Transitioning From Matt to Steve

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Link Roundup

• Quality-Speed Tradeoff — You’re kidding yourself: Ron Jeffries on the quality vs. speed argument
• The Pomodoro Technique
• Agile in a Flash: Agile Reference in the form of flashcards, with explanations and comments
• Clean Code Grades: Clean Code Developer Grade system is a graduated collection of principles, rules and practices which a software professional can use to produce "cleaner" code. It is based partly on the contents of the book Clean Code by Robert C. Martin.
• Kanban, Flow and Cadence
• Burndowns and Flareups in Agile Design
  

Link roundup

• Announcing Trinidad: In-process test runner for FitNesse wiki pages
• Rake Stats: How to log Rails 'rake stats' command output over time and add extensions to it into CruiseControl
  
• Clarke Ching's "Rocks into Gold": a biztech parable for software developers who want to Survive - and then Thrive – through the Credit Crunch.
  
• Hiring Software Developers: The Agile Aptitude Test
• Agile Payback: The adoption of agile programming methods has proved one of the most effective and popular strategies of the past year
• Anthrax and Standups: Slightly old but relevant post from Brian Marick on story-based standups
• Playgrounds & a Thought on Testing

Asynchrony honorably mentioned as Great Place to Work

St. Louis Magazine has an article that notes something that those of us who work at Asychrony already knew: Asynchrony is a great place to work. We received an honorable mention in the publication's January issue highlighting the area's Great Places to Work. Sure, our "Employees play Halo on two 40-inch TVs," but we're got several of the other perks that other companies have, and some that they don't. Like flexible childcare, pet-friendliness, FFASHH, and, of course, the free lunches. That chinese food in the first-floor refrigerator was for everyone, right?

Defense Systems highlights Asynchrony's SOA work at USTRANSCOM

Defense Systems magazine had a good article about Asynchrony's SOA work at USTRANSCOM. Here's a snippet with a quote from Steve:

The prescriptive architecture is due for delivery in the fall of 2009, said Steve Elfanbaum, Asynchrony’s president. But it won’t take the full length of the contract for new Web-based capabilities to come out, or for the transition architecture to be fully defined.

“People (in USTRANSCOM) are already clamoring for new services and want to use what we have now,” he said. “So as things come out of this process, as the various templates and standards fall out, we’ll start to use those as soon as we can.”

That's textbook agile philosophy, providing value as soon as possible. Who says government contracts can't be done agilely (or at least more agilely)?

Link roundup

• Retrospective facilitation -- John Wilger
• Kanban introduction -- Eric Landes (podcast)
• "How we develop software at Socialtext" (video)
• Getting Real About Agile Design
• Working through Screens (ebook on user interaction)
• Agile Philanthropy
  

Environmentally friendly, reusable story cards

Besides conversation, nothing beats the tactile, low-fi index card for communicating story information. And for environmentally friendly story cards, nothing beats this invention (well, we're not really sure it's an invention in the strictest sense) by Asynchronite Dan King: The Lamindex Story Card. As the name implies, it's a laminated index card that can be used and reused for countless stories and countless projects.




They're relatively cheap to make (just go to Kinko's if you don't have your own laminator or teacher friend), though Dan advises getting the "special kind" of laminate for easy cleaning.