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Rediscovering the Obvious

An occasional journey through one man's perspectives as he fumbles along in the footsteps of many great men.

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Today, I played designer
It was rather nice. For a few minutes earlier today, I was able to experience the designer's perspective of Blend. We had a bug filed on one of our common controls' visual appearance, and a designer and a developer were pairing on cleaning it up. They Read More...

Posted Tuesday, September 30, 2008 11:33 AM by willeke | 0 Comments

More thoughts on overtime
Every few months something triggers a series of thoughts in my head about overtime practices, behaviours, and incentives. Every time I think about it, my thoughts come back to a question of the relative incentives in the way our software development system. Read More...

Posted Wednesday, September 24, 2008 12:22 PM by willeke | 0 Comments

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Mr. Sowell goes to software.
There is no need to attempt to determine the net effect of cities on costs in general. First of all, there is no such thing as costs in general. There are particular costs that matter differently to particular individuals and enterprises, and those individuals Read More...

Posted Friday, August 22, 2008 11:56 AM by willeke | 0 Comments

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Back from Agile2008!
Wow, so much I probably should talk about, but I don't even know where to start. Massive amounts of networking, information, realization, and even contribution going on, and I can't unravel it at all right now. I think there's a lot of potential for transforming Read More...

Posted Tuesday, August 12, 2008 12:11 PM by willeke | 0 Comments

30 days later
Wow - it's been over thirty days since my last post. What's changed since then? First, we've put http://inkubook.com into production. I'm very proud of the work I've done and that my team has done on this one. We killed ourselves getting it done, but Read More...

Posted Friday, July 25, 2008 9:39 AM by willeke | 1 Comments

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And a subtle shift scrumward
Our team has decided to take a step back towards scrum and away from our previous semi-Kanban approach. I think that it's a good plan at this time, although I also suspect that many of the benefits of our earlier approach will continue to show through. Read More...

Posted Friday, June 20, 2008 1:37 PM by willeke | 0 Comments

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Thoughts on Batch Size
The concepts surrounding batch size have been floating around my head again in recent days. My current assignment is a rather large batch of work with Silverlight 2.0, but it's one that I've been able to subdivide into a number of small batches that rapidly Read More...

Posted Tuesday, June 03, 2008 5:29 PM by willeke | 0 Comments

The first time
Thursday, after the main IndyNDA event, I performed my first public presentation. I've presented to teams, classrooms, and my company before, but this is the first time I've had the opportunity to present to an uncontrolled group of my professional peers. Read More...

Posted Saturday, April 12, 2008 2:15 PM by willeke | 0 Comments


Attachment(s): Rich Branch Management.ppt

Sanity check: is your process doing what it needs to?
I rarely repost, but this single, fairly short article seems to hit many of the high points in a very condensed format. If I were in a southern church hearing this read i would expect a constant stream of "Amen" echoing around me. Read it. Think about Read More...

Posted Wednesday, February 27, 2008 11:32 AM by willeke | 0 Comments

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Test Driven Book Reading
http://blogs.msdn.com/jmeier/archive/2008/02/19/5-keys-to-improving-your-reading-speed.aspx I like it - I use a lot of these techniques when I'm reading technical books for specifics... less so when I'm looking for an overall introduction to a new technology, Read More...

Posted Tuesday, February 19, 2008 7:31 AM by willeke | 0 Comments

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Kanban: Critical realization
Read this today, and it's something that I've known for a long time, but have never really articulated. Kanban smooths out the aggregate, but the individual work request may still vary widely. -- Corey Ladas, here . The entire thread (2 posts currently) Read More...

Posted Thursday, January 31, 2008 8:22 AM by willeke | 0 Comments

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Agile vs. lean - My fourteen cents
(Metaphor: groups of explorers seeking a fabled place) Agile and Lean are indeed different. They are two different paths taken by different groups in an effort to arrive at the same place. We do not yet know what that place is, nor what it will look like Read More...

Posted Wednesday, January 16, 2008 11:34 AM by willeke | 0 Comments

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In my inbox...
Subject: "Today's scrums will be held in front of the kanban board." Yes, it was followed with: " That’s the one with all of the post-its. " But, this is a huge step towards better flow, which has been an issue for months. Read More...

