InfoQ Homepage Stories & Case Studies Content on InfoQ
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InfoQ Video: Architecting Toronto.com with .NET Casestudy
Toronto.Com attracts over 700,000 unique visitors per month, and offers comprehensive and searchable access to business and event listings. Originally built in 1997, the previous J2EE foundation for the site was found hard to evolve in the face of new requirements. In this presentation, Scott talks about how the site was re-architected to .NET 2.0.
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Agile at Microsoft: Developing XML Notepad
InfoQ had the opportunity to interview Chris Lovett of Microsoft's XML team regarding XML Notepad and its development process. XMLNotepad is a free XML editor written in C# with features like a search tool that supports RegEx and XPath, an XSLT transformation results view, and a schema validator. The interview is about software development processes used to build the product.
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Experience Report: Unique Work-Study Agile Development Apprenticeship at NMHU
In 2004 a new work-study degree program launched at NMHU, using Agile practices to execute commercial projects. The premise: create a balance of people, software, systems, craft and agility to produce development teams 10 times as productive as their traditional counterparts. InfoQ brings you the story of a unique educational experiment: a challenge to think differently about training developers.
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Study: Co-Located Teams vs. the Cubicle Farm
Many trainers agree that co-location is essential to really see the benefits of Agile, but proof of this has been largely anecdotal. On the ScrumDevelopment list recently, an interesting conversation was launched when a member pointed out a study conducted at a Fortune 50 auto maker, comparing productivity gains in collaborative workspaces versus traditional cubicle culture projects.
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Experience Report: Running FIT and Fitnesse with Ruby
Ron Jeffries and Chet Hendrickson, well known contributors to the Extreme Programming community, regularly meet in bookstores and cafes to pair program, then Ron blogs about what they've learned. Yesterday Ron wrote a detailed blow-by-blow of their experience installing and configuring Ruby/Fit, then Fitnesse on top of it. For agile practitioners, this is essential "Iteration 0" work.
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BEA Publishes SOA Practitioner's Guide
BEA has self-published a set of guides that are designed to help develop a reference architecture for SOA and a guide to services lifecycle. These guides also contain input from BEA customers on successful SOA adoption.
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Practitioners Adapt Agile to Local Constraints
Some people think they can only be Agile with small, co-located teams and full management support, but most teams aren't that lucky. So, should they should give up on Agile techniques? Scott Ambler's answer is a resounding "No!" His Dr. Dobbs article "Imperfectly Agile: You Too Can Be Agile!" outlines how Agilists overcome common challenges that others use as excuses for not being Agile.
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An Interview with Hal Fulton, Author of "The Ruby Way"
Pat Eyler interviews Hal Fulton, Ruby veteran and author of "The Ruby Way".
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Opinion: Code Coverage Stats Misleading
John Casey recently spent some time refactoring Maven's assembly plugin, using coverage reporting to mark his progress and make sure he didn't break anything as he went. It didn't exactly go as planned - but at very least it was a learning experience. His conclusion: when you're seeking confidence through testing, perhaps the worst thing you can do is to look at a test coverage report.
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Book Excerpt: Agile Retrospectives
InfoQ brings you an exclusive chapter excerpt from the recent book "Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great", by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen. These expert facilitators show how teams can run focused, helpful retrospectives themselves, without an outside facilitator. We asked the authors a few questions about the making of their book.
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Tech Stories Need to Include People and Technology
Brian Marick, reflecting on conversations heard at Agile2006, blogged about his concern that some of us are telling stories from the purely human or social viewpoint, while other are telling technology-only stories, noting that that XP isn't a story you can tell well without talking about both of these. Marick encourages us to include both when we communicate in and about projects.
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IBM Buys Insurance Focused Webify
Big Blue snaps up Insurance focused SOA vendor Webify. Both IBM and Webify were at the center of a significant SOA outsourcing project with Fireman's Fund Insurance. Terms were not disclosed.
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Microsoft Counting On Scrum and XP
When Microsoft launched SQL Server 2005 last fall, ending a five-year wait for major revisions, Steve Ballmer acknowledged "It's been a bit long in the making, we're committed to a much closer cycle time."eWeek reports that they will do this using agile development methodologies, such as XP and Scrum. Yet they won't mandate methodology, stressing product quality instead to encourage improvement
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Agile2006 Day One Podcasts
The Agile2006 Conference got a kick-start from industry veteran Peter Coffee, who challenged a standing-room crowd to reject the idea that broken software is normal, and to "shun mediocre attainments" . Bob Payne has been recording interviews and sessions at the conference, including the entire keynote.
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Agile Delivery at British Telecom
Methods and Tools has a 3-part article by Ian Evans of British Telecom outlining the challenges of software development at BT and the approach they took to switch to an Agile approach. Going from a well-established waterfall-based delivery approach to Agile takes patience and time, as well as a lot of commitment. But despite the challenges, few at BT would go back to their old ways.