Scrumdamentalists and crusaders

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 […]

Describing (smart) use cases using Enterprise Architect 8. Part II – Use case scenarios and structured specifications

Enterprise Architect by Sparx Systems is a commonly used modeling tool, targeted at modeling UML and BPMN diagrams. One of the most frequently used diagrams is the use case diagram. A use case diagram consists mainly of actors and use cases, either traditional or smart use cases. Use case scenarios There’s different ways of modeling and describing what action a […]

Describing (smart) use cases using Enterprise Architect 8. Part I – Templates and validations

Enterprise Architect by Sparx Systems is a commonly used modeling tool, targeted at modeling UML and BPMN diagrams. One of the most frequently used diagrams is the use case diagram. A use case diagram consists mainly of actors and use cases, either traditional or smart use cases. A use case template The specification of the individual use cases in the […]

March 16, 2011 – Centric Event. Requirements in agile projects

Will present keynote and some sessions at Centric internal event on agile software development, targeted at project managers, information and business analysts. This talk specifically targets at the role of information analysis and requirements in agile projects. Topics will include: Does business and information analysis still exist in agile projects? Agile requirements Where does the backlog come from? An agile […]

March 16, 2011 – Centric Event. From lightweight agile to enterprise agile.

Will present keynote and some sessions at Centric internal event on agile software development, targeted at project managers, information and business analysts. Topics will include: Why doesn’t waterfall work – and did it ever? What makes agile different? The Agile methodology that doesn’t exist. An overview of agile processes that do exist. Agile key characteristics Agile best practices Agile beyond […]

February 10, 2011 – Capgemini Legal, Utrecht. An introduction to agile

An important and often underestimated aspect in organizing agile projects is the contract between the client and the contractor. Getting the contract right is much harder than it seems. Venue: Presentation and discussion for legal department at Capgemini, Papendorp, Utrecht. Reasons for getting into contract disputes have to with that it is very hard to establish upfront what it is […]

The explicit role of testing and testers in agile projects

Not all agile processes and approaches recognize the role of testing explicitly, other than stressing the importance of unit testing. However in short iterative projects, testing is key from day one. On of the agile approaches that does explicitly describes the role of testing – and of having testers on-board – is the agile process Smart. One of the characteristics […]

A book on pragmatic software architecture, patterns and frameworks?

One of the major items on my wish list – that is on the professional half of it – is to write a book that displays my ideas on software architecture, patterns and frameworks. Yes I know, there are many books on software architecture, and there are many books that explain patterns, and yes there also are a lot of […]

Please vote for my Microsoft Mix 2011 proposals!

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 […]

Simple little things. Issue commands using CommandName and CommandArgument in a GridView control

Handling events in ASP.NET is not always as straightforward as it seems. One particular pattern that often occurs is that there’s several items in a row in a GridView control that trigger commands. Now the GridView supports several standard commands such as Select and Delete, but what if you want to issue your own command? As an example, here’s my […]

Een introductie in agile business intelligence [in Dutch]

Om kosten te besparen, een veelgenoemde aanleiding voor Business Intelligence (BI) projecten, wilde een bekende overheidsinstantie weten hoe effectief de bestrijding van uitkeringsfraude was. Hierbij speelde een interessant fenomeen. Het onderzoeken van mogelijke fraude kost de instantie geld, maar het vinden van fraudeurs levert daarentegen direct geld op. En dus ging men op zoek naar de optimale verhouding tussen het […]

November 29, 2010 – Vrije Universiteit. Software architecture, patterns and frameworks.

On November 29 I will be doing a series of three lectures for the IT audit program at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, introducing the students to the processes, concepts and techniques of software development, as they will most likely be auditing (software development) projects later during their career. During the third and last lecture I will try to explain […]

November 12, 2010 – Microsoft TechEd Europe. How smart use cases can drive web development

[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 […]

November 10, 2010 – Microsoft TechEd Europe. How frameworks can kill your projects

[Session ARC202 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. […]

November 9, 2010 – Microsoft TechEd Europe. How frameworks can kill your projects.

[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. […]

A recipe for enterprise agile. Mixing Scrum and Smart

To cut to the chase, those of you who have worked on enterprise or service oriented projects before already know this. These types of projects are characterized by a large number of organizational, functional and technically complicating factors. Enterprise software development projects are surrounded by a large number of complicating characteristics and challenges: Many different stakeholders. Projects have many different […]

Being Smart in enterprise agile

As agile is becoming more and more mainstream, organization are starting to do enterprise software development project using well-known but fairly basic lightweight agile processes.   In many projects this has lead to surprisingly bad result, baffling the agile Certified Pokémon Trainers who are coaching these projects. The presentation below shows a number of accelerators or technique that projects can […]

De uiterste houdbaarheidsdatum van requirements

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 […]

Simple little things. The 42 extension method anti-pattern

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 […]

Simple little things. Placing dynamic images in databound controls

Sometimes there’s these really little things that hardly seem worth the effect blogging about. But when you start googling for the apparent solution, there’s a million-and-one blogs, forum questions that at the least are contradicting. In this particular case I wanted to set different images in different rows in a Repeater or GridView depending on some property of the domain […]

Horrible web design (I) – HP Help Form

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 […]

PowerPoint Architecture

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 […]

The big question. Managing IT projects Barack Obama style

Despite misunderstanding and resistance of his space-flight loving people president Barack Obama recently aborted the Constellation space program. The Constellation program targets at putting humans on the moon again, for the first time since 1972, with the ultimate goal of possibly planning a manned trip to Mars in 2025. Although I had never heard of the program, after reading the […]

Spring 2010 speaking engagements

Again doing a lot of talks this spring on a wide range of subjects, from new technology, via enterprise agile to model driven development, but also about smart use cases, domain driven design, UML, and software architectures, design patterns, frameworks and .NET. This season’s highlights? Not a difficult choice: doing talks both at Microsoft DevDays and TechEd North America is […]

Smart use case stereotypes in service oriented projects

Smart use cases are a great technique for specifying standardized requirements in many types of projects. Over the past few years we have smart use cases being modeled and written in projects using Java and .NET, as you might expect, but also in Sharepoint projects, business intelligence, service oriented projects and even SAP implementations. Stereotypes drive standardization Standardization of your […]

Introducing our Agile Dashboard

The Accelerated Delivery Platform’s (ADP) Agile Dashboard is a pragmatic and publicly available tool (free) for managing project progress online. The Agile Dashboard was originally intended to manage progress for our agile projects, but these day it is used in a much broader perspective. As the ADP Core Team receives a lot of questions about it, it’s time to present […]

My weekly thoughts on Twitter

New entry " Weekly digest of week 53 2009 / 2010: A happy 2010 for you all! Thi.. http://bit.ly/8TNPq5 " on Capping IT Off. # Pfff. Took me 1/2 day but restored connection to VPN again. Cisco AnyConnect 2.3 does not work on Windows 7. So back to previous utility. # Uninstalled Cisco VPN Client 5.0.3 and installed Cisco VPN […]

Beyond agile testing. Or: how to become a pro-active tester

Agile – in all it’s variations – becomes an increasingly popular process for realizing software. The roles testers and testing plays in these projects is challenging and new. Testers are no longer considered code-killers, but can play – and are expected to play – a  very pro-active role in agile projects. Although all agile process agree on the importance of […]

My weekly thoughts on Twitter

Unsubscribed from Dr. Dobbs Journal. There's too much information to read anyway in the field of software development. # New entry " Weekly digest of week 52 2009: In the last digest of 2009: A look a.. http://bit.ly/4rsmWg " on Capping IT Off. # New entry " Avatar, reuse and model driven software development: Last week my.. http://bit.ly/5StRd0 " on […]

My weekly thoughts on Twitter

RT @smartusecases. Smart Use Cases FAQ http://bit.ly/53pc9c # The 3 stages of owning a computer. http://htxt.it/OGjn # New entry " Questions on smart use cases. Part III – Stereotypes and minimal us.. http://bit.ly/7XwfdJ " on Capping IT Off. # Spent the morning looking at reusables from our distributed agile .NET projects. Discussed framework upgrades and smart use case metrics. # […]