XP Day Switzerland, French Speaking Edition, March 30 2009, Geneva, Switzerland

Published February 26th, 2009 Under Conferences | Leave a Comment

Methods & Tools is a proud media sponsor of the XP Day Switzerland, French Speaking Edition. This conference proposes an international vision of Agile approaches. During one day, twelve presentations will cover topics that interest both managers and developers. The variety of the content will allow beginners and experts to get the most out of the conference. in addition, you will get the extraordinary chance to get directly the wisdom from Pascal Van Cauwenberghe, one of Methods & Tools author and a very good conference presenter.

http://www.xpday.ch/

Thinking Tools for Scaling Lean and Agile

Published February 25th, 2009 Under Books | Leave a Comment

This book from Craig Larman and Bas Vodde is a classic example of the fact that it is better to teach somebody to fish than to give him fish. It emphasizes that it is important to “be agile” more than to “do agile”. Approaches like Scrum or Lean are more frameworks to think about continuous improvement than tools that should be applied blindly like cooking recipes. The book will therefore tell you that “large-scale Scrum is Scrum” or that lean is not just kanban or waste reduction. The first part of the book is focused on thinking tools (systems thinking, lean thinking, queueing theory) that are presented with software project management related examples. Those who are looking for practical advice should not believe that the book remains only at the conceptual level. The authors distill many “try…” and “avoid…” recommendations that will help you implement agile and lean ideas in your organization. The second part of the book is devoted to organizational tools and the final chapter proposes frameworks to adapt Scrum to larger contexts.

This book is a must for those who believe that software development project management goes beyond the simple application of “silver bullet” recipes. It is a rich source of both thinking and practical content that is well suited for non-linear reading. A very good “Scrum primer” chapter at the end of the book will provide an introduction for those who are not familiar with this approach and a large number of “recommended readings” items will allow readers to explore more in details each concept.

Get more details on this book or buy it on amazon.com

Get more details on this book or buy it on amazon.co.uk

New Videos and Tutorials Directory for Java Developers

Published February 24th, 2009 Under Methods & Tools, News, Videos | Leave a Comment

Java-TV.com is a directory of videos, interviews and tutorials focused on software development activities with the Java programming language.

Linkopedia February 2009

Published February 17th, 2009 Under Links, Software Development | Leave a Comment

DevCreek is a community dedicated to improving software quality through the collection, analysis and sharing of project metrics.

DomainDrivenDesign.org is a open forum to share ideas and interact with other people interested in domain-driven design.

Apache Cayenne is an open source persistence framework providing object-relational mapping (ORM) and remoting services

Speed up your Web pages. Learn how you can make the browsing experience better for dial-up users by reducing loading times by as much as 80 percent, in some cases.

JavaScript Test Driven Development with JsUnit and JSMock. This article is a crash course in writing maintainable JavaScript.

The Role of Leadership in Software Development. In this video, Mary Poppendieck discusses of leadership roles in software development — what works, what doesn’t and why.

Practicing Testability in the Real World. This video presents a testability checklist that will ensure that core testability principles are considered while testing a particular feature.

Learning JavaFX. Robert Eckstein teaches you the fundamentals of the new JavaFX programming language, all in fifteen minutes or less!

Find more interesting links on the software development links directory, the software development tools directory, the software development articles directory or the software development videos directory

IBM Rational and WebSphere Strategies

Published February 11th, 2009 Under News, Software Development | Leave a Comment

I attended last week a conference in Geneva where IBM was presenting the strategy for its Rational and WebSphere software development solutions. If you consider IBM as a hardware company, you should realize that today services is the most important revenue sector and software is the most important source of income. Currently, IBM focus is on aligning IT (and software development) with business goals and this objective impact also the strategy of its software development solutions.

For WebSphere, the most important point is the recent acquisition of Ilog by IBM. Ilog has a strong solution for business rules management and the goal of IBM is to push this product to its existing customers and improve the positioning of WebSphere in Business Process Management. As both companies were already partners, there are no specific product integration issues. On the other end of the market, IBM is fighting RedHat’s JBoss with the free WebSphere Application Server Community Edition, pledging to offer competitive support prices for organizations that need it. There was also a presentation of the sMash, a product that allows to create rapidly dynamic web applications using PHP and Groovy running on an optimized java virtual machine. This is the commercial result of the work done at projectzero.org.

On the Rational side, the intention is to provide a native implementation in the new Jazz platform of products like ClearQuest and BuildForge. The next version of the Team Concert product will be improved in terms of enterprise reporting and global project management. The product is still developed using the open commercial concept, where the software is proprietary but the development process is open for customers’ input. As far as Telelogic products are concerned, they will keep their independence and industrial software focus, but they should also get more integrated on the Jazz platform in the longer term. Rational is also introducing a new consulting concept: Measured Capability Improvement Framework (MCIF). The goal of this approach is to check how software development practices are aligned on business objectives.

With the current economic conditions, it could not be easy to sell software development solutions that require large budgets and important modifications of current practices. IBM addresses this challenge by proposing a modular approach that allows a gradual transfer to its Jazz platform and the use of open source solutions in the overall software development toolbox.

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