Tracking change and innovation in the enterprise software development community
Create REST
-enabled Web Apps
with Project Zero
from IBM.
Introducing the
SpringSource
Application Platform:
Next-gen Java
AppServer
Terracotta:
Scale your
Apps w/ease
Offload the DB:
Learn More!
Plan-driven dev
Environments and
Agile tutorials at the
Better Software
Conference & Expo!
Rule your SOA
with CentraSite
standards-based
registry/repository
This recent inquiry, by InfoQ China editor Jacky Li, picked 5 very different cases of Scrum adoption in China, which got different results, and asked: Why did you use Scrum? How did you adopt it? What problems did you encounter, and why did it succeed or fail? Despite the small sample size, it's an interesting comparison, pointing out that improvement doesn't ensure success.
The purported fraud by Jerome Kerviel at Société Générale may bring down a major financial institution and may have caused markets to tumble worldwide. Attention has turned to systems intended to prevent fraud and other illegal activities. What role can software architects play in detecting and avoiding fraud and other suspicious behavior?
Partnership Coach Michael Spayd tells us that both contractors and permanent employees can find themselves playing a "consultant" role, and should consider using consulting contracts or "designed partnerships" with their clients - not regarding the exchange of money, but to create a climate for stellar results for the client, while also communicating their own values and preferences.
'Release It!: Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software' by Michael Nygard, which is nominated for a 2008 Jolt Award, discusses what it takes to make production-ready software and explains how this differs from feature-complete software. InfoQ spoke with Nygard about the areas that the book covers and some questions around how the book's philosophy fits in with concepts such as Agile.
A case study about how motor vehicle insurance records company Safeco used SOA approahes, SCA, BPEL, and composite application approaches to reuse legacy code, enable runtime modifiability thanks to decoupling, Java and .NET interoperability, and the ability to deliver a complex solution integrating over 5 systems in less than 8 weeks with a small team.
At QconLondon 2007 Jim Coplien spoke with "Pragmatic" Dave Thomas for InfoQ. This energetic 30-minute interview runs the gamut of Dave's wide-ranging interests: 'agile' publishing; how to turn what you love doing into a book; programming (and methodology) monocultures; staying limber with code "katas"; and advice for academics: help your students live with the passion of a 5-year old!
InfoQ presents a one hour video from the APLN Leadership Summit at Agile2006, where a panel of business leaders spoke about their experiences: Bud Phillips (Capital One Financial), Israel Ganot (BMC Software), Steven Ambrose (DTE Energy), Peter George (Cronos Inc.). Topics included top-down vs. bottom-up adoption, making the leap of faith to enterprise adoption and the value of the PMO.
In this talk, recorded at QCon London, Mark Nottingham explains how Yahoo! leverages Web technologies, specifically HTTP-based caching using Squid, to create a high-performance architecture for integrating multiple Yahoo! properties, concluding that the Web provides sophisticated techniques without using SOA tooling such as ESBs.
Here is a story about Agile's use in a governmental organisation: at the 2006 APLN Leadership Summit Mark Salamango and John Cunningham looked at the problems and opportunities of introducing Agile in Army environments. True Agile practices cannot be 'commanded' or 'directed’ but frequent delivery offers Agile leaders a "soft" kind of power that is, in fact, very effective.
For those getting started with Agile, this book offers a detailed first-person account of how one Swedish company implemented Scrum and XP with a distributed team of 40 people, and how they continuously improved their process over a year’s time.
