Tools don't solve problems, thinking does
There is an intriguing question that pops up frequently in organizations developing software in projects: when is a project successful? For sure, one of the most (mis)used resources on the subject is the Standish Group. In their frequently renewed CHAOS Report they define a project successful if it delivers on time, on budget, and with all planned features. For a […]
Many organizations turn towards agile to escape failing traditional software development. Due to this increase in popularity, many newcomers enter the field. Without the necessary real-life experience but proudly waving certificates from two days of training. During a challenging talk I did at the CodeMotion conference in Madrid, in October 2013, I tried to show what happens to projects that […]
Believe it or not, but I have a confession to make. I’m currently in a pure waterfall project. It’s my first in many, many years and despite the fact that I love the technology, I don’t like our way or working it a bit. During the first phase of this project we are trying to deliver twenty functional work items. […]
After a series of very disappointing games the Dutch national football team was eliminated during the preliminary rounds of the European Championships. Comments weren’t mild. The most heard comments largely focused on the lack of team spirit and mental fitness. Not uncommon to Dutch national football teams. Earlier this week an interesting broadcast of the Dutch sports program Studio Sport […]
Without any doubt agile is the biggest evolution in software development approaches since the introduction of waterfall back in the early seventies. And yes. Agile is an evolution rather than a revolution. The best practices and techniques in agile didn’t just pop-up. Rather they emerged from years of hard-working, real-life experience in succeeding and failing in projects. So working in […]
I guess object relational mapping is an accepted paradigm for exchanging data between an object oriented domain layer and underlying databases. For most applications object relational mapping is more than sufficient. And if not, perhaps command query responsibility segregation might contribute well to your solution. Being a more than frequent user, this very short blog post is not meant to […]
Er is een anti-patroon op het gebied van agile dat me nauw aan het hart gaat. En dat is de institutionalisering van agile. In de afgelopen vijftien jaar heb ik met veel plezier en inzet organisaties en projecten gecoacht op weg om agile worden. In die vijftien jaar heb ik ongelooflijk veel geleerd, over software ontwikkeling, over programmeren, over processen, […]
On November 3, 2011 I presented the keynote of the Agile Open Holland Conference in Dieren. During this challenging talk I discussed the current state of affairs in agile organizations and projects and the effects of the recent strong rise in popularity of agile approaches. Let’s put it mildly: there’s a lot of work to be done. Death by dogma […]
To all the dear people in the agile community and to the faint-hearted: this will not be an easy blog post. There was a time when being a software developer was a decent craft, requiring decent craftsmanship and yes also a lot of creativity, some communication, some collaboration. Still it was a decent craft. The waterfall-ish methodologies we used weren’t […]
After having promoted agile and iterative approaches to software development projects for over a decade, I finally find that, like Bob Dylan says, the times they are a-changing. And for the better. Many small and large organizations and enterprises are now turning towards agile approaches, often to compensate for years and years of failing projects. You might suggest that all’s […]
From April 12-14 the next edition of Microsoft’s MIX Conference will take place in Las Vegas. I’ve sent in two proposals for the Open Call. Today heard that both proposals made it through the first cut, which means they’re open for public voting (you don’t have to be registered). It would be great if you would cast your vote for […]
[Session ARC205 at Microsoft TechEd Europe 2010 in Berlin] Use cases have been around for many years describing the requirements of software development projects. From a developer’s point of view, use cases are often seen as too abstract and too complex to develop code from. Until now, that is. During this interactive talk, speaker Sander Hoogendoorn will demonstrate how to […]
[Session ARC203 at Microsoft TechEd Europe 2010 in Berlin] When it comes to Microsoft .NET-connected development, more and more frameworks are entering the market, both from Microsoft and from open source. Think of ASP.NET MVC, Castle, Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), Entity Framework, Unity, Linq2SQL, ADO.NET Data Services, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), nHibernate, Spring.NET, CSLA, NUnit, Enterprise Library, MEF or ADF. […]
