One of the basic principles of XP is to provide value. To achieve this ,you do the stories first that bring the most value. Now if those stories are risky or big, then you want to fail fast and move on. However in software development, most things are possible…it's just a matter of time. So how do you fail?
Tagged eXtreme Programming
On the 1st of February my mother lost her battle with cancer. For nearly 2 years my family has lived with the knowledge this day would come, but it is still hard when it does.
Tagged Ephox
At the final, for 2007, QUT Dean's Industry Working Breakfast last week I found myself discussing the disturbing trend in the decline in IT enrolments with Bobby Barnett, a secondary school IT teacher at John Paul College.
We talked about the fact that kids today1 are so comfortable with technology. They use it voraciously and for so many purposes, so why is it that we haven't seen an increase in IT enrolments. It seems that while they are more than happy to use technology, they aren't fired up with the idea of creating it.
Suneth attended QCon last week and in his post "The Great Convergence" he summarises Kent Becks comments on "the great convergence of Business Trends and Developing Trends in the IT world".
I totally agree with the view that today's developers require far more social and people skills than evidenced in the traditional view people have of the developer. I also think that the Agile practices help focus a development team on the needs of the client and hence force engagement with the business users, resulting in the need for and development of these skills.
I was having lunch with Adrian recently and we were talking about how people work with email. One thing he said made me stop and think about the different ways people treat email and the potential problems that can occur if they aren't aware of the differences.
What he said was, "e-mail is a conversation, not a considered media".
