Software Development is a Team Sport! https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/aridle/feed.xml The intersection of agility and Visual Studio Team System... Wed, 17 Apr 2019 03:16:30 GMT en-US hourly 1 I've moved... https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/aridle/ive-moved Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:00:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/aridle/2008/04/11/ive-moved/ http://ridlehoover.com.
]]> Ade Miller's New Blog https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/aridle/ade-millers-new-blog Wed, 26 Sep 2007 19:06:07 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/aridle/2007/09/26/ade-millers-new-blog/ Our resident p&p Brit has moved his blog.  You can now find Ade Miller's thoughts here:  http://ademiller.com/blogs/tech/.

Check it out.

]]> Agile 2007: Reaching New Heights - Learning to Adapt https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/aridle/agile-2007-reaching-new-heights-learning-to-adapt Mon, 17 Sep 2007 23:32:33 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/aridle/2007/09/17/agile-2007-reaching-new-heights-learning-to-adapt/ In her opening keynote, Susan Ershler told the autobiographical story of her experiences climbing Mt. Everest.  It was an entertaining talk.  But, relating the subject matter to the Agile community was a bit of a stretch.

The primary message of Susan's talk centered around her tag line:  "Project, Prepare, Persevere."

  • Project - Envision where you want to be.
  • Prepare - Sharpen your saw, stuff your pack, and take a map.
  • Persevere - If at first you don't succeed...

Entertaining?  Yes.  Motivational?  Perhaps.  Agile?  I'm not so sure.

]]> More to come! https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/aridle/more-to-come Fri, 07 Sep 2007 20:15:12 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/aridle/2007/09/07/more-to-come/ I'm still working on my posts summarizing the Agile 2007 sessions.  But, I'm also trying to ship some updates to the TFS process templates right now.  I'll kept good notes.  So, the conference may be a faint memory, but I will get my thoughts up here.

In the meantime, check out this summary of summaries for a bunch more thoughts about the conference:  http://www.notesfromatooluser.com/2007/08/carnival-of-the.html.

Enjoy!

]]> Tuesday @ Agile 2007 https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/aridle/tuesday-agile-2007 Tue, 21 Aug 2007 17:26:43 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/aridle/2007/08/21/tuesday-agile-2007/ Tuesday saw the opening keynote by Susan Ershler, as well as the beginning of the vendor talks that I organized this year.  Here's the full list of sessions I attended:

Reaching New Heights: Learning to Adapt
by Susan Ershler

Agile Tooling: A Point, Counter-point Discussion
by Ryan Martens (Rally) and Ron Jeffries

Agile Practices in a Distributed Environment
by Michael Vax (Luxoft)

Absolute Agile: Applying the Synergy of Lean and Agile to Enterprise Transitions
by Paul Hodgetts (Agile Logic) and Justin Yaros (Kelley Blue Book)

Empowering Agile Transformation
by Amr Elssamadisy (Valtech)

Agile Adoption at Google: Potential and Challenges at a True Bottom-up Organization
by Mark Striebeck

I also had an interesting conversation with James Shore Tuesday afternoon.  More on each of these to follow.

]]> Agile 2007: The First Thing to Build - Trust on Agile Teams https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/aridle/agile-2007-the-first-thing-to-build-trust-on-agile-teams Tue, 21 Aug 2007 17:12:29 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/aridle/2007/08/21/agile-2007-the-first-thing-to-build-trust-on-agile-teams/ Diana Larsen is a special sort of nut.  She's an organizational development and communications expert, not a technologist.  Her sessions touch on many of the softer skills necessary to thrive on a team (any team, not just an Agile team). 

I've been seeking out and attending Diana's sessions since my first experience with her and her toys back at ADC 2004 when she ran a Discovery Session that explored self-organization.  (Speaking of the toys, I didn't see them this year.  Where were they, Diana?)

In this session, Diana explored the concept of trust, starting with a quote from Brad Appleton:  "The first thing to build is trust."  I took several pages of notes during the session.  But, of everything, one point stood out for me:  individuation.

Individuation is the process of getting to know someone as a person, finding out what differentiates them as an individual.  Without individuation, all you have to judge someone are the stereotypes and prejudices that you carry with you.  (And, I with me.)  In order to truly trust someone, you must get to know them personally.

It seems so simple that it's almost silly.  But, I'd never thought about it before.  And, it explains a lot about my own behavior and that of others with whom I've worked.

During the course of the session, Diana recommended several books, including:

And, one of the folks at my table highly recommended another, related book:

There was much more to the talk than I'm mentioning here.  I recommend looking through Diana's slides if you are interested in more information.  The slide on symptoms of distrust (12) is work the click alone!

]]> Agile 2007: Having Fun with Rails & Agile Development https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/aridle/agile-2007-having-fun-with-rails-agile-development Tue, 14 Aug 2007 14:46:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/aridle/2007/08/14/agile-2007-having-fun-with-rails-agile-development/ In 90 minutes, Garg, Matt and David built a working web photo sharing web site.  Garg played customer.  David played whip-cracker (um... PM), and David did all the heavy lifting with Rails.

This talk was a high level introduction to the speed and power of Rails as a development environment.  As such, I found most of the material repetitious of other demos I've seen.  But, the guys did a good job of showing off the Rails notion of "convention over configuration."  They also showed off RSpec and demonstrated the plug-in architecture.

Recommended resources (from Garg, Matt and David):

I would have liked the session to be more hands-on.  I'll have to check out the Rails lab for that level of immersion.

]]> Monday @ Agile 2007 https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/aridle/monday-agile-2007 Mon, 13 Aug 2007 13:04:28 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/aridle/2007/08/13/monday-agile-2007/ The conference is organized a bit differently this year.  The only thing going on this morning is registration.  So, I checked in and scanned the program guide for sessions I'd like to attend.  There are too many good looking talks, this year!  I hate that!  How can I ever get to see all of them.  I'm going to attend the following sessions this afternoon:

Having Fun with Rails and Agile Development
by Barg Upender, David Naffis, and Matt Scilipoti

The First Thing to Build: Trust on Agile Teams
by Diana Larsen

I'll pen reviews in between the sessions.

]]> Agile 2007 https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/aridle/agile-2007 Thu, 09 Aug 2007 21:50:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/aridle/2007/08/09/agile-2007/ Agile 2007 I will be attending Agile 2007 in Washington, D.C. next week.  In my capacity as Vendor Talks Chair, I will be moderating the vendor talks in Meeting Room 3 on both Tuesday and Thursday. 

Drop me a note if you're attending the conference.  I'd love to meet you and find out about your experiences with Agile.

]]> Update: Iterative and Incremental Development https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/aridle/update-iterative-and-incremental-development Wed, 01 Aug 2007 14:04:28 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/aridle/2007/08/01/update-iterative-and-incremental-development/ I am enjoying the copy of Visual Studio Team System: Better Software Development for Agile Teams by Will Stott and James Newkirk that I picked up the other day.  So far, it is doing a good job of both explaining Agile and how an Agile team might use VSTS.  They've even gone to the trouble of creating a VSTS process template for XP.  Of particular interest to me, though, in light of my recent post, is this bit on IID:

... software is developed in a series of cycles which each deliver some working software (iteration) that builds upon what has gone before (incremental).

Short & sweet - just like I like it!

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