Category: General

Hi All, Over the past couple of weeks, there has been some hubub over a letter that went out from the Scrum Alliance to their user groups. This letter let to an announcement that the Orlando Scrum User Group was closing. This led to a posting I did on the Scrum Development list. This in…

I was recently building an app which needed to take advantage of versioning. I liked the look of acts_as_versioned, which is a nice add-on to Rails to versions models. However, the tutorial-fu is pretty sparse, and what is out there is pretty old, so I wanted to write up what it took to get it…

Thanks again to everyone that came out to my Software Craftsmanship talk at BarCampOrlando yesterday. I had a blast, and I enjoyed talking with so many of you throughout the day about moving forward with becoming craftsmen in your own organizations. Here are some resources I talked about or listed in the slides: Agile Manifesto…

“Bob, we need to talk. I’ve been reviewing the check-in histories, and Steve hasn’t bothered to check in anything in the past 6 days. When he does check-in, his quality is just utter crap. I don’t know what happened, but I’m tired of dealing with him and his slack attitude.” We’ve all had team members…

Some exciting news from the Day of Ruby event – in addition to the Tampa Day of Ruby being held on May 16th (which has 1/3rd of the slots gone already – so sign up quick!), I’m excited to announce that we’ll be holding an Orlando Day of Ruby on May 30th! Both events are…

One thing that has always amazed me is the giant leaps we take in organizations to protect the salary information of others. Even telling another employee your own salary is a firable offense in some companies – much less finding out what everyone makes. I’m a firm believer in things like Maverick and SEMCO where…

With all the hubbub around the World Agile Qualification Boards and other certifications, I wanted to make sure that teams were getting the most out of their capabilities. So I’ve created the Agile Object-Oriented Maturity Model Certification. You can get all the details at the site. Sign up today!

Steven List asks if Retrospectives are an antipattern. The question actually came from Chris Matts, and was a point I agreed with – the more mature a team, the less likely they will need formalized retrospectives. To explain more, check out Patrick Kua’s Model for Understanding Retrospective Impact. The key thing that struck me is…

Respect is perhaps one of the most fundamental tenets of any team. Before a team can even begin to address the 5 Dysfunctions, they must learn to respect each other. Fundamentally, there are two different meanings for respect – one being a reverence for a particular person. For example, we may have significant respect for…

Everything is now finalized for the first Day of Ruby event, which will be held May 16th in Tampa, FL. This is a free event for anyone interested in getting hands on with Ruby and Rails (especially .NET and Java developers). For all of the details, and to register, head over to http://tampa.dayofruby.com or follow…