InfoQ Homepage Architecture & Design Content on InfoQ
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New Book on Lean Software Offers Practical Advice
In 2003 Mary and Tom Poppendieck adapted the revolutionary principles of Lean manufacturing for software development. Their new book offers a blend of history, theory, and practice, drawing on their experience optimizing the software "value stream". They present the right questions to ask, the key issues to focus on, and techniques proven to work for those implementing a lean software process.
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Opinion: Time for an Agile Certification Program
Pete Behrens, trainer and organizational Agility consultant, recently blogged about the contentious topic of certification. He noted that both Scrum and FDD have 2-day basic certification programs, while "XP has remained silent on the topic," and called on the Agile community to begin looking at a true Agile Certification Process.
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Survey: Leaders Say Agile Has "Crossed the Chasm"
Diana Larsen leads a lot of retrospectives... So, it's not surprising that, when she asked herself "Where is Agile going now?" her response was to run a retrospective of her own. She found that leaders in our community are convinced: Agile methods have "crossed the chasm" to become a respectable alternative for managing and working in software projects. InfoQ brings you this exclusive article.
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Microsoft Open Specification Promise
Microsoft has announced the "Open Specification Promise", guaranteeing the freedom to legally implement any of the 35 Microsoft-supported Web services standards for both commercial and open source developers.
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Spring and OSGi - A Perfect Match?
The Spring Framework has become a favorite of enterprise application developers. The OSGi specification and various Java implementations has also been growing in popularity. Work has recently begun to combine the power of these two complementary frameworks with a specification supported by BEA, Oracle, IBM, Eclipse, the OSGi Alliance.
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GNOME 2.16 - Now with C#
GNOME, the popular desktop environment for Linux, has started offering C# bindings for the GTK+ and GNOME libraries. This has resulted in Mono, an open source version of the CLR, becoming a GNOME dependency.
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Gemstone Releases GemFire 5.0 Enterprise Data Fabric
GemStone Systems has introduced GemFire Enterprise 5.0 an enterprise data fabric for JEE, grid, and SOA applications. GemFire supports massive data loads while providing scalability, data integrity, and fail over. Version 5.0 adds features such as enhanced data partitioning and caching event models.
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Opinion: Putting Overtime in Perspective
Agile work, when done in a disciplined, creative way, tends to be very intense, so Agile leaders encourage balanced lives for team members and promote "sustainable pace". Mitch Lacey, a Microsoft Program Manager, recently blogged about his emerging understanding of how to use this XP practice appropriately.
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InfoQ Article: An Introduction to WS-Reliable Messaging
Web Services Reliable Messaging 1.1 is available as a new draft version of the OASIS specification originally released by Microsoft, IBM, BEA and others. WS-RM ensures messages can be delivered reliable over unreliable protocols such as HTTP. Paul Fremantle, co-chair of the OASIS technical committee, provides an introduction.
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Presentation: Agile Project Management Planning and Budgetting
What happens to planning when teams "self organize"? Agile methods are empirical: plan it, do it, evaluate, plan again. David Hussman reviews practices for planning a project, release, iteration.
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System.Data.SQLite to Support ADO.NET vNext
SQLite is a lightweight database engine written in C. Designed to be cross-platform, it doesn't have any external dependencies and only takes about 250 KB of disk space. Though it doesn't support all of SQL92, it is suitable for smaller projects, especially ones that need cross-platform support. And to top it all off, the source code is in the public domain.
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Holacracy - The Self-Organizing Enterprise
The fit between Agile teams and traditional enterprises can be challenging. Agile may highlight or exacerbate pre-existent dysfunctions, in areas a project manager may not be well-placed to address, so those involved in Agile roll-outs are thinking about alternate ways to organize the enterprise. Holacracy, created at Ternary Software, suggests that self-organization can extend outside IT.
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webMethods acquires Infravio
BPM and integration vendor webMethods will acquire SOA registry provider Infravio for US $38 million in cash.
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Opinion: Agile Forgets the Human Factor
Kevin Brady, self-declared Agile critic, has a problem with Agile software development approaches: he feels that while they look great on paper. they fail to work in reality because they forget the human factor. Commenters on his blog entry question whether Agile or poor implementation lie at fault.
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SQL Server Everywhere: the Future of Lightweight Databases
What is a developer who wants a light-weight, file-sharing based database to do? The answer is SQL Server Everywhere (SSEv). Like Jet, it is an in-process, file-sharing based engine. Though it lacks the functionality of SQL Server, it is suitable for small end-user applications that run on the desktop.