http://blog.gdinwiddie.com Effective software development Sat, 31 May 2008 04:18:18 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en As you may have noticed, I haven't posted for awhile.  I've been on the go too much. Right now I'm at the Agile Coach Conference in Ann Arbor, MI.  The regular sessions will start tomorrow.  For Friday evening, we had some delightful lightning talks. http://blog.gdinwiddie.com/2008/05/30/agile-coach-conference-2008/ I posted this question on LinkedIn this morning, and have already received a ton of answers. I thought it would be good to ask here, too. As a manager, what would you like the software developers under your management to learn? This might be knowledge of some specific technology, some ... http://blog.gdinwiddie.com/2008/04/03/what-would-you-like-your-software-developers-to-learn/ David Maister asks, in a business turndown, do you respond with cost-cutting measures, such as layoffs of junior personnel, or do you reduce the profitability at the top, redirecting the efforts of your top people to long-term growth while the junior people attend to the reduced amount of immediate work? ... http://blog.gdinwiddie.com/2008/03/11/short-term-profit-or-long-term-prosperity/ It is good when we learn from our experiences--much better than when we don't learn from them. I recently wrote about learning, or failing to learn, from observing others. A recent discussion on the scrumdevelopment yahoogroup got me thinking about another way to learn from experiences, and that's ... http://blog.gdinwiddie.com/2008/02/28/learning-from-experience/ Esther Schindler quoted me in her article, Getting Clueful: 7 Things CIOs Should Know About Agile Development, on CIO.com. Unfortunately, my advice got altered a little in the editing process. She says, Consultant George Dinwiddie from iDIA Computing suggests using a burn-down chart to track project progress. I actually recommend ... http://blog.gdinwiddie.com/2008/02/06/advice-to-a-cio-about-agile-development/ I know this has been bandied about hither and yon by lots of people. But I still see statements like the one by James Bach quoted on Matt Heusser's blog that "the part of the testing problem they address is a small fraction of the whole." Well, yes. ... http://blog.gdinwiddie.com/2008/01/29/what-test-driven-development-is/ The subject of determining compensation for developers on Agile teams comes up from time to time on the mailing lists. I'm no HR specialist, and I don't have any easy answers to this question. It seems certainly true that some people will have provided more value than others ... http://blog.gdinwiddie.com/2008/01/27/agile-compensation/ A while back, I was working with a young and cocky software developer. He was a smart guy, and sure of his abilities. He had seven years of Java experience, he said, and he knew how to write code. As he was a new member of the team, I ... http://blog.gdinwiddie.com/2008/01/22/what-do-you-know/ Some of you may remember that I started a house construction project. Things are moving very fast, now, and the actual construction may take less time than it took to get all the necessary permits. So far, the project's about 100% over the time budget. And people ... http://blog.gdinwiddie.com/2007/12/25/refactoring-a-house/ Our teams sometimes have multiple projects. I am wondering what is the best way and what is the SCRUM way of handling this. My feeling is that the best way is to have a single backlog per team (even if this means that in a sprint the team is working ... http://blog.gdinwiddie.com/2007/12/03/combined-backlog-for-multiple-projects/ Sometimes people just won't do what you want them to do—what they should do—no matter how hard you try to persuade them. Why is that? It's been quiet on this blog for awhile. For one thing, the house construction mentioned so long ago has finally started moving forward after a long ... http://blog.gdinwiddie.com/2007/11/17/the-limits-of-energy/ I'm just back from XPDay Manhattan, one of those small conferences that Matt Heusser and I have praised before. This conference was a mix of prepared talks and open space. I think this is an excellent format. It provides material for those who haven't yet identified a ... http://blog.gdinwiddie.com/2007/10/16/in-praise-of-small-conferences/