Tuesday 30 March 2010

Just a theory...

From time to time over the past four months or so I have been receiving phone calls at my work claiming to be representing a secure delivery company that want to arrange for a delivery within a specified time range on a particular date.

Every time they ask for the names of people who should be allowed to sign for the delivery on my behalf, in case I am unavailable.

After the first couple of calls I developed the theory that the callers are not legitimate a delivery company, but could in fact be recruiters looking for contacts.

The most recent call was almost convincing, as they specified an organisation name that could have been legitimate so I gave the receptionist's name. Sure enough no delivery came, but I did overhear a call from a recruitment website who asked for the receptionist by name...

Sunday 28 March 2010

iPad might be worth a look after all

I'm slowly coming to the realisation that the last few books that I have purchased have been PDF files rather than physical paper.

Once the hype dies down and the inevitable technical version 1 issues are ironed out I may take a look at iPad.

Tuesday 16 March 2010

London Java meetup discussion

This evening I attended a meetup of the London Java community in a bar in central London.

There were a few familiar faces and some interesting informal discussions.

One discussion that I was lightly involved in revolved around the idea of some agile development practises effectively just being micro-management.

That triggered a memory about something I had read a few months back online.

Here is a link to the blog post by Mike Cohn that I suspect triggered my memory:
http://blog.mountaingoatsoftware.com/ssssh-agile-is-all-about-micromanaging

The attention grabbing headline is that it is about micro-management, but the important factor is that it is the team that is doing the management.

Monday 15 March 2010

Velocity in software development

It's not about the number of issues that you deal with, it's the estimates against them that counts towards velocity in software development.

Dealing with the smallest issues first might give some sense of satisfaction and accomplishment, but you'll have to face reality eventually and deal with those problems that require more thought.