Vorige week gaf ik – voor de zoveelste keer – training in het identificeren en modelleren van smart use cases. Dit keer bevond ik me in de hippe ruimtes van Meeting Plaza Utrecht, boven het altijd sfeervolle Hoog Catharijne. Tijdens de goed verzorgde lunch werd het onderwerp al snel bepaald door de uiterste houdbaarheidsdatum. Van levensmiddelen, maar meer nog, van […]
Extension methods are a powerful feature in .NET, and have been increasingly adopted by the developer community. Also, LINQ and other framework features rely heavily on extension methods. In fact, extension methods were originally invented to be able to implement LINQ without having to change a lot of .NET framework base classes. Basically, an extension method is implemented as a […]
Last week, the Microsoft TechEd North America 2010 took place in the great city of New Orleans. I was lucky to be invited to do a talk on how frameworks can kill your projects. When it comes to Microsoft .NET-connected development, more and more frameworks enter the market. Both from Microsoft and from open source. Think of ASP.NET MVC, Castle, […]
Every now and then you see really horrible examples of software development. While I was try to scan a document using my printer/scanner, the software by HP failed miserable. Being the nice customer I am, when HP invited me to fill in an enquiry about the quality of their service. The form presented to fill in my feedback was simply […]
It’s a mildly sunny April morning in 2002 when I park my car outside of a huge government agency office in a small suburban city near Utrecht. I am invited for a brainstorm session with the agency’s enterprise architects. Although I do not consider myself an enterprise architect, and explained that upfront, they were eager to discuss their architecture with […]
Suppose you are in the IT department of a (very) large organization and have been developing systems for your organization for quite some years. Chances are that you will have a landscape of systems great and small that all serve a particular purpose, or that have served a particular purpose. Systems that were built in a variety of languages, such […]
Let’s suppose for a moment that it’ is 1986. And let’s suppose you are starting a new company. A company that sells products or services to customers, as most companies do. Let’s say you selling (surf) board wear. You start selling your first t-shirts and you decide that you need to automate stuff. So you create a list of your […]
Earlier this week I attended the Landelijk Architectuur Congres in Nieuwegein. Besides the noteworthy percentage of attendees with mustaches, grey hair and ties, a pleasant and friendly event. In the afternoon of the first day of the event I did a lively talk on shaping service oriented projects using smart use cases. During the talk I recevied some very peculiar […]
IT Works, Hotel Pullman Brussels Airport, Diegem, Belgium (www.itworks.be) Although agile software development approaches, principles and techniques are slowly becoming more mainstream, it is still necessary to promote them for the larger part of the IT community and organizations. Together with my Belgian guest speaker Stefaan van Royen (now of BoonDoggle), who can talk very lively on implementing Scrum and […]
Array Seminars, Hotel Amrath Lapershoek, Hilversum (www.arrayseminars.nl) Although agile software development approaches, principles and techniques are slowly becoming more mainstream, it is still necessary to promote them for the larger part of the IT community and organizations. Together with my Belgian guest speaker Stefaan van Royen (now of BoonDoggle), who can talk very lively on implementing Scrum and Smart, I’ve […]
This column will be pulished in the September 2009 issue of Software Release Magazine (www.release.nl). Eind augustus gleed er een opvallende leaflet in mijn gloednieuwe brievenbus. Een leaflet van McDonalds. Niet dat ik daar normaliter veel acht op sla, maar deze trok mijn onverdeelde aandacht. “Ook Utrecht Leidsche Rijn heeft nu een eigen McDonalds. Uniek in Nederland. het is de […]
My talks in June 2009. June 3. Agile software development in everyday practice. Full-day seminar on doing agile projects for IT Works, Hotel Pullman, Diegem, Belgium. With guest speaker Stefaan van Royen, Mediamine. See www.itworks.be. June 9. Pragmatic .Net development. Full-day seminar on software architectures and patterns for .Net software development for Array Seminars, .NBC Nieuwegein. See www.arrayseminars.nl. June 15 […]
Pragmatic model driven development .Net using use cases Guest lecture at Hogeschool InHolland, Alkmaar, Netherlands. December 21, 2007 Informal guest lecture for students graduating this year. Likely subjects are software architecture, patterns, modeling and implementing smart use cases. Project anti-patterns Talk at Javapolis, Antwerp, Belgium. December 12, 2007 Presented my well known talk on project anti-patterns at Javapolis, the biggest […]
