Month: August 2008

One of my more read books in my library is the very excellent Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers. The book is a great resource when you are plopped down in front of a bunch of legacy code, and need to figure out just how to move forward. This evening I was writing…

Glen Alleman has a great post on the differences between project versus program management. Some of the highlights: * The project manager tries to keep change to a minimum while Program managers expect change and even embrace it * Success is measured by budget, on time, and products delivered to specification versus Success is measured…

Over on the Agile Project Managers list, Jonathan House proposes the following: I think that it’s high time that a new school of management emerges that uses Dilbert as it’s cautionary statement – if what you are proposing as a manager has ever appeared in a Dilbert cartoon, you need to re-think your proposal. Of…

I’m working on a project where we are automating the notification of a project management system. The storage mechanism is all XML files, so we’re using the FileSystemWatcher. Since I wear a green Test-First wrist band I wanted to find a way to write this test-first. The logic that we are working with is that…

At the Agile 2008 conference this year, I had the chance to run into Keith Braithwaite after Ron and Chet’s talk about agile practices. One of the things we talked about was Brian Marick’s examples (a.k.a. “An Example Would be Handy Right About Now”). I’ve given lots of thought about examples over the past couple…

If you are using CoRD to connect from OSX to a Windows machine over RDP, you may initially be confused as to how to do a “Right-Click” – especially if you are on a MacBook like I am. Have no fear – do a “Shift-Ctrl-Click” to access all the Right-Click goodness.

Last night I presented at the Agile Tampa meeting at the new Microsoft office here in Tampa. We covered adopting agile practices in an organization. The important take away was that you don’t want to just adopt practices blindly. You have to take into consideration things like the adoption model (from Crossing the Chasm), the…

Just a reminder that this Wednesday (August 13th) is the next Agile Tampa meeting. I’m speaking this month on a talk titled “XP and Scrum: Tools and Practices for Making Your Organization Agile”. Pizza starts at 6pm, and the talk starts at 6:30pm. Michael graciously says it will go till 9pm, but I promise not…

It’s that time of year again! Agile 2008 starts on Monday in Toronto, and I’m looking forward to it. I do have some concerns about the quality given the number of people (1600) coming to it. They used an interesting stage concept this year, so we’ll see how that goes. I’ve also joined the Twitter…

It’s late at night. You’ve gotten hungry or thirsty, and have decided to pop down to your kitchen for a snack. You just want to grab it and go. Halfway through the kitchen, you hear something skittering across the floor. You also hear a strange sticky sound, and what also sounds like water dripping. You…