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June 26, 2007
SCRUM - possible to solo?
I've been doing a lot of reading lately regarding development - practices, frameworks, patterns, testing.
It's about time I properly formalised the whole thing; not having had the 'luck' to attend a programming course of any ilk, I've had to go it alone, and mostly down blind alleys.
One thing that has always plagued me is the lack of a formal development methodology. I do use source control and I analyse, plan, prepare and document - its when I get into the nitty-gritty that things tend to go a little haywire.
I've decided that for the upcoming development work I'll be doing (on my own...sniff) I'll try and implement a SCRUM methodology.
Part of this will include working out how to keep the methodology applied. The sprint planning etc. is already in place, mostly, but the daily and milestone SCRUMs could be an issue. I reckon a checklist can be useful to force myself to be objective about what has to be done, what has been done and where the problems lie.
Wrap it all up into some journaling tool and it could be a goer.
It'll be an interesting exercise if nothing else.
Now to Google and see if anyone else has managed it...
Posted by dottie at 1:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 22, 2007
Keep your mouth shut and your eyes open
Sterling advice from my Grandfather - I miss him.
Everything I read tonight seems to speak to me - maybe it's the wine, maybe its the fact that my life is beginning to move after years in a rut.
Jeff Atwood talks about the singular hell of being a singular programmer.
One unfortunate aspect of my professional career is the lack of peers. It has lead me down blind alleys, forced me to work with destructive people, caused me no end of issues - still, I've done alright. If I had to do it over, I wouldn't change much, just the initial conditions - if I could be less naive....
Anyway, the road is forking, I have decisions to make and I need my sleep. Godnight today and good morning tomorrow.
Posted by dottie at 1:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
How little we know
I especially like this
And a curriculum of study can only develop when a field hits a good mix between navel gazing and stubborn obliviousness. Questioning is good; questioning is necessary. But there have to be times when you fold your arms and say, “Because, that’s all. Just because.” ( I teach cataloguing, and I’ve grown used to saying that. ) The fear of being shallow could prevent IAs from reaching a working consensus on what constitutes an adequate skill set.
Just substitute any web oriented knowledge, or anything about your life
What some people would call shallow, I would call a fear of being shallow, which translates into a frenetic inability to calm down.
Sobering stuff.
Information architecture at its best is not about the cool, the newest, or the latest. Information architecture is about the breath, the pause, the stillness in the eye of the information hurricane. I’ve experienced that stillness in many places. I feel it when I play Bach, and sense those incredible structures that stand like cathedral arches within the myriad notes that I’m trying to play. I feel it when I’m programming, and I sense the logic of the program I’m struggling to create emerge out of all my false starts and stumblings. I feel it whenever I see someone, from whatever walk of life, come down from the heights to figure out patiently what’s happening between A and B. IA is history, and a part of history: one class of those timeless moments in human life when we’ve stopped chasing about, one of those moments when we’ve stopped to think.
I remember reading something recently that compared reading classic literature and modern prize winning literature. There is no comparison, the classic literature wins out.
I suppose it is an unfair comparison, classical literature that we can easily access is popular for a reason - it is good, it speaks to us, it tells us something about ourselves. It has 'come down from the heights to figure out patiently what is happening between A and B'. That is the point of what could be viewed as discrimination.
In the frenetic pace of modern life and life as a freelancer, the pressure to 'just deliver' is immense. Your work flows and thought patterns undergo a relentless evolution. The final result is shallow, insular and historic - unfortunately.
Maybe it's the academic in me, hoping to get another chance to boil the sea; soon I hope to concentrate on just one thing. To pause and breathe, contemplate and hold esoteric knowledge up to the light hoping sunbeams will catch an edge for a moment, casting rainbows in the shadows making us all go - ah! and then fade.
Posted by dottie at 12:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 11, 2007
Safari on Windows
Steve Jobs announced something today. Something wonderful?
Time will tell.
Safari for Windows
Weird huh?
Is this a continuing trend for Apple now that it is not constrained by non-Intel hardware? Will we see other mac only applications making the transition? Apart from Logic Audio, there is nothing else I would like to see on Windows (not that I really care anymore...)
What about Safari for Linux?
Of course, all this really means is that us poor web developers will have to start testing on Safari in addition to the plethora of browsers available on Windows.
Thanks Steve!
Posted by dottie at 8:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack