Tools don't solve problems, thinking does
Suppose that while getting the groceries for the weekend, I decide to buy some steaks. I’m not sure yet whether it will be tournedos or regular steaks, but meat it is. So I go to my local butcher shop and lay down my requirements. The prices for tournedos and steak are known, they can be viewed from the examples on […]
When reasoning about business domains in projects with customers, domain objects and their services are always discussed. But if you listen more closely you might hear additional requirements on the domain. “Off course, customers can also find a book by typing in their ISBN” or “we also register the customer’s web site, by adding the URL.” When to use value […]
It’s hard to admit, but I only discovered the Scottish band Biffy Clyro by accident when I was browsing through the sales at an online record store. Bought their fourth (!) album Puzzle for a mere 5 Euro’s. But I’ve been playing it ever since (for months and months now). Gets better each time you hear the record. Found this […]
Alhoewel ik het liefst code schrijf, heb ik een zwak voor het schatten van projecten. En dan niet een academische functiepuntenanalyse, maar elke pragmatische aanpak verdient mijn steun. Tijdens mijn loopbaan heb ik aardig wat schattingen gemaakt en gezien. Van tenenkrommend tot waar-halen-ze-die-getallen-vandaan? Waarom rekenen veel organisaties voor projectmanagement een toeslag van 20%? Waarom geen 14.81%? Zouden schriftgeleerden in die […]
Earlier this week I presented a talk at the inspiring Software Developers Conference 2008 in Noordwijkerhout, the Netherlands. My talk had an inspiring, or at least intriguing title: How to keep our jobs. Why? Well, let me share some thoughts on the productivity of software development projects. A 100-fold Recent research by Gartner shows that the productivity of software development […]
Finally, after some experimenting we’ve got it. My team managed to put out the broadcast of my talk on everything and the kitchen sink on YouTube, and moreover, link from that. See the results here. Introduction The introduction part with some jokes in it. Software architecture, design patterns and smart use cases in code A brief introduction into software architecture […]
Dat is schrikken! Als gevolg van de immer toenemende vraag naar software, en het dalen van het aantal studenten die sodtware development willen leren, moet de productiviteit van ontwikkelaars stijgen. Om precies te zijn: honderd keer. Althans, dat voorspelt Gartner. Honderd keer. Dat is niet mis. Nu houdt ik me al zo’n twintig jaar bezig met het vernieuwen van software […]
On LinkedIn I stumbled over this interesting question (posed by Tony Bruce). Well, I clearly and loudly have to disagree. Having guided several organizations from waterfall to agile, but also from chaos to agile I would definitively say that it is easier to transform a company without rigid methodology to agile, than to convert a waterfall styled company to agile. […]
I have a mobile device running Windows Mobile 6 which I use for synchronizing my contacts, tasks and appointments with Outlook running on my office laptop (yes, running Windows Vista). Now, since a week my mobile device stopped connceting to my laptop, much to my agony. So I tried al the options I could find on the internet for solving […]
Maybe you recognize the following situation: you are asked to estimate a new project. So you dive into the – often incomplete and unclear – specifications. After trying to understand the specifications and hopefully having a lot of meetings with the customer and end users you create an neat Excel spread sheet with a work breakdown structure, and some formulas […]
Het is maandagmorgen. Er schijnt een waterig zonnetje over Ede. Ik parkeer mijn auto op het parkeerterrein van de Reehorst dat verlaten oogt bij de start van de nieuwe werkweek. Ook vandaag is de Reehorst het toneel voor een Software Developers Event. Één sessie in het bijzonder heeft mijn interesse: Addressing non-functional requirements with aspects. Waarom nu juist deze sessie? […]
Het is half vier ‘s middags als mijn vliegtuig in een zachte motregen landt op het vliegveld van Seattle Tacoma. Omdat ik deel uitmaak van de Visual Studio Advisory Board ben ik op weg naar de campus van Microsoft in Redmond, het overbekende slaperige voorstadje van Seattle. Maar behalve dat Seattle de reuzen Microsoft en Boeing huisvest, kent ook koffieconcern […]
Vanmorgen bracht ik met mijn jongste zoontje Boet – net drie – een bezoek aan de dichtstbijzijnde kinderboerderij. Zijn eerste bezoek aan een kinderboerderij. Een openbaring. Toen ik hem na afloop, vlak voor zijn middagdutje vroeg of hij het leuk had gevonden in de kinderboerderij, antwoordde hij heel gedecideerd: “Ik vond het niet leuk in de kinderboerderij. Er waren geen […]
