Showing posts with label Agile. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Agile. Show all posts

Reading Notes #297

Jekyll_AppService

Suggestion of the week

  • How to uninstall Scrum (Erwin Verweij) - When you will read that post (because you must read it... Seriously), you will smile, giggle and maybe even laugh.


Cloud


Programming


Miscellaneous





Reading Notes #236


WhyAzureCLISuggestion of the week


Cloud


Programming


Miscellaneous

  • Happiness is DevOps’ Cornerstone (Alexandre Brisebois) - Interesting post that asks a lot of questions... I would like to see some graph or pie chart about our answers.
  • 5 Habits that Help Code Quality (View all posts by Erik Dietrich) - Yet another post about how to code better, but this one is refreshing. It explains why the opposite would be harmful and also give us a training plan for better chance of success.
  • What’s in your highlights folder? (Marc Gagne) - Because life is not only mistakes and bad luck.Here good tips to help you giving some sunshine into your life when needed.

Reading Notes #207

msdnmagSuggestion of the week

  • A Beginner’s Mind - A very inspiring article, especially for the younger, but also for the more experienced, that want to keep their interior flame.

Cloud


Databases


Programming


Miscellaneous



Reading Notes #197

P1010915Suggestion of the week

Cloud

Programming

Podcast

Miscellaneous


Reading Notes #186

published by Gartner
I finally watch most of the recorded sessions from Build, Ignite and MVPvConf, and I had more time to read.

Suggestion of the week

  • Learning to git bisect (Rural) - Very, very interesting walkthrough, I never knew Git got that kind of feature.

Cloud

Microsoft is currently the only vendor to be positioned as a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrants for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service , Application Platform as a Service , Cloud Storage Services and Server Virtualization

Programming


Miscellaneous


~Frank

Note about the image of this week: This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request here.

Reading Notes #182

post-it_AzureBootcamp2015Suggestion of the week


Cloud

released the DocumentDB Data Migration tool, an open source solution that imports data from a variety of sources, including JSON files, CSV files, SQL Server, MongoDB and existing DocumentDB collections.

Programming


Miscellaneous


~Frank B.


Reading Notes #162

CloudBusSuggestion of the week


Cloud


Programming


Miscellaneous


~Frank Boucher


Reading Notes #156

IMG_20140927_092417Suggestion of the week


Cloud


Programming


Miscellaneous


~Frank

Reading Notes #142

keyboardSuggestion of the week


Programming


Mobile

  • Xamarin.Forms - Write Once, Run Everywhere, AND Be Native? (Scott Hanselman) - Very interesting post that proved how amazing Xamarin is becoming.

Miscellaneous




Reading Notes #141

Image from hubspot.comSuggestion of the week

  • Moving to Microsoft Azure (Filip Ekberg) - Another story about a blog migration on Azure. It's always interesting to learn what kind of trouble the people got while doing that.

Cloud


Programming


Mobile


Miscellaneous




Reading Notes #139

Suggestion of the week


Cloud


Programming


Mobile


Miscellaneous


~Frank


As strong as a team

cloudteamEverybody knows that we are stronger together. At work, we are grouped in small teams to accomplish more and... but wait, are we really working as one big strong force or are we working in a group but focusing on our own personal achievements? Let me share with you how as a team, we achieved what we thought was impossible.

The Context

The project was an application integrating different parts of the client's environment. A lot of technology was involved and of course, the schedule planned for it was really tight. We were a small team with different levels of experience.

The fall

As a team, we thought that splitting the job was the best option. Every member took a piece of the puzzle and started working on his side.
The juniors got themselves overwhelmed in complex patterns and best practices. They forgot the client's needs and tried to stubbornly use new technologies. The more experienced were pushed in this swirl of queries and technological challenges, lost their landmark, their concentration and the big picture.
The solution we were building was looking like an ugly patchwork that was not even functional. Continuing this way was a guarantee of failure.

