ThoughtWorks will give two free seminars at Berns Tuesday April 21 2009.
The morning one is given by me and will be on the business value of agile and lean, and how it can be the competitive advantage in difficult times.
In the afternoon my colleague Zack Exley will give a behind-the-scenes look at the technological side of the Barack Obama campaign.
Both of the talks will be kicked off by our chairman Roy Singham who will give his view on why he believes Scandinavia has a great future in the software development world.
You are welcome to attend either one of these - or both of course.
This Saturdays edition of Dagens Industri had a really interesting column by Jan Åman, former curator of Färgfabriken. He writes about how you can either move forward or secure your back, and how the world is run by people watching their backs and making sure that decisions can never be questioned.
It is very close my favorite XP slogan "playing to win" and what I talk about in my presentation on Agile Documentation. A good read, but unfortunately only in the paper edition.
I am quoted in todays issue of Computer Sweden on BDD. It is a well written article even if I do not agree with Emil Gustafssons quote in the end where he states that BDD doesn't bring that much new things to the table. I think that people looking at BDD for the first time might perceive it as such, but I must say that there is a clear difference in both approach and outcome.
The Agile Sweden annual christmas party is on Thursday at the Agical office. The evening will kick off with a few lightning talks, of which I am doing one. My talk is titled "The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work" and will discuss how XP's value of simplicity has more or less been forgotten as agile has gone mainstream.
This has in almost deterministic fashion caused people from both sides of the OSS-MS divide to wave their party flags. But no one asks the to me more obvious question - why do you connect your office suite with all those systems, and why is that a problem if you do not have Microsoft Office? Seems more like an architecture question if you ask me.
I had a interesting conversation with Kevlin Henney at Øredev regarding the word 'should' and its usage in Behaviour Driven Development. Kevlin does not like 'should' as he feels it is too vague in many circumstances. And I have to agree with Kevlin.
Sometime you are speccing something like "the title of the index page should be 'blabbr.com - the worlds largest social network'", which might be something that we will change in the future. 'Should' is a good choice of words here.
Another time the spec says 'when the nuclear reactor overheats it should shut down.'. 'Should' is not a good choice of word here. I'd much rather say that the nuclear reactor must shutdown, as to really say that we have no other option.
So, let's use both. Use 'should' when describing a something might change, and 'must' when describing something carved in rock.
This might also help using the specs as an executable requirement. At the moment all specs are valued the same, every fail breaks the build. Perhaps there is a value in saying that certain specs are really important and should never fail. We could have different colors for different types of failure.
My Friday morning inbox contained an email from Niclas Nilsson asking me
to replace him doing interviews for InfoQ at Øredev. It took some planning
calls to my wife and booking of babysitting, but now I am good to go.
I will be interviewing these six gentlemen:
Jon Bostrom
Walter Bright
James Bach
Roger Sullivan
Luke Hohmann
BJ Hargrave
Let me know if you have any question you would like me to ask.
I will be at JAOO this year, telling everyone who is interested all about ThoughtWorks Sweden. Last time I went to JAOO was 2001, so I am really looking forward to it.
I will probably spend quite some time in the ThoughtWorks booth, so come by and say hi. Or beat me in the IT-run which I have signed up for.
I am happy to say that I will give one of the lightning talks at Smidig 2008. My presentation is about optimizing the whole product chain, from concept to cash, and stop focusing on projects as they fragment the organization and cause local optimization.
Last years conference was great and inspired us here in Stockholm to do our own version in the form of Agila Sverige. I am really looking forward to going back to Oslo.
To match my .Net experience, we will touch on frameworks and tools for .Net, but focus on the ideas and philosophies behind them, making it a very platform independent presentation.
The event is first and foremost for clients and members of .NetAkademin, but any seat not taken by them is available to the public.
ThoughtWorks Sweden has come a long way since I last posted anything about it. We have ourselves a nice office downtown, with proper phone numbers and pretty business cards.
This means that we are available for consulting gigs, primarily in Stockholm, but we can serve basically all of Scandinavia. With ThoughtWorks global organization behind us, we offer software delivery in Java, Ruby and .Net as well as agile coaching and consulting. We are also keen to show off our products Mingle, Cruise and Twist.
Call us, email us, come by the office for a coffee or lunch. We look forward to hearing from you.
ThoughtWorks
Mäster Samuelsgatan 60, 8 tr.
111 21 Stockholm
Office: +46 8 5500 2100
Skype me: mahnve
email me: mahnve at thoughtworks dot com
Assaf writes about using Hahlo and Fluid, and I find this paragraph especially interesting:
A great Web app uses persistent, readable URLs for every interesting resource. Twitter does that, so it’s pretty easy to share links to people, statuses and other points of interest. Hahlo hides the entire user interface behind a single URL, but it works extremely well because Hahlo is just a front end, Twitter is the system of record. If I need to link, I wouldn’t be using Hahlo links anyway (although link discovery is missing in the current version).
Perhaps this is a good way to both have the cake and eat it? Have a restful, share nothing API, which is accessed by a separate GUI app built in say Seaside that can use state as much as it wants.
I remember a dinner I had a while back with the CEO of a global financial services firm. As one of his first acts as CEO, he'd cancelled an enormous outsourcing contract, and I'd asked him why - his response has stuck with me. 'Banking is a technology business. Pure and simple. I can't win if I don't have my own team.'
Independent of his views on outsourcing, I've heard the same point made by many (but not all) financial services executives - banking (like big swaths of telecommunications, media and retailing) has become a technology business, where every ounce of performance and differentiation matters. Even, and especially, in the midst of market turmoil.
Which is why you should use consultants that can help you improve your game, not play the game for you.
A programmer by trade since more than a decade. I live in Stockholm, Sweden with my beautiful wife and wonderful kids. My professional interests centers around agile software development with a strong focus on the actual programming. In my very limited spare time I like listening to and playing music, weight lifting, golf and, sadly enough, programming
