Brad Appleton ACME Blog

SOA, Mashups, Mashed Knees and Surgery

Brad Appleton's ACME Blog — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:35:05 GMT

Today is my birthday - I had arthroscopic knee surgery last night and am feeling pretty good so far (happy birthday to me). I know I still have a lot of meds/painkillers in my system and that its going to feel more uncomfortable the next few days. I'm...(read more)

BOOK: Running an Agile Project

Brad Appleton's ACME Blog — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:21:01 GMT

First, on a personal note, I had the misfortune to tear cartilage in my right knee a couple days ago and will require surgery to repair/remove it. I'm hobbling around on crutches for the time being. I hope I can still attend (and present at) Agile2009...(read more)

WANTED: Seeking Single Agile Knowledge Development Tool-set

Brad Appleton's ACME Blog — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 11:11:04 GMT

I'll be presenting at Agile2009 in Chicago on the Tools for Agility stage on Tuesday 25 August, 4:45pm-5:30pm. Here is my session description from http://agile2009.org/node/2762 WANTED: Seeking Single Agile Knowledge Development Tool-set Aren’t code...(read more)

Studies on Effectiveness of TDD?

Brad Appleton's ACME Blog — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 10:56:04 GMT

This question came-up in a discussion earlier this week: Do we know of published studies on this subject? A quick Google-search turned up the following for me ... George Dinwiddie 's page on Studies of Test-Driven Development has links to a dozen...(read more)

Resources on Retrospectives

Brad Appleton's ACME Blog — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 10:55:05 GMT

I found a really good resource-list from George Dinwiddie on Introspection and Retrospectives that includes the following list of resources (mostly patterns & techniques) about conducting retrospectives. It contains many (but not all) of the links...(read more)

Refactoring @ Scale

Brad Appleton's ACME Blog — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 10:54:02 GMT

In my previous post, Refactoring for Agility , I posted an outline and some thoughts for Part I of an Overview on Refactoring. Now I'm ready to post on Part II which is about refactoring @ scale. By "at scale" I mean in the larger context...(read more)

Refactoring for Agility

Brad Appleton's ACME Blog — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 08:36:05 GMT

Some of you might have guessed from my recent posts on Emergent Design , Technical Debt , JEDI Programming , and 5S Qualities of Well Designed, Well-Factored Code , that I've been looking into trying to teach the fundamentals of refactoring and how...(read more)

Mercurial, Git and Scala

Brad Appleton's ACME Blog — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 06:52:05 GMT

Three more brand new books I just received that are worth mentioning ... Version Control with Git : Powerful tools and techniques for collaborative software development, by Jon Loeliger, O'Reilly, 2009 Mercurial: The Definitive Guide -- Modern Software...(read more)

BOOK: Landing the Tech Job You Love

Brad Appleton's ACME Blog — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 10:54:05 GMT

I blogged earlier about The Passionate Programmer and The Nomadic Developer . A new book just came out that seems like the perfect complement to these two: Landing the Tech Job You Love by Andy Lester (also from the Pragmatic Programmers ). I've only...(read more)

BOOK: The Economics of Iterative Software Development

Brad Appleton's ACME Blog — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 00:44:05 GMT

In the July issue of the Agile Journal I reviewed Walker Royce, Kurt Bittner and Mike Perrow's book The Economics of Iterative Software Development: Steering Toward Better Business Results . Here is an excerpt ... The Economics of Iterative Software...(read more)

BOOK: The Art of Lean Software Development

Brad Appleton's ACME Blog — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 00:35:02 GMT

In the June issue of the Agile Journal I reviewed Curt Hibbs, Steve Jewett and Mike Sullivan's The Art of Lean Software Development: A Practical and Incremental Approach . Here is an excerpt ... With last month's announcement of the Lean Software...(read more)

JEDI Programming - Just Enough Design Initially

Brad Appleton's ACME Blog — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 23:53:04 GMT

I left a comment on the "What is Missing?" entry at the Agile-in-a-Flash blog . The author's asked the questioin "What is missing?" from the stack of Agile flashcards they are developing. I responded ... I think the "JEDI"...(read more)

