Software Development Perspectives

Amazing

2011-11-30T14:17:00.001-08:00

I love this article from 50 years ago that envisions the "Home Computer". Isn't it amazing how far technology has come in 50 years!

Certified Scrum Master

2011-11-03T19:49:00.000-07:00

Finished the Scrum Master Certification class yesterday and just got my certification. Very exciting!

Scrum Master

2011-11-01T08:58:00.001-07:00

I was fortunate to get a spot in a Scrum Master Certification class and after the class is over, and I take the online certification exam, I will be a certified Scrum Master.

This is exciting for me. Even though I have been using agile Practices for a few years, it's good to be certified for the things that you do.

I'm also excited to see agile practices taking hold in State Govt. I think they are long overdue!

New Job!

2011-06-23T19:06:00.000-07:00

I guess I'm a little behind! Started a new job a couple months ago. It's going great! Maybe I'll get around to blogging occasionally.

A new role

2010-10-19T18:59:00.000-07:00

I recently moved into a new acting role at work, at least temporarily, until a new CIO is hired. In this role, I have a much broader scope to manage than previously, at a higher level. I'm finding it an interesting challenge. After spending the last 2 years building an agile team, it's interesting to step back into leading teams who's processes do not necessarily fit the mold of "agile". I am observing their patterns and looking for opportunities. I'm a big believer now in being agile. Collaboration, communication, customer and product focus, minimal documentation. We'll have to see what's next.

Good Podcast on Teamwork and Adapting to Change

2010-04-12T09:31:00.000-07:00

I really enjoyed this podcast from This American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/403/nummi

Funny! This was from yesterday (April Fools Day)

2010-04-02T09:43:00.001-07:00

http://www.devagile.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=601

Be sure to follow the links, too...

Scrum Tools

2010-03-03T12:30:00.000-08:00

We're checking out Jazz/RTC from IBM Rational Software right now as a possible solution for our team. We already use clearQuest, so RTC is a natural next step. It's very cool!

Agile North Florida

2010-01-08T04:28:00.001-08:00

We're starting a new user group in Tallahassee for people who are interested in learning more and sharing ideas about agile software development practices. Check out the website at:

http://sites.google.com/site/agilenorthflorida/

4 Scrum Masters

2009-08-24T05:32:00.001-07:00

My team now has 4 Certified Scrum Masters. The process we have implemented is very scrum-like, but also incorporates other agile and non-agile practices. It helps for people to get certified for the roles they perform. If certification is available, and if it is monetarily feasible, I would highly recommend it. Certification not only helps the people to feel more empowered to perform in their roles, but it also provides the team with with trained people to help steer the course and champion the ideals regardless of approach. Now, if I can only find a way to get our customers certified as Product owners!

http://www.scrumalliance.org/scrum_certification

Florida's Budget Woes

2009-04-14T19:30:00.000-07:00

It's a rough time for the US Economy. Duh. Who doesn't know that.

It's been rough for State Government in Florida this year, too.

Training $ have been hard to come by this year. They're never really easy to come by, but this year is especially bad.

Shifting the team from a disciplined approach to an agile approach would certainly be easier if there was money in the budget for ongoing mentoring and training. Hopefully, things will improve next fiscal year!

In the mean time, we learn by doing!

Balance

2009-04-14T19:20:00.000-07:00

Successful software projects require a balance of discipline and agility.

Becoming Agile

2009-04-14T16:28:00.001-07:00

Moving from a disciplined software development approach to an "agile" software development approach is difficult, but not impossible!

Here are some things to keep in mind:

Understand the current process before you try to change it
Look at the whole process
Don't think of any new method or tool as a silver bullet
Remember to set boundaries
Start small
Existing processes may only need to be streamlined and not replaced completely but...
Sometimes you just need to completely stop doing what you have been doing and try something totally different
Shifting people out of their comfort zone carries a risk, but it can also be very rewarding both for the team and the individual
Give people the freedom to learn from each other and self-organize
Involve your customer at every step for buy-in
Keep an open mind
Adopt and adapt
Mentor and teach
Review and improve

Importing Use Case Requirements into a new modeling tool

2009-02-12T18:35:00.000-08:00

As a manager, I don't get nearly enough time to do the fun, more technical aspects of software development any more. Still, occasionally I get to do something fun. Today was one of those days. The system I manage has 180+ use case specifications of varying size and complexity that we use to manage ongoing requirements changes. Recently, we have been experimenting with moving some of our modeling and requiremements management efforts into a different tool to see how the tool stacks up against our legacy tools. Anyway, after a little monkeying around with a CSV export file, I was able to get the use case requirements imported into the new tool. Yay me! So, that was my highly technical work activity---tomorrow I'm back to management stuff and writing a Service Level Agreement.

