reason to dig deeper into "cloud computing". While I was already watching the evolution of Amazon's web services like S3 and EC2, a lot of offerings nowadays labelled as "cloud computing" were quite new to me. To better understand … Continue reading Who Else Wants to Understand Cloud Computing?
Configuration Management: Introduction to Cfengine
As promised in my last post about configuration management, I want to introduce you to one of the key Open Source configuration management players on the scene today - Cfengine. Embarked upon in 1993 by Mark Burgess, Cfengine has helped system administrators configuring and maintaining their servers in the data center for over a decade … Continue reading Configuration Management: Introduction to Cfengine
Velocity – what will we be able to deliver this week?
The final building block of our introduction to agile is velocity. In addition to employing user stories to break down big features into manageable junks, maintaining a backlog for ruthless prioritizing, and story point estimates, velocity will help you find out what you can deliver in a week. Looking at "Yesterday's Weather" to Learn About … Continue reading Velocity – what will we be able to deliver this week?
Configuration Management: Scaling The Data Center and Growing Your Business
The Velocity 2008 Conference hosted many excellent presentations and discussions concerning web performance and operations. Adam Jacob, of HJK Solutions, presented how his company goes about "Building An Automated Infrastructure". To briefly explain what an automated infrastructure is, let's think of servers and data as office buildings and automobiles. Would it make sense to begin … Continue reading Configuration Management: Scaling The Data Center and Growing Your Business
Estimation of User Stories With Story Points as Abstract Size Measure
After discussing which issues we tried to solve by introducing agile practices to manage a remote development team, using User Stories to be able to compare requirements and building a Backlog for ruthless prioritizing I want to share our learnings about agile estimation of User Stories. As you might have experienced, estimating the time required … Continue reading Estimation of User Stories With Story Points as Abstract Size Measure
Don’t get Discouraged – Get Agile
The bigger a ship, the longer it takes to turn around. This old adage certainly applies to today's businesses, and if you're fighting to spin the steering wheel of a large vessel (by trying to change the work habits of hundreds of employees), you're in for a long battle. But don't let yourself get discouraged, … Continue reading Don’t get Discouraged – Get Agile
A Backlog for Ruthless Prioritizing
So far, I've talked about how I went for Introducing agile practices to manage a remote development team as well as User Stories - Making Sure Your Customers Get The First-class Seats. While User Stories are a good start, enforcing ruthless prioritization of these stories can really streamline your development processes. Priorities get mixed up … Continue reading A Backlog for Ruthless Prioritizing
Avoiding Code Inventory with Staged Releases
Have you ever found yourself in Sprint 4 or 5 without a single release under your belt? Is it because the new functionality involves a big database upgrade or depends upon coordinating three or four different departments? Not only does this kill motivation, but it's extremely risky to push out this mountain of code and … Continue reading Avoiding Code Inventory with Staged Releases
User Stories – Making Sure Your Customers Get The First-class Seats
In my last post about Introducing Agile Practices to Manage a Remote Development Team I described the issues we faced with our existing development process and provided a step-by-step overview of the agile practices we implemented. In this post, I want to introduce you to the concept of User Stories and how you can use … Continue reading User Stories – Making Sure Your Customers Get The First-class Seats
Get Your Team Working Together
Let's face it, compared to other engineering disciplines software development is just coming out of the stone age. Heck, I'm sure I'll get a lot of flak for even suggesting that software development is an engineering discipline (though I have to admit the way a lot of developers go about their work, calling it engineering … Continue reading Get Your Team Working Together
