Some Agile Advocation

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During the first week of March, I co-presented on a topic about iterative and agile software development to a group of Business Analysts within the company I work for (which follows traditional Waterfall practices). It was a good presentation, and I had a great time doing it.  I wished there was more time to field questions, because it seemed like there was definitely some interest (or at least some curious minds).

What I found most interesting was how I had to adapt my presentation to the audience.  Talking about pair programming, test-driven development and continuous integration is not as important to a group of BAs as it would be to a group of developers.  Instead, I focused more on the benefits of moving from BRUP to more JIT requirements, and trying to justify why it’s ok to define high-level requirements up-front, yet defer the details until the point where the development teams are actually going to implement them.

With any luck, there will be some ensuing discussion about the merits of agile and iterative practices; if nothing else, it will have been an opportunity to get some new ideas into a few more minds…

This is embarrassing…

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Ok.  So, I just signed up for a Twitter account the other day… finally.  I feel like such a noob.

Just to clear my tech credibility, I’ve known about Twitter for a long time now; I just haven’t had a need for my own Twitter account.  My friends are mostly on the Facebook wagon, and the only reason I now have a Twitter account is because I’m finding more and more conference and event notifications being posted on Twitter instead of their web site blogs / RSS feeds.  Oh well, it was about time.

However, this small activity gave me pause in my life…

Seriously, I’m starting to feel like I’ve passed my prime in terms of technology trends.  I don’t do the 300+ texts per month; I just now got on the Twitter bandwagon; My Facebook page is not littered with ever little app that I find (I’m selective like that); and I still read books on printed paper.

Maybe I’m just getting a little cynical in my “old age”.  After all, In my day, we didn’t have this obesity problem with kids playing video games all the time.  We enjoyed our 16-bit goodness and savored in the knowledge that we could beat our games in just a few hours and then have the rest of the day to go outside.

Recent Booklist

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Some of my colleagues have done this in the past, so I figure I’ll share as well.  Here are some technical books that I have read over the past few months (or am currently reading):

  • Now, Discover your Strengths – I actually read this early in 2008, but I find myself coming back to it frequently for reference.
  • Behind Closed Doors (Pragmatic Series) – This is the book I’m currently reading.  So far, it’s… interesting.  The jury is still out on this one.
  • Practices of an Agile Developer (Pragmatic Series) – This was probably my favorite book of the Pragmatic Series.  Lots of insightful things in here.
  • Pragmatic Unit Testing with C# and NUnit (Pragmatic Series) – I read this after already being familiar with unit testing.  It was a good refresher and gave me several little nuggets of new information and tips.  I highly recommend this for both the novice and seasoned developer.

A co-worker of mine is a big fan of the Pragmatic Series and has been kind enough to let me mooch borrow some of his books.

And, because sometimes I get tired of reading technical books (gasp!), here are some recent books that have kept me from losing my mind in code samples:

  • Angels and Demons – I wanted to read this before seeing the movie, since I’ve heard they are taking several liberties with the movie adaptation.
  • Star Wars: New Jedi Order – I’m not ashamed to admit I’m a Star Wars fan, though I guarantee you won’t find me at any conventions in a stormtrooper outfit anytime soon.

Still Here…

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It’s been a little over three months since I posted on here.  Yikes!  It’s not for lack of things going on, or things to talk about; I just haven’t had the time to sit down and write anything of substance.  I’m going to try to change that.

My biggest difficulty lately has just been trying to put down my thoughts with enough content, but not to write just for the sake of writing.  I read others’ blogs, and some either write several pages worth of content; or write things I could care less about.  As a reader, this becomes a turn-off for me and I find myself frequenting their sites less and less.  (The same can be said for those that don’t post often… err… yea…)

So, with that in mind, I’m going to try to blog more frequently in the coming months; but I’m going to start with posts that are relatively brief , but substantive – I don’t want to blog for the sake of blogging.  It’ll be a balancing act.  Blog more, but blog well.  We’ll see how this goes…

PDC Media Galore!

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Given the recent economic downturn, it’s not surprising that many who wanted to make to this year’s PDC event were not able to go.  However, this year it seems like folks at Microsoft are happy bringing the event to us – virtually, at least.

Microsoft has launched as web site with a plethora of information that is being presented at the PDC as it goes on right now!  For people like me who love to absorb information, this is a treasure trove of material.

You will need to install Silverlight 2 to take advantage of much of this site.

HDC ’08

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Last week was the Heartland Developer Conference in Omaha and, as usual, it did not disappoint.  This was my fourth year attending the conference and I always enjoy the sessions that happen.  Also at the event was a demo Microsoft Surface table that I got to play around with; and the Microsoft booth had Rock Band 2 set up. I was able to get in one quick jam during the conference; thanks to whoever sat in on the drums…

Some of the more interesting sessions I attended this year include:

  • Rod Paddock on “AJAXing Your .NET Applications”: Very good presentation, especially for the more novice AJAX developers, like myself.  The biggest payback was seeing his demo of the Fiddler tool.  Very cool stuff!
  • Dennis Kirlin on “Estimating in the Abstract”: This was one of my favorites.  Dennis’ presentation was unique in that he presented a number of agile concepts and practices without using any of the associated buzzwords. By doing so, the presentation sounded refreshingly new, even to those already familiar with the concepts.
  • Javier Lozano on “The Zen of ASP.NET and MVC”: I attended a presentation with the IADNUG earlier in the year over this same topic, and it’s amazing the number of changes that have occurred between the earlier CTP and the recent beta release of the MVC framework.  I was unimpressed with the former, but Javier’s presentation won me back.  Now if only they could get the thing out of beta…
  • Clint Edminton on “Modeling in Visual Studio Codename Rosario”: This demo was cool until he told us that these features were for the Architect Edition of Visual Studio Team System.  Does Microsoft not think that developers use UML?  At least they now acknowledge that developers do interact with databases.

The other interesting thing to note was the increase in agile-specific topics, including sessions on using Scrum with Team Foundation Server, and the aforementioned Agile Estimating session.  I’m looking forward to what is to come in 2009.