Happy 2009!

2009-01-05T14:29:00.001-08:00

Here we are in 2009! How did we get here so fast!

For me, 2008 was a challenging but good year. I transitioned from a team that I built from the ground up over several years to a new team and role I knew nothing about. I had a goal--help the new team to transition from a disciplined, RUP-centric approach, to a more agile, collaboration-centric approach. I feel like we made great progress. There is still much to do, but we have implemented Scrum and are well on our way to becoming more agile in our requirements, testing, and build and release processes.

2009 should prove to be an interesting year. Things are a little crazy in the world right now and we all have our challenges. But, with challenge comes opportunity. I think the world has the potential to rise to the occasion.

I look forward to the challenges and opportunities of 2009!

Scrum Workshop

2008-11-05T19:13:00.000-08:00

My team spent the day today learning how to do Scrum. (Scrum is an agile project management methodology that's named after a Rugby term). Anyway, it was a great workshop, led by an excellent instructor, and we all learned a lot! I hope we can really apply what we learned and I hope we can get our customer to buy in 100% to their role as the product owner.

What amazes me most about Scrum is its simplicity...so easy even a caveman (like me) can do it.

The Code of No Code

2008-10-06T19:12:00.000-07:00

Years ago, when I was a lowly mainframe programmer, I used to think that one day people would no longer be writing all these lines of code and would instead draw pictures of what they thought a system should do and the pictures would be used to generate the code. Today they call this "Model Driven Development" and I hear that some people actually use this technique to create programs. I can neither confirm nor deny this, however :)

I Blog Therefore I Am

2008-10-01T19:34:00.000-07:00

Actually, I can't think of anything else to write for this entry, but I always wanted to say that.

Scrum

2008-10-01T19:27:00.000-07:00

We're taking a serious look at Agile methods at work right now and in particular Scrum for managing our software releases. I think it's going to be great for the team. All those Pigs and Chickens and planning poker and everything! Awesome!

Agility or Discipline, That is the Question...

2008-07-10T18:40:00.000-07:00

It seems that Agile methods have taken over as the status quo these days...but what about the old "Tried and True" methodologies? Are they dead? I don't think so. The best way to develop software surely lies squarely in the middle between agility and discipline.

Requirements

2008-04-25T04:19:00.000-07:00

Gathering and documenting software requirements is a discipline that has been approached in many different ways over the years. Detailed analysis and design documentation, feature lists, use cases, user stories, prototypes are all approaches I've seen and/or used.

I'm not sure that any of these is the "best" approach.

What I believe is more important than any requirements technique are 3 things:

Requirements need to be simple, clear and concise
It's important to get requirements from the right people
Requirements will change

Linked Lists

2008-04-14T19:49:00.000-07:00

I remember one of my projects in college was to create our own database management system using linked lists. Do they still teach these kinds of things?

I also remember that my decision to change my major from a focus on architecture (real architecture, not the software kind) to computers was based on thinking that nothing else really sounded very interesting at the time (besides hanging out in the student union and playing ping pong and they didn't have a major for that)

So here I am a bunch of years later and I still play ping pong and I ended up as a software architect. Fate is strange, eh?

Methodologies

2008-04-11T04:37:00.000-07:00

I have always been a fan of process. I've enjoyed watching software development processes evolve over the years. The one thing I've noticed is that there is no "Perfect Process". They all have their strengths and weaknesses and most need to be tailored to add value. I've followed SDLC's, written and implemented SDLC's, used RUP, and worked to incorporate elements of waterfall, spiral, agile, etc. as appropriate. In my experience, none of these approaches seems to be the "end all be all" of software development processes.

What seems to work best, though, is to approach usage of any SDLC from a common sense perspective. Tailor the process to meet the specific needs of the project.

Programming on Punch Cards, the Jurassic Period...

2008-04-09T09:49:00.001-07:00

I was telling someone just yesterday about how I had to program on punch cards in college...writing code for fortran, cobol and rpgII. Dinosaur days! I still remember the day they installed the new really cool Cande terminals for our Burroughs and we got to use those instead of cards. I also remember the day (previous to the Cande terminals) that I dropped my 350 card cobol program on the day it was due and the card sorter was broke--had to put them back in order by hand...glad we've progressed since then!

First Post

2008-04-09T09:10:00.000-07:00

I hope to capture my thoughts about where I have seen software development over the last 20 or so years and where I think it's heading. Maybe this will just be a lot of rambling...