Alex and his team at Inedo are developing a game - inspired by development strategies like Lean, Agile and DevOps - about software and some of the people who make it. In this opening of a short series, Alex looks at how games affected his office culture, what he's learned about designing games to do more than just be fun, and how his team are hoping to share their passion with the developer community.… Read more
Oftentimes you will be forced to learn how to write proposals without a whole lot of help. You can learn, and be taught, the skill of writing an outstanding proposal, but you can't do it without a fair amount of practice. Today, Dwain explains how to write proposals that can be judged to be outstanding and what, specifically, that means.… Read more
In the course of rescuing a development from 'merge misery', it became increasingly apparent that there were a number of practices for managing branches in the Version Control System that would have reduced the pain and effort of the subsequent merge, and made the dream of continuous delivery come closer to reality. From the experience comes some well-tested ways of making branches and merges a stress-free part of application development.… Read more
Ops and Development people are busy, and focussed on their jobs. They have plenty of ideas for improving the whole software delivery process but the task of developing, maturing and communicating a different way of working isn't often in their job-description. Others are only too keen to do so, but on their own terms. So, let's get clarity. What is the central DevOps idea really?… Read more
It is a question that almost anybody working in IT occasionally ask themselves. 'How can I best develop my career to make sure my skills and experience remain in demand?' The questions may be spurred by a variety of reasons, including job-insecurity, dissatisfaction, or a wish for career advancement. So what advice would you give? Buck Woody tackles the difficult question with some straight-forward advice..… Read more
As part of our long-running series of articles where we ask working database developers how database source control improves their work within development teams, we made the mistake of asking Hugh Bin-Haad, Database dev and relational theorist.… Read more
Sometimes, technical jargon is often so readily understandable by the technical community that they forget that it may be interpreted quite differently by the rest of the business. 'Technical Debt' is an example of a metaphor that is considered very differently by others. By failing to adopt a common language, you could be giving a message about your IT project that is quite different to the one you intended.… Read more
Creating and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships with external vendors is one of the pillars of good project management. Dwain Camps goes through what to expect and allow in your client-vendor relationship during the various stages of a given project to ensure its success and secure that all important win-win outcome.… Read more
When you work for a small software development (or any services) company, one of the major challenges is to make sure that you expend your limited resources on opportunities that are economically sound. You may be approached by companies that have heard about you and think they might want to do business with you, but do these leads really represent opportunities? How much of your time should be spent finding out? Dwain Camps offers some guidance.… Read more
Fifty years after starting the 'Art of Computer Programming', (TAOCP), Don Knuth is still working hard at the project. He has almost completed the first five volumes. It is considered amongst the "hundred or so books that shaped a century of science". Richard Morris asks him how things are going, and to find out more about his many achievements. … Read more
Despite all the advances in software tools, there seem to be several enduring truths about software development. By understaning these 'laws', Ziv's law, Humphrey's Law and Conway's Law, for example, you can remove some of the mystery of the process. Al Noel discusses these and other laws that seem to apply generally to the art of programming.… Read more
Although it is necessary to deliver a software project on budget, to schedule, to the right quality, it isn't, by itself, sufficient to ensure success. It has to be be what all the participants expect and want. To achieve all this requires a balancing act, with tradeoffs and compromises, but it is great when you get it right. Dwain gives advice from hard-won experience.… Read more
Phil's dread of Powerpoint sales presentations is already known to his readers, but we've never before heard the story of how an intern in his team gave them the necessary insights to find a cure for their unfortunate tendency to doze off, and convince them that they were charmless geeks.… Read more
In which Phil finds himself in a place of work where, despite his penchant for insulting or upsetting senior managers, he survives purely due to his ability to distill complex IT documents into one-page strategy papers… Read more
In IT, it is difficult to measure individual productivity, and it is particularly difficult to determine whether a project manager for a development project is 'pulling his weight'.… Read more
Could it be that, if you adopt Test Driven Development, Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment, then much of the bureaucracy of team-based software development becomes redundant? It is an intriguing idea which has led to a creative experiment.… Read more
Interviewing for a database position is a careful game of give and take. Knowing what to expect and how to prepare for your interview is important, but it's only half the battle. You'll also need to ask questions to see if the job, and the company, is a good fit for you.… Read more
When developing software, it makes sense to 'fail early, fail often'; to become aware of mistakes quickly and to learn from them. This means being able to deliver software as early in development as possible. This makes it easier to gather opinions and promote discussions with the people who would want to use the application; and then respond to the feedback. … Read more
Alex Payne worked on developing Twitter for three years. When he started, it was a small side-project: When he left, it had become an international cultural phenomenon. Since then, he has worked with several early-stage start-ups. He has been researching a book on the history of programming languages, and is co-author of a book on Scala. … Read more
If you're a technical professional, it is a good idea to belong to a professional association. There are several to choose from, and they all provide benefits. It is worth checking what each of the associations state as being their primary goal, before deciding which ones are right for you.… Read more