Emergent Design and Evolutionary Architecture - Resources

Brad Appleton's ACME Blog — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 23:31:04 GMT

As a bit of a follow-up to my earlier posting on Technical Debt - Definition and Resources I gathered some resources on the subject of Evolutionary Architecture and Emergent Design (which is closely related to refactoring, restructuring and reengineering...(read more)

Embracing Change - quotable quotes on change and uncertainty

Brad Appleton's ACME Blog — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 12:56:04 GMT

It’s inevitable that requirements will change. Business needs evolve, new users or markets are identified, business rules and government regulations are revised, and operating environments change over time. In addition, the business need becomes clearer...(read more)

Technical Debt - Definition and Resources

Brad Appleton's ACME Blog — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:26:02 GMT

I ran across a few really good papers on the subject of technical debt that are fairly comprehensive in their treatment of not just what it is, but also how to manage it: Technical Debt and Design Death : How to ensure you can deliver business value in...(read more)

Resources on Self-Organizing Teams for Agility

Brad Appleton's ACME Blog — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:33:05 GMT

In the past several blog-entries I've been focusing on the agile principle of self-organization, what it means, and what it implies for teams. So far, I've written about Agile Self-Organization versus Lean Leadership , Self-Organization and Complexity...(read more)

Agile Self-Organizing Teams

Brad Appleton's ACME Blog — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:10:01 GMT

The previous blog-entry on self-organization was lots of jargon and technical mumbo jumbo that didn't say too much about what that means for teams of people. So let's shift from talking about self-organizing systems in complexity science to talking...(read more)

Self-Organization and Complexity

Brad Appleton's ACME Blog — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:05:02 GMT

In my previous blog-entry I talked a little about how self-organization is a key aspect of software agility . I'd like to explore exactly what self-organization is a bit more in this posting. Self-organization comes from complexity science and the...(read more)

Agile Self-Organization versus Lean Leadership

Brad Appleton's ACME Blog — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 10:31:05 GMT

Getting back to the agility cycle ... recall that I started with the business agility cycle and used that to derive the software agility cycle . There isn't a great deal of difference between the first two steps of the business-agility cycle and the...(read more)

Value Proposition for Agility

Brad Appleton's ACME Blog — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:47:02 GMT

I'm sure I'm not the first person to think it, but I just came across the description of a newly published book whose title made me think about this subject. The book is: Reading Minds and Markets: Minimizing Risk and Maximizing Returns in a Volatile...(read more)

The Dynamics of Leadership-Team Behavior

Brad Appleton's ACME Blog — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 07:36:01 GMT

Interesting article in BusinessWeek from Jim Collins on the Dynamics of Team-Leadership Behavior . It's actually an excerpt from his latest book " How the Mighty Fall: and Why Some Companies Never Give In ." Anyway ... the Dynamics of Team...(read more)

BOOKS: The Passionate Programmer and the Nomadic Developer

Brad Appleton's ACME Blog — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 22:56:05 GMT

Gosh, when I write/say the titles of these two books together in one line it looks like the title of some kind of computer-geek romance novella. (maybe it will sell more books that way :-) Anyway, I'm mentioning these two books together because they...(read more)

5S Qualities of Well Designed, Well-Factored Code

Brad Appleton's ACME Blog — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 00:34:04 GMT

The other day I was trying to explain to someone the properties of code that is well-factored and found myself using aliteration with 'S' words. That made me wonder if they were equivalent to Lean's "5S", which is as follows: Seiri...(read more)

HBR on Rebuilding Trust

Brad Appleton's ACME Blog — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:17:00 GMT

Some of you may recall some earlier blog-entries of mine on the topic of trust: Trust: The social virtues and the creation of prosperity by Francis Fukuyama More Articles on Trust Building Trust: In Business, Poliotics, Relationship and Life by Solomon...(read more)

Rewiring the Primal Management Talent Code

Brad Appleton's ACME Blog — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:49:04 GMT

I came across an interesting book in Borders over the weekend, but didn't have the time to browse it more thoroughly. A few hours later, at home, I looked it up on Amazon.com . I found the description and review comments very interesting, and found...(read more)