InfoQ Homepage Culture & Methods Content on InfoQ
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How Closely Should We Measure Productivity?
A goal of agile methodologies is to improve the productivity of software developers. Unfortunately, productivity can be difficult to measure. In a recent blog posting, Lidor Wyssocky argues against focusing too closely on quantifiable metrics, encouraging us instead to look at "soft evidence" for productivity gains.
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Martin Fowler, Dave Thomas, Werner Vogels to speak at QCon London
Since our last announcement, the QCon conference, InfoQ and JAOO's new annual joint conference in London (March 12-16), has been making a lot of progress. The tracks have been defined, more speakers have committed to joining, and it's looking like QCon could become an important world-wide annual event.
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Network Computing Reader Poll: Drop the Buzzwords, Deliver the Goods
Over 700 IT managers responded to the 2007 Network Computing Readers' Survey, many of whom reported frustration with the internal strife and snake-oil salesmanship of technology vendors. Respondents recommended that vendors stop "promising capabilities that aren't there", and "address actual business problems, rather than chasing buzzwords."
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Noted Professor Decries "Macro Management"
Dr. Henry Mintzberg, an outspoken and controversial scholar in business school circles, recently decried the "heroic leadership" stereotype which undermines organizations, propagated by the press and by MBA programs that stress leadership at the expense of practical management skills. He sees a need for more "distributed leadership," whose effectiveness lies in a community itself.
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MS VSTS for Database Pros Set to Enhance DBA Agility
Scott Ambler has been writing about "Agile Database" practices since 2002, but the array of supporting tools has been rather skimpy. Now, integrated "Agile DBA" tools are starting to appear. Case in point: Microsoft's Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) for Database Professionals, set for release at the end of this month, which supports TDD practices against the database.
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Scrum in Five Minutes - Executive Summary
In his latest blog entry, Jeff Sutherland introduces an exceptionally concise overview of the Scrum development process, which may be useful for communicating with management, courtesy of Swedish consulting firm Softhouse.
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Experience Report: Beginners and Experts Using Open Space
As Agile conferences receiving an influx of novice teams and managers, some suggest that new tracks or conferences should be organized for these beginners. InfoQ brings you this experience report from a recent Open Space event, suggesting that mixing up expertise levels creates a valuable conference experience for all.
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Responding to Urgent Requests
In his article "How Two Hours Can Waste Two Weeks," Dmitri Zimine describes the costs associated with changing development priorities after the beginning of an iteration. Joel Spolsky took issue with Dmitri's comments, which in turn were defended and elaborated on by Mishkin Berteig.
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Architecture a Key Factor in Scaling Agile
Scott Ambler's recent article "Scaling Agile Development Via Architecture" summarizes strategies for Agile teams regarding software architecture, and argues that an effective approach to architecture is an important key to successfully scaling Agile software development.
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Announcing QCon: New conference in London, UK, March 12-16, by InfoQ and JAOO
A new enterprise software development conference is starting this year in London, UK, March 12-16th 2007. QCon, the InfoQ and JAOO conference, aims to become an annual event providing a venue for learning, networking, and tracking innovation in the Java, .NET, Ruby, SOA, and Agile communities with additional tracks on architecture & design, Ajax, IT in Finance, and more.
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Article: SimpleTicket Railway Story
In this first installment of the Railway Stories series, we cover SimpleTicket, a newly open-sourced Rails app that provides insight into the progress and innovation enjoyed by Ruby on Rails advocates, and paints a vivid picture of a dynamic, modern startup.
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Jeff Sutherland Recommends Combining Scrum with CMMI Level 5
A paper proposed for the EUROPEAN SEPG 2007 conference, "Scrum and CMMI Level 5: The Magic Potion for Code Warriors," has triggered discussion in Scrum circles. One of its authors is Scrum co-creator Jeff Sutherland, whose blog addressed a common question: since Scrum can already bring an organization's process up to CMMI level 3, is it worth the time & effort to achieve CMMI level 5?
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Drawing Analogies Between Publishing and Agile Development
In a recent blog posting titled "Moving from Software Production to Software Publishing," Gojko Adzic describes how he and his staff applied agile software development techniques to improve the production process at Mikro, the Serbian edition of PC World magazine. He then describes some ways in which the magazine publishing model can be applied to software development.
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Interview: David H. Hansson on the Future of Rails
I had the pleasure of asking my friend David some hard-hitting questions about the future of Rails in the enterprise, profiting from his success and whether a vendor will fork Rails someday. He was very confident and relaxed, so there are tons of entertaining and priceless comments on Rails adoption, service-oriented architecture and scaling Rails applications...
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Current Status of Java Static Analysis Tools
Static analysis tools help developers locate potential problems in their code. Static analysis is an inspection of code without executing it, looking for problems as varied as misunderstood APIs to use of the wrong boolean operators. This post summarizes the six of the leading tools and discusses the current trends in static analysis tools.