Blogs
Chess Pieces or Domain Expertise? Your Choice
Posted by: Johanna Rothman on 06/18/2013
Many years ago, I started a job as a contract manager, and it became clear I had a big problem. I had developers who knew one area of the code well. I had testers who knew not much of any area of the code well, even though they had worked for the organization for many years. Why? They had been shuffled from one project to another almost every month for years. The writers had more domain expertise than anyone, because they had learned the product from end to end. What was I going to do? This...more »
Slides from Exploding Management Myths Posted
Posted by: Johanna Rothman on 06/10/2013
I gave a talk last week at Better Software/Agile Development, called Exploding Management Myths. This is my first talk based on some of my management myths. Yes, the ones I’ve been writing for the last 18 months. Yes, I have more in me :-) I have posted the slides and the audio from my talk at slideshare. I still cannot understand how to properly sync the slides and audio at slideshare. I don’t talk evenly, which is what slideshare expects. I tried to separate the slides and audio....more »
Slides and Audio from Let’s Test Posted
Posted by: Johanna Rothman on 05/31/2013
I delivered a keynote at Let’s Test in Sweden last week, “Becoming a Kick-Ass Test Manager.” A lovely gentleman, Aleksis Tulonen, recorded the audio. Thank you, Aleksis! I attempted to marry the audio to the slides. I was not successful. However, the audio is up on slideshare. You can download the slides, page through them and listen to the audio. There are gems, such as, “I’m not done yet. This is my keynote.” On the slideshare, there is a link to my original...more »
Clojure on Cloud Foundry
Posted by: Matt Stine on 05/29/2013
I was inspired by Brian McClain’s post on bringing Haskell to Cloud Foundry using Cloud Foundry v2 buildpacks, so I decided to go on a buildpack journey of my own. Since Clojure is the language I most enjoying “toying around with,” I thought I’d try to deploy a simple Clojure web application using the Heroku Clojure Buildpack. To reiterate some of the coolness around buildpacks, they are what allows a PaaS like Cloud Foundry or Heroku to support various runtimes without...more »
Into the Crucible
Posted by: Matt Stine on 05/29/2013
Wow…it seems I only post to this blog toward the end of May. Well, that all changes now. You see, as of June 3, 2013, this blog is going to become one of many aspects of my new “day job.” On Monday, I start my life as a Community Engineer with Cloud Foundry by Pivotal. What’s a Community Engineer? Quite honestly, I’m not completely sure of the answer to that question yet. But given the many conversations I’ve had over the past few weeks, it seemingly fits...more »
Devs in the ‘Ditch Slides Posted
Posted by: Johanna Rothman on 05/21/2013
I gave a talk at Devs in the ‘Ditch last week when I was in London. I posted the slides on slideshare: Overcoming Three Pitfalls of Transitioning to Agile. The very nice people at 7digital made a video and posted it, too. If you can take the time, watch the entire video. Rob Bowyer gave a great talk about kanban and theory of constraints. My part about overcoming these three pitfalls starts at about 42 minutes in. There are many other pitfalls to transition. This talk had just three of...more »
Auto-Refresh for Play Framework Apps
Posted by: James Ward on 05/15/2013
Over this past weekend I built a little tool for Play Framework app developers which auto-refreshes an app in Chrome when the source code or static assets change. Check out a video demonstration: For information on how to set it up, check out the project on GitHub: https://github.com/jamesward/play-auto-refresh Special thanks to Josh Suereth for helping me figure out the SBT magic.more »
Android Panel and Kiosk Apps
Posted by: James Harmon on 05/14/2013
One advantage of doing business in the Chicago area is getting to see lots of manufacturers. The Midwest still builds stuff.As an Android developer who gets to talk with many of the local companies I've recently noticed a pattern in the Android space that I wanted to share.High end tools and machines often contain some kind of display that describes the status of the tool or provides a way to configure or operate the tool. And by "tools and machines" I'm covering a huge variety of...more »
Book Review Functional Programming For Java Developers
Posted by: Demian Neidetcher on 05/14/2013
First off, this is a small book. 72 pages including a glossary. I was able to read it on a plne ride from Louisiana to Denver. Like the tagline says, I hope I never need this book. As the title suggests, the book is about making Java more functional. On my team we spend half our time in Groovy and half on Scala. I suppose we have done similar things in Groovy. The support that Groovy has for closures makes it easier than it would have been in Java. He also covers what is coming in Java for...more »
Securing Single Page Apps and REST Services
Posted by: James Ward on 05/13/2013
The move towards Single Page Apps and RESTful services open the doors to a much better way of securing web applications. Traditional web applications use browser cookies to identify a user when a request is made to the server. This approach is fundamentally flawed and causes many applications to be vulnerable to Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks. When used correctly, RESTful services can avoid this vulnerability altogether. Before we go into the solution, lets recap the problem. HTTP...more »
