In this interview, Lyssa Adkins and Michael Spayd, cofounders of the Agile Coaching Institute, discuss the role of the Agile Coach and the competencies (i.e. facilitation, mentoring, teaching, and coaching) necessary to become effective in that role. Also discussed are ways an Agile coach can transform teams and organizations while reinforcing behaviors that will endure after the coach leaves.
Tony Wong, a project management blackbelt, enumerates some practical points on individual procutivity. This article wonders how well these apply to software development and contrasts his list with that of other lists.
Pinal Dave has posted a 31-part series titled SQL Server – Interview Questions and Answers. It starts with general topics such as “What is Normalization?” and works its way to obscure topics such as “What is Difference between ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE and WITH NO_WAIT during ALTER DATABASE?”. Data warehousing is covered and there are even guest posts on SQL Azure.
The slowdown in our economy has not only effected jobs but also other things developers take for granted such as attending conferences. Conference organizers are trying to up come with creative ways to attract attendees. One such conference is Ruby DCamp being held September 18-19, 2009 in Washington, D.C.
Tobias Mayer, James Coplien, Dan Rawsthorne, Alan Cyment and David Schmaltz are all giving back to their communities in different ways. Tobias is offering free Scrum Training to those in need; James, Dan and Alan all travelled to Serbia to provide free Scrum Training and David helped a nonprofit when their budget fell apart.
Microsoft released an identity developer training kit, following closely on the heels of the release of Geneva Beta 2 at Teched. The training kit is a set of hands-on labs and resources designed to help developers to take advantage of Microsoft’s identity products and services.
A list of some of the Agile training providers and consolidators from around the world. This article is not a comprehensive list, but a snaphot and starting point for the reader's further investigation.
Learning a new programming language can be a daunting task and at times difficult to know where to start. Now try to learn a new web framework at the same time and you have a recipe for confusion. We had the opportunity to talk with Michael Hartl about his approach to teaching people Ruby on Rails, his book the Ruby on Rails 3 Tutorial, and the excellent video series with the same title.
In the nature vs. nurture debate, researchers have declared nurture the winner. People who excel are the ones who work the hardest; it takes ten+ years of deliberate practice to become an expert. Deliberate practice is not about putting in hours, it’s about working to improve performance. It does not mean doing what you are good at; it means challenging yourself under the guidance of a teacher.
Gregory Brown explains the Ruby Mendicant University, a free online school for software developers that combines mentoring and training.
