Mark Shead – Page 5 – Technical Agile Coach and Trainer

Prioritizing Features

In building software, the actual coding is rarely the hardest part. Often deciding what features to build is very difficult. There is a huge wasteland full of code that never got to the point where it was actually usable before people gave up on creating it. Getting your code to the point where it is being used by real users clears a significant hurdle and gives you a much greater chance of success.

Arranging the order of your features so you can quickly get to a usable state with the smallest set of useful capabilities without building anything unnecessary may sound simple. It isn’t.

Continue reading “Prioritizing Features”

December 9, 2012September 11, 2017

Infinitest

Infinitest lets you automatically run tests in the background in your IDE. Whenever you change something the tests get run automatically.

December 9, 2012September 11, 2017

Radio Shack Catalog

A look at this Radio Shack Catalog from 1983 is a good reminder of how far computers have come.

December 4, 2012September 11, 2017

Bringing Back Manufacturing – Agile Style

GE is bringing some manufacturing jobs back to the US and finding significant cost savings. Basically they are applying Agile processes to creating water heaters.

The GeoSpring suffered from an advanced-technology version of “IKEA Syndrome.” It was so hard to assemble that no one in the big room wanted to make it. Instead they redesigned it. The team eliminated 1 out of every 5 parts. It cut the cost of the materials by 25 percent. It eliminated the tangle of tubing that couldn’t be easily welded. By considering the workers who would have to put the water heater together—in fact, by having those workers right at the table, looking at the design as it was drawn—the team cut the work hours necessary to assemble the water heater from 10 hours in China to two hours in Louisville. (full article)

Chef Solo Demo Video

Chef is a tool that lets you manage your server infrastructure in a way that is similar to the way you manage your code using version control. You can even test your chef configuration using tools like Cucumber. In 6.5 minute demo, I’ll show you how to use chef solo (chef without a central server) to install and manage Tomcat 7 and Java 7 on an EC2 instance. The configuration files are stored in GitHub so you can look at them or clone them for your own use. Continue reading “Chef Solo Demo Video”