Individuals and Interactions With Gil Broza
Posted by: Johanna Rothman on 05/13/2013
My friend and colleague, Gil Broza, is interviewing me for his Individuals and Interactions virtual training event. My topic? “Focus Keeps You Going.” If you read my personal kanban series a couple of weeks ago, you saw how my focus kept me going. Even with a big interruption last week, due to a death in the family, I was able to maintain my focus, because I knew exactly what I had to do, to finish my work, to get ready for my trip today. Gil has other great people in his event: Doc...more »
Succeeding with DDD - Documentation
Posted by: Paul Rayner on 05/07/2013
I’m often asked about what teams doing Domain-Driven Design (DDD) should do in the way of documentation.The question What types of Written Design Documents are used in DDD projects?) came up on Stack Overflow and I started to write a response, but realized it was getting way too long to post there. So here it is. When it comes to documentation, we need to begin with the end in mind. We need to understand why we are writing it in the first place: What purpose is each document intending to...more »
Personal Kanban and Iterations, Day 5
Posted by: Johanna Rothman on 05/03/2013
I am still making progress, although it’s more difficult to see my progress today. Why? Because I did not get as much to done. One of my readers asked a question about the Urgent queue and the relative ranking of my ever-growing left hand column. How did I determine what to do, and what was the rank of each? The Urgent queue always trumps everything on the left hand side of the list. I was so frantic on Monday, I didn’t order anything when I put the list together. It almost didn’t matter...more »
Personal Kanban and Iterations, Day 4
Posted by: Johanna Rothman on 05/02/2013
I’m still chugging along, making great progress. I took some interruptions yesterday, as many people do. They are not reflected on my kanban. They are in my calendar, which I am not showing you :-) A potential client emailed, asked for a call. I said yes, and we arranged for a call that day. Could I have put it on my kanban? Yes. Did I bother? No. Does that make me a bad person? No. It’s my kanban, not yours. I don’t track metrics from my kanban. If I did, I would want that and...more »
London Workshops Almost Full, May 16 & 17, 2013
Posted by: Johanna Rothman on 05/02/2013
Are you considering joining me in my Coaching or Project Management workshops in London on May 16 or May 17, 2013? If so, please decide quickly. I have room for two more people in the coaching workshop. I have room for three more people in the project management workshop. When those places are gone, they are gone. That’s it, no more. I will run a waiting list. If you are considering it because you are not sure, email me. more »
Personal Kanban and Iterations, Day 3
Posted by: Johanna Rothman on 05/01/2013
I’ve been busy crossing work off my list. And, as with all of us busy people, I’m adding more work to my list. I feel as if I’ve accomplished a lot this week. It’s just about time to rewrite my list, because with the cross-outs, it’s hard to see where I am. It’s time to go to draft 2 for the workshops, which might be the final drafts for the prose. I will be revising the simulations and interactions during the week. I hope to complete them by the end of the...more »
Personal Kanban and Iterations, Day 2
Posted by: Johanna Rothman on 04/30/2013
I’ve made great progress on Day 1, and I wasn’t even in the office all day! You can see I’ve added more todos, at the bottom of my queue. I discovered two urgent todo’s. I had a call-back, to reschedule a doctor’s appt this week to next week, and to vote today. (We have a primary election today for a special senate election in June.) And, since I’m cheating on how to do a real personal kanban, I thought I would at least describe for you how to do real personal...more »
Personal Kanban and Iterations, Day 1
Posted by: Johanna Rothman on 04/29/2013
I use a form of personal kanban inside one-week iterations to finish my work and notice what I am not doing. I do this to maintain a cadence of blogging and to finish work. Did you notice that word, finish? Sidebar: For those of you who don’t know what “kanban” is, it literally means “card.” It’s been used in manufacturing for years as a pull system for work. I have an example for what a kanban system might look like for teams in Agile Lifecycles for...more »
Intro to Play Framework at Boulder Area Scala Enthusiasts
Posted by: James Ward on 04/22/2013
This Wednesday (April 24, 2013) I’ll be presenting an Intro to Play Framework at the Boulder Area Scala Enthusiasts meetup. Also, Dustin Whitney will be presenting an Intro to Scala. Hopefully see you in Boulder!more »
Management Myth 16: “I Know How Long the Work Should Take”
Posted by: Johanna Rothman on 04/17/2013
Long ago, when I was a young developer at an anonymous company, one of my managers was disappointed with my progress. “I know how long the work should take. If I was doing the work, it would be done by now,” he huffed at me. “Really?” I could have stopped there. I didn’t. “If you had done the work right the first time, I wouldn’t be in here mucking around with this, trying to fix everything. I pull something here, and something pops out over there. Of...more »
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