Category Archives: process

Can Agile methods work against you?

Posted on January 19, 2007 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

Just yesterday I visited a client (who had actually read this blog!) who was interested in hiring me to write the data access layer of their application. When they asked me if I write detailed UML diagrams with a CASE … Continue reading →

Posted in agile, valtech | 1 Comment

Finding giant post-it pads in France

Posted on January 12, 2007 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

I had the hardest time finding in France some of those giant office post-it notes that Craig Larman recommends in his Scrum course. My first guess had been the usual office supply stores in Paris such as Gibert Jeune and … Continue reading →

Posted in agile | 2 Comments

Scrum is hard… and some people will vote against it with their feet

Posted on January 4, 2007 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

In a previous post, I mentioned that Paul Julius was seeing a 30% turn over after Agile practices are introduced. Apparently, this is also expected by Ken Schwaber. This sounds quite contradictory to one the reasons for adopting Scrum, mentioned … Continue reading →

Posted in agile, scrum | 2 Comments

Do not show a polished product too early

Posted on January 2, 2007 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

Jason Yip pointed me to an interesting post by Kathy Sierra: Don’t make the Demo Look Done. Also a nice reminder of Joel’s Iceberg Secret. That brings back fond memories of the beginnings of our project. Our client wanted to … Continue reading →

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Great interest in OpenSpace and FIT technologies

Posted on December 7, 2006 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

I arranged a presentation last week to my colleagues, with Guillaume Tardif as co-host. We were quite pleased that many more people than expected showed up. The most part of the presentation was about OpenSpace Technologies. We are planning to … Continue reading →

Posted in java, openspace, tdd, test, valtech | Comments Off on Great interest in OpenSpace and FIT technologies

Agitar Presentation

Posted on November 21, 2006 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

I have arranged a visit in Valtech by Agitar UK people last week. We had a presentation of AgitarOne (Agitator + Dashboard), their recently-released product. Frankly, the documentation and video presentations on their website do not give it justice: there … Continue reading →

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Free Agile Seminar at Valtech Paris

Posted on November 8, 2006 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

My employer is organizing an Agile Seminar on the morning of December 5th, in Paris. Entrance is free. Keynotes will be given by a couple of VT guys I know and will be worth it. Note that most of the … Continue reading →

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Webcams with a remote team: should we give up?

Posted on October 24, 2006 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

Considering that we are a distributed team (well, 80% offshore anyway), Craig Larman has been pushing for us to use webcams extensively. He suggested that each project manager for the project (one offshore, one onshore) should get one, and systematically … Continue reading →

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More about Open Space Technology

Posted on October 20, 2006 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

I am getting more questions in the office about Open Space Technology. There are quite a lot of information on the web — once you know were to find it. I find this one a useful introduction. Though it describes … Continue reading →

Posted in openspace | 1 Comment

Taking notes visibly to everyone

Posted on October 16, 2006 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

Something to keep in mind for the future: during CITCON, Joe used a projector to display his computer while he was taking notes on the same computer. In this way, anyone who shows up would have an idea of the … Continue reading →

Posted in citcon, openspace | Comments Off on Taking notes visibly to everyone

CITCON: The Culture of CI: Before Installing CruiseControl & Beyond Installing It

Posted on October 13, 2006 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

I had suggested a topic covering “Beyond Installing CruiseControl – CI Culture with Management and Developers”. It actually got merged with “Social Impact of CI”, suggested by Michael, and “How to introduce CI”, from Jeffrey. Jeffrey had, in fact, a … Continue reading →

Posted in citcon, continuous integration, openspace, test | 1 Comment

CITCON and random figures

Posted on October 11, 2006 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

Mike from Atlassian was quite a vocal participant to CITCON. During the talk on CI Culture, he explained that the developers in his team were among the top 5%, but that they wanted to reach the top 1%. Someone then … Continue reading →

Posted in citcon, openspace, test | 2 Comments

CITCON and technical excellence

Posted on October 10, 2006 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

I was generally impressed by what people seems to have put in place for Continuous Integration. Here is a list, from the top of my head: load testing; Douglas Squirrel from youDevise told how they were using CruiseControl to trigger … Continue reading →

Posted in citcon, continuous integration, openspace, test | 2 Comments

CITCON: CI and offshore

Posted on October 10, 2006 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

At CITCON, I was quite happy to see one person suggest the topic “CI and offshore”, as I am involved on an offshore project myself. Unfortunately, this person didn’t show up, and just we were just 3 in the session. … Continue reading →

Posted in citcon, offshore, openspace, test | 2 Comments

CITCON: Remote (Cruise)Control: Amazon EC2

Posted on October 10, 2006 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

Someone at CITCON (I’m pretty sure it was Mike) had a really good idea: use the service offered by Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) to run CruiseControl. Basically, Amazon EC2 offers virtual machines where anything can be uploaded. No … Continue reading →

Posted in citcon, continuous integration, test | 3 Comments