InfoQ Homepage Culture & Methods Content on InfoQ
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Agile Beyond the Workplace
Many of us in this field have had our work habits affect our family life - many times for the better. Some of us use index cards in their daily life for scheduling, prioritizing, and discussing daily tasks with their families. Peter Abilla blogged about how he uses a Job Chart (a type of information radiator) to teach his children.
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Can Tools Reduce the Effort Involved in Test Driven Development?
With the presence of high quality test generation tools like Agitar One and Parasoft's JTest, some are questioning the need to write tests manually. 'Uncle' Bob Martin weighted in, exploring the weakness of the idea.
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Does TDD Really Ensure Quality?
Analysis of a recent study by the National Research Council of Canada's Institute of Technology into Test Driven Development turned up some interesting observations regarding the value that this approach adds, including whether, in fact, it adds any more value to the quality process than testing after development.
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Prefer Broad Design Skills over Platform Knowledge
In his latest article Martin Fowler suggests that what matters most while building a team is not experience or thorough knowledge of the specific platform and business domain, but rather some broader skills that allow building quality software and delivering value.
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InfoQ Interview: Dave Thomas on the Joys of Life-long Learning
Guest interviewer Jim Coplien chatted with "Pragmatic" Dave Thomas at QconLondon 2007, covering everything from 'agile' publishing and academia to staying limber with code katas. Dave's career advice: Cultivate the passion of a 5-year old!
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Iterating and Incrementing to 'Get What You Need'
In "Don't know what I want, but I know how to get it", Jeff Patton described a few ways in which Agile teams and business users miscommunicate, and argued that the agile community needs to be clear about the terms 'iterating', 'incrementing' and 'shippable'.
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SQL Server Best Practices Analyzer to be Integrated into SQL Server 2008
Microsoft is looking to change how SQL Server is managed by incorporating the SQL Server Best Practices Analyzer into the core of SQL Server 2008. This new feature, known as the Declarative Management Framework, allows for proactive enforcement of database policies.
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Mark Mahieu Creates CICE Closure Prototype
One of the hottest topics in Java in recent years has been around adding full closure support to the Java language. Given the complexity that closures could introduce however, it is difficult to judge their full impact without being able to experiment with prototypes for the various proposals.
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Is Velocity Really the Golden Measurement?
What value do teams get from measuring velocity, beyond the ability to reasonably estimate commitments for the short-term future? J.B. Rainsberger proposes that teams spend less energy scrutinizing velocity and more energy thoughtfully identifying and eliminating areas of waste in their projects.
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Target Process 2.7: Agile Project Management tool for Distributed Teams
Target Process 2.7 has been released. Target Process is an Agile Process Management tool that automates many of the tasks associated with an agile project. Notable features in recent iterations include visual iteration planning, program level release planning, individual velocity reports, and more.
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Mike Cohn Provides New Patterns of Agile Adoption
Agile Alliance founding member, consultant, and book author Mike Cohn recently distilled his experiences helping teams adopt Agile into three core pairs of patterns that can be used by teams when launching an agile transition.
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Sun purchases MySQL: Perspectives and Analysis on the Impact
In a move which caught many off guard, Sun Microsystems announced that it would be acquiring MySQL AB, the company which owns and develops the MySQL database, for $1 Billion USD. InfoQ analyzed the announcement and reactions and spoke with Kevin Harvey, Chairman of the MySQL board of directors, to learn more about this deal and what it may mean for the future.
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Mythical Agile Shortcuts
Going agile seems a pretty trivial task. We pair up, write unit tests, integrate regularly and support our teams with an easy to manage framework such as Scrum. In reality, however, this is not the case. All too often the benefits are not achieved and team does not function as expected. Ross Petit's recent article sheds some light on why things go wrong when the rubber hits the road.
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QCon London March 12-14 Update: Kent Beck, Martin Fowler, Google, Amazon, Yahoo!
QCon's second annual conference in London, UK is taking place in just 8 weeks, March 12-14. In the last month, a number of important additions have been made to the conf: XP founder Kent Beck, author Martin Fowler, sessions from Google, Yahoo!, Amazon, Salesforce.com, MySpace.com, eBay, Merrill, Betfair, Credit Suisse, and others. Gang of Four Patterns author Erich Gamma is also presenting.
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Oracle to Acquire BEA Systems
Oracle and BEA reach an agreement wherein Oracle buys BEA's outstanding shares for ~$19. How will they resolve their product-line redundancies? Reactions are interesting and varied, and the spectre of insider trading has already been reaised.