InfoQ Homepage Culture & Methods Content on InfoQ
-
Opinion: It is Time for a New Paradigm Shift in Business-IT Alignment
Fred Cummins, an EDS fellow, offers his vision on how SOA is changing business-IT alignment. He dismisses some proposal which recommend fusing and diffusing IT with and within the business and explains how Services boundaries offer a natural boundary to foster collaboration between the business and IT.
-
Skyway Builder Community Edition Supports Code Generation For Spring Applications
The latest version of Skyway Builder Community Edition (CE) offers an open-source code generation framework for Spring based web applications. The community edition can be used to generate the code required in data, service and web layers of a Spring application. Skyway Software recently announced the general availability (GA) of Skyway Builder 6.1 version.
-
Information Radiators: Is low tech really better?
The Extreme Programming Yahoo Group has been discussing the pros and cons of low tech information radiators, such as task boards, compared to high tech tools. The original poster preferred a physical task board to a spreadsheet, but found himself unable to explain why to his boss. The ensuing discussion uncovered a variety of reasons to choose simple physical means of reporting information.
-
Interview with Brian Marick at Agile 2008
Brian Marick discusses what he means by micro-scale-retro-futurist-anachro-syndicalism and why we should go back to the roots of Agile. He talks about what he thinks were the mistakes in the Agile Manifesto, how it has lead to the state of the Agile community today, and how we can build better systems by making them so that they are much more easily tested.
-
Requirements Come Second - What Comes First?
Allan Kelly sites an article from MIT's Sloan Management Review about why it is important to get a team's technical competence and ability improved before focusing on business-IT alignment. This, he claims, is one of the reasons Agile software development has been so successful. Allan's point indirectly touches on a recent community debate about successful, valuable, Agile adoption.
-
Engine Yard to Take Over Ruby 1.8.6 Maintenance?
Ruby 1.8.6 is still in heavy use, although its replacement 1.8.7 has been around for over half a year now. Now Engine Yard plans, in accordance with the 1.8.6 maintainer, to take over the maintenance of Ruby 1.8.6 and sponsor some long needed performance fixes.
-
Assess Your Agility With 'ABetterTeam.org'
Sebastian Hermida has put together a free online tool to help teams get a better understanding of how well they're doing adopting agility. The site, abetterteam.org, is based on the "Assess Your Agility" quiz Jim Shore and Shane Warden include in their book, The Art Of Agile Development.
-
Interview: Ian Robinson discusses REST, WS-* and Implementing an SOA
In this interview from QCon San Francisco 2008, Ian Robinson discusses REST vs. WS-*, REST contracts, WADL, how to approach company-wide SOA initiatives, how an SOA changes a company, SOA and Agile, tool support for REST, reuse and foreseeing client needs, versioning and the future of REST-based services in enterprise SOA development.
-
Interview: Luke Francl Explains Why Testing Is Overrated
In this interview filmed during RubyFringe 2008, Luke Francl explains his position towards testing. While supporting unit testing, he thinks testing is not going to reveal all application defects. Development teams should practice code reviews and usability tests which are likely to discover bugs not visible though other methods.
-
Article: InfoQ Editors' Recommended Reading List
Members of the InfoQ editorial team discuss a number of books which have influenced how we think about software development, architecture and managing projects.
-
Backlog Lacks the Backbone
Backlogs have been under criticism for some time now. Mary Poppendieck goes to the extent of suggesting that product backlog should be eliminated if it is not satisfying the desired purpose. On similar lines Jeff Patton suggested using story maps instead of flat backlogs which help focus on the system being developed.
-
Eclipse Banking Day London
Last week's Eclipse Banking Day in London saw 80+ attendees discuss the use of Eclipse in banking. Sponsored by the Eclipse foundation, in conjunction with Sybase, Cloudsmith, Actuate, Itemis and WeigleWilczek, there were eleven presentations and four short talks by members of the banking and Eclipse communities.
-
Spolsky vs Uncle Bob
The last few weeks, a public dispute has been going on between Joel Spolsky and Robert C Martin (Uncle Bob) about Test-Driven Development and about the SOLID principles of OO design. Here is a summary and review of the match.
-
Use Cases Considered Valuable (but Optional) For Lean/Agile Requirements Capture
Dean Leffingwell, author of Scaling Software Agility and Chief Product Methodologist at Rally, has concluded that Use Cases can be a valuable tool to model requirements for a large-scale Lean/Agile Project. Use cases are not commonly encountered in Lean/Agile (especially XP and Scrum), where stories are the requirements gathering tool of choice.
-
Scrum Club: Agile Philanthropy With an Edge
The first rule of Scrum Club is... At work they are product managers, CTOs, entrepreneurs, designers, and coders. At Scrum Club they are helping each other learn about agile development, by doing agile development, while benefiting non-profit organizations. It helps that they have a Fight Club inspired video. ...and if this is your first time at Scrum Club, you have to Scrum!