Posted Wednesday, January 16, 2008 7:45 AM by willeke | 0 Comments

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TFS Sql script - list policy overrides
I don't like to call out individual blame, but sometimes a bit o' shame is what it takes... this query, when run against the (2008 version) version control database in TFS will give you a nice summary and detail pair that can be dropped into excel, or Read More...

Posted Friday, December 07, 2007 9:40 AM by willeke | 0 Comments

Go me (again!)
Well, Bernardo got a new job, I got a new role. I've been officially promoted to Software Architect here at Authorhouse, effective immediately. This role change led me to think more about what the role of architect really means, and I've come to really Read More...

Posted Tuesday, November 13, 2007 6:30 AM by willeke | 0 Comments

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Policy Override Queries
Run them directly against the TfsVersionControl database, I don't see this data in the cube anywhere. Don't forget in SSMS you can copy from the output grid directly into excel with no problems. ' Summary : select id.DisplayName as Account, COUNT( id.DisplayName Read More...

Posted Wednesday, September 19, 2007 12:41 PM by willeke | 0 Comments

First Sprint Wrap-up meeting
Had my first ever sprint wrap-up meeting. I knew it wouldn't be too bad, but I've been wanting to get some sort of recycle on project phases for a couple different positions now, and was glad to see how one was run, especially since I'm in the middle Read More...

Posted Tuesday, September 18, 2007 2:04 PM by willeke | 0 Comments

Thanks SEP!
SEP , my previous employer, has graciously released their Code Review Support Tool to the community under the New BSD license. It's currently up at CodePlex and is a fully functioning (version 3-5!) release. Matt and I are currently gathering ideas about Read More...

Posted Friday, September 07, 2007 8:41 AM by willeke | 0 Comments

On the nature of strawmen...
It's much easier to tell somebody why they're wrong than it is to tell them how to do it right. Thus, build something quick and dirty (even as a thought exercise), and THEN figure out what's "right". Prototypes. Agile. RAD. Models. Alphas. Betas. Every Read More...

Posted Friday, August 31, 2007 1:37 PM by willeke | 7 Comments

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Back to Vault
I'm back to Vault (and DevTrack) at my new job... it's not so bad, even though I do love the many integration possibilities that Team Foundation offers between the different components. That said, since I've had a lot of experience with Vault in the past, Read More...

Posted Friday, August 17, 2007 9:02 AM by willeke | 0 Comments

In @ 8:30, Scrum by 9
It was very nice this morning to have a daily stand-up be the first thing of my first day at the office. It gave me a great feel for what the various team members were up to and how they were going about the project, and this was before I even really Read More...

Posted Wednesday, August 15, 2007 3:47 PM by willeke | 2 Comments

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Software development IS product development
Great analysis by Corey at http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/LeanSoftwareEngineering/~3/142106190/ This part especially hits home with how I feel about things I've seen (emphasis mine): "Software methodology’s understanding of the meaning of quality, reliability, Read More...

Posted Thursday, August 09, 2007 9:20 AM by willeke | 0 Comments

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Too soon! Too soon!
http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2007/08/06/work-item-tracking-enhancements-in-the-aug-rosario-ctp.aspx This is pure torture... TFS 2008's still only in beta 2, and he's already tormenting me with the things that the NEXT version will have, but I Read More...

Posted Monday, August 06, 2007 9:37 AM by willeke | 0 Comments

Must-Read post
I've been bickering with one of my peers about testability vs. simplicity and extensibility vs. sufficiency, and this article came back to mind. Anybody who hasn't read it, should. Anybody who has read it should read it again. Where were you before? Where Read More...

Posted Thursday, August 02, 2007 8:50 AM by willeke | 0 Comments

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On the nature of specs...
The last of a very good series of posts at http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/2-speed/~3/117149909/ inspired me a little bit in how metrics and data in general should be presented. Consider the two Churchill quotes he presents, only substitute the word "specification" Read More...

Posted Wednesday, May 16, 2007 9:50 AM by willeke | 0 Comments

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