For as long as I’ve been in this business, I’ve heard a lot of manager, project managers, architects and other non-coders compare software development to construction. In this metaphor the architect creates the design and hands it over to the contractor, who does the work. In this metaphor the creative parts ends with the architect handing over the design to […]
Tomorrow, June 26, I will be doing a talk at the SDN Event at Hotel Houten in Houten (see www.sdn.nl). This talk will be dealing with the many anti-patterns that surround agile software development. Unfortunately, the session description for my talk is not entirely up-to-date. So I’ll repeat it here. Better safe then sorry. Hope to meet you all tomorrow […]
The months May and June are notorious for the number of talks – as Rick van der Lans describes: May and June are speaker’s season. Just to remind me not to forget any of my upcoming talks, here’s a list: May 12. Project estimation with smart use cases. At Capgemini, Utrecht. Presentation at internal software estimation seminar for Community of […]
After a dozen years of promoting and evangelizing agile software development in the current years of economic unpredictability a breakthrough in applying agile processes and techniques is emerging. But with the rising popularity of Scrum, MSF Agile, OpenUP, Smart, XP, Lean, FDD and the likes, it’s not only success stories any more. Similar to failing traditional waterfall projects there patterns […]
One of the characteristics of most traditional – linear, waterfall – styled organizations is the extremely rigid execution of their software development projects . “Our handbook says we need to fill in this form, so that’s what we do guys.” People is these projects live by the blind assumption that whoever invented or wrote down their software development process knew […]
De voorpagina van de Computable van 20 maart is opgesierd met een prachtige foto van een uit een witte limousine stappend bruidje in een even witte bruidsjurk en prachtige borsten. Nieuwsgierig geworden naar het bijbehorende artikel, kom ik al snel tot de teleurstellende conclusie dat dit weer eens gaat over het mislukken van de gemeentelijke basisadministratie, dat ondertussen toch wel […]
Good to hear that I’ve made the program of this year’s Microsoft DevDays. Will be a challenging talk on software architecture and patterns, titled just like this blog post. Here’s the description. Hope you like it. Navigating through the hypes, Software architectures and patterns to help avoiding your projects to crash When it comes to .Net software development, more and […]
Go to episode three. Go to episode two. Go to episode one. In case you’re wondering why doesn’t this dude come to his point, you’ve probably missed it. I’ve made it already. The point is: you should always have a single point of truth, and at most have it reproduced on the server side. Which in most cases you don’t […]
Go to episode two Go to episode one Client / server could have been a much more successful era in software development, if it wasn’t for this copy-and-paste programming, leading to applications that slowly became unmanageable. I have seen this anti-pattern occur in any of the popular client / server technologies. Without exception, whether it was Visual Basic, PowerBuilder or […]
Go to episode one. So now you’re stuck with this two-tier architecture. Is this a problem. Well, not yet. However, it can become a huge problem, and it has become a huge problem in many, many client / server applications, in a vide variety of technologies, including several types of (legacy) web application technologies. The truth is out there The […]
At this point in time, where we slowly shift from service orientation to cloud computing, building business software is more complicated then it has ever been. There are many platform that your software needs to target, and there are even more ways of writing the software. Beyond choosing technology Choosing a technology goes way beyond stating that you are doing […]
I always thought that software was developed to make things easier. Now, I’m aware of the fact that to software developers this job can be quite intriguing. But, being a developer myself, sometimes even I experience difficulty in deciphering question raised by the software I use. For instance, what to do with the following question, posed to me when I […]
It’s too bad there’s only 24 hours in a day. There are so many ideas in my head that I still have to write down, that I have to make a (short) list now to keep my head from exploding. So here it is: White paper on how to do agile SAP projects using smart use cases. Article on applying […]
This is the video from Parlays.com that presents the talk I gave at the last JavaPolis conference in Antwerp, Belgium. During the talk I ask myself the question how everybody in their own role can attribute to making our project fail, as it is far too complicated to make your projects succeed. The talk presents popular anti-patterns I’ve gathered over […]