Afternoon sojourn into Agility
So, post-lunch ambulatory orations aside, I got back to work and returned a ticket before shooting off to a talk about agile development.
This pleased me, for I spent much of the time nodding to myself at the things I knew - though only recently learnt - regarding the subject. The presenter did touch upon some interesting new topics I hadn't covered before, including some tooling that supported his project nicely in its agile goals.
Having recently read about CruiseControl and Continuous Integration, Test Driven Development and previously about Pair Programing, and the Agile philosophy, the speaker went on to offer a concrete example of these techniques in use in a real project.
I was particularly curious about the use of a tool called _checkstyle_ to help encourage stylistic rules and coding standards. Violating the rules would result in a build break, an equivalent error to failing a unit test.
One of the more interesting techniques was scheduling the daily mini-meeting - or scrum as it's apparently known in Agile circles - before lunch and with the restriction that the participants stand to ensure the duration remains short. There is even a rule that if anyone stays longer than fifteen minutes, they must stand on one leg for any extra time they stay, to adequately discourage any overtime.
I must whole-heartedly approve of the coloured light on the integration test machine that changes from green to red so everyone knows the minute there is a build break. I have images of people scrambling like fighter pilots to suit up and tackle the enemy at the sight of it's crimson glow. But that's just me.
This pleased me, for I spent much of the time nodding to myself at the things I knew - though only recently learnt - regarding the subject. The presenter did touch upon some interesting new topics I hadn't covered before, including some tooling that supported his project nicely in its agile goals.
Having recently read about CruiseControl and Continuous Integration, Test Driven Development and previously about Pair Programing, and the Agile philosophy, the speaker went on to offer a concrete example of these techniques in use in a real project.
I was particularly curious about the use of a tool called _checkstyle_ to help encourage stylistic rules and coding standards. Violating the rules would result in a build break, an equivalent error to failing a unit test.
One of the more interesting techniques was scheduling the daily mini-meeting - or scrum as it's apparently known in Agile circles - before lunch and with the restriction that the participants stand to ensure the duration remains short. There is even a rule that if anyone stays longer than fifteen minutes, they must stand on one leg for any extra time they stay, to adequately discourage any overtime.
I must whole-heartedly approve of the coloured light on the integration test machine that changes from green to red so everyone knows the minute there is a build break. I have images of people scrambling like fighter pilots to suit up and tackle the enemy at the sight of it's crimson glow. But that's just me.