The recovery

Of course, I wouldn't be writing this post if we did continue, instead we met and looked at what we could do better. Hopefully, for us, most of what we did was not a loss. If we re-focused, with a bit of a ramp-up and some extra hours put in, everything was still possible.
We did some lunch-and-learn to share the knowledge. We wrote templates to get all on the same base when we were starting new sections. We also produced short documents that explained how to get started with the concepts and technologies present in the project. The goal was to keep it short and simple so it will be readable at a glimpse.
However, all this would have been lost without code-review for everyone. Often code-reviews are perceived negatively. A review is the chance to improve not only "your" code but to standardize variable names, namespace structures, code patterns and to get to know the functions/ tools available.
Another valuable thing was our daily scrum meetings. That way, as soon as one team member had issues the best resources could jump-in to resolve the problems, or share his previous experience on how to solve this kind of complication.
With all these efforts we not only did we deliver a great solution, but we built something better: a team. Not only that people worked with each other, yet they were team-members that worked in synergy and that, is a great accomplishment.

The Lesson

I discovered something that I already know! A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. It sounds so simple but is it not always like that with the truth? Feel free to share what you did to improve your teamwork in the comment section.


~Frank

References

  • www.scrum.org

Reading Notes #111

Cloud


Programming


Database


Miscellaneous


~Frank




Reading Notes #109

 

WP_20130928_004Suggestion of the week


Cloud


Programming


Database

Miscellaneous


~Frank


Reading Notes #101

stormSuggestion of the week


Cloud

 

Integration


Programming

 

Database

 

Miscellaneous

  • Is Agile Really Cheaper? (Scott Sehlhorst) - I like this post because it puts words on though that I had. A good post to be more prepare next time a client asks you the question.

~Frank




Reading Notes #100

Rainbow-in-the-CloudsI’m back! The blog is not dead. I was just super busy. First, I went to the Microsoft Build and it was very nice. Then I moved! I have now a gigantic stack of books and articles to read… so more to come.

This week marks an important milestone, the 100th Reading Notes! I want to thank you all my readers / followers to have been supporting me all along. Let’s go for under more!

Happy reading!


 Suggestion of the week



  • Don’t Write Code You Don’t Need (Erik Dietrich) - Very interesting post that gives some best practices to write better code.

  • Cloud



  • Failure is not an option for Netflix's service oriented architecture (Joe McKendrick) - Good proof that working with failure is not a synonym of fail.
  • Is there more to using SQL in Azure than redirecting your connection string? - Nice post that explains why we need to think differently when doing cloud.
  • Quick Recap of cloud announcements at BUILD and WPC 2013 - (Luis Panzano) - Nice! A two-week summary in one post!
  • Autoscaling Windows Azure Cloud Services (and web sites) (Maarten Balliauw) - One of the announcements that impressed me the most at build conference. Don't miss the chance to learn more about the new autoscaling feature of Azure.

  • Programming



  • Stop Doing Internet Wrong (Scott Hanselman) - Interesting list of some simple things to do to get a better experience online.
  • Cross-Platform Portable Class Libraries with .NET are Happening (Scott Hanselman) - Great post to get started about Portable Class Librairy (PCL) how are very useful to write app that run on many platforms.
  • Try Visual Studio 2013 Preview – There’s an Azure gallery image for that!(Tyler Doerksen) - Resistance is futile. It is so easy to try that you won't be able to resist. And if you don't know what's new in VS2013 check Scott Hanselman Build conference.
  • What is claims-based authentication? (Gunnar Peipman) - Nice post that gives a nice introduction to claims. It looks like the first of a series about this topic.
  • ASP.NET N-Layered Applications - Introduction (Part 1) - Very promising series where the author describes all steps of is application. For the architecture to the unit tests.

  • Miscellaneous



  • Why So Many Leadership Programs Ultimately Fail (Peter Bregman)- Interesting story, that proof once again that the best wait to learn something is to hump in and do it.
  • Is Agile Really Cheaper? (Scott Sehlhorst) - I like this post because it puts words on though that I had. A good post to be more prepared next time a client asks you the question.
  •  
    ~Frank


    Reading Notes #95

    Cloud_hammorkSuggestion of the week

    Reading Notes #94

    cloud_sheepSuggestion of the week

    Cloud

    Programming

    Databases

    Integration

    Miscellaneous

    ~Frank


    Reading Notes #79

    Suggestion of the week


    Summary_Notes78Cloud

    Database

    Practice

    Integration

    Programming

    Miscellaneous

    ~Frank


      Reading Notes #78

      Cloudy_Mug2Suggestion of the week

      Cloud

       

      Integration

      Database

      Programming

      Miscellaneous


      ~Frank