On Plaxo, a networking website, someone started a poll that was issued to answer the question: which region is the best one for offshore IT projects? Besides this being a fairly subjective question, none of the multi-choiced answers matched my opinion. The list lacked The Netherlands. You will find the poll at: http://pulse.plaxo.com/pulse/events/show/39328239. And since the poll’s author requested comments, […]
Can’t help it. Looking at someone else’s code is just plain fun. Especially when it’s not that well architectured. It seems that I keep running into nice fragments of how not to code. Well, to be honest, my colleagues tend to help out, and send me all kinds of code examples. Have a look at the tiny fragment below. If […]
Omdat de grijzende stewardessen van Air Canada op de nachtvlucht van Honolulu naar Sydney nu eenmaal niet de Volkskrant rondbrengen, besluit ik genoegen te nemen met de Herald Tribune. Direct valt mijn oog op een bericht linksonder op de voorpagina. Het artikel wordt geflankeerd door een foto van een Indiër in strak pak, met dito stropdas en dito kantoor op […]
In the beginning in November, I was in Barcelona. Apart from the fact that the Microsoft TechEd took place there, Barcelona is obviously in itself a landmark. One of my favorite places in the metropolis is the Sagrada Familia, the famous temple by Antoni Gaudi. Frequently used as a metaphor for colossal and never ending type of software development projects […]
In a blog post my former collegue Anko – who is a tester – states that “… in discussions with testers … there seems to be only one belief: the fact that structured testing can only be done based on detailed, documented specifications and test execution-after-all-coding-is-done.” As Anko is very familiar with agile testing he knows better than this, and […]
In Dutch. Appears in SDN Magazine, February 2008. Ik weet het nog goed, hoewel het twee jaar geleden was en mijn geheugen niet meer alles is. Mijn collega Wouter belde. Geschrokken. “Zoiets heb ik nog nooit gezien,” begint Wouter, mij nieuwsgierig makend. “Ik dacht dat we in Nederland toch wel aardig konden programmeren. Maar wat ik hier nu bij mijn […]
Earlier this year I wrote an article on how to implement value objects (as mentioned by Martin Fowler en Eric Evans in their books, respectively Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture and Domain Driven Design). It appeared in English in International Developer Magazine (from Australia), and was later translated into German to appear in ObjectSPECTRUM. Finally it now also features in […]
Did a talk at Javapolis 2008 in Antwerp in December. As I stood in last minute for Andy Mulholland, group CTO at Capgemini, who was ill, I had little time to prepare a sound talk. That’s why I used a golden oldie, but still very valid! Project anti-patterns. How to make your projects fail Software development is hard. Many software […]
While modeling use cases, and in particular smart use cases, clear naming conventions can emphasis the meaning of your use cases more clearly. In general In general you might say that a use case expresses a particular action that is executed by one or more actors. Therefore it is considered good practice to name your use case after the action […]
Soms wordt ik door bedrijven of hogescholen gevraagd een mooi verhaal te komen vertellen. Vaak een goede gelegenheid om eens te sparren met developers. Zo sprak ik recent in Arnhem bij Avisi – een klein, zeer enthousiaste Java-bedrijf. En terwijl ik vertelde over agile, Smart, smart use cases, patronen en het genereren van code vanuit UML viel het me weer […]
The big question in agile projects is when to start with the design and test design for a specific work item – in my case a smart use case? In traditional waterfall styled methodologies, analysis and design for the full project will be finished even before the first line of code is ever written. In agile projects, and in our […]
Under normal circumstances Barcelona is a lovely city, where beatiful dark-haired and dark-eyed girls parade the small streets of Barri Gotic and El Raval, and tapas bars are overcrowded by locals and tourists trying to act as locals. But not this week. This week the conglomerate of Microsoft and Glasgow Rangers supporters pollutes the pavings. The latter are easy recognizable […]
Vlak voor mijn zomervakatie werd ik gebeld door collega Rob, een business consultant. “Jij moet eens met de CIO van mijn klant praten,” zegt hij. “Die is bezig om zijn hele IT-organisatie te herstructureren.” Even is het stil. Rob bouwt de spanning genadeloos op. “Hij past daarbij de lean principles van Toyota toe,” vervolgt hij, ”en die sluiten volgens mij […]
Being in a hotel room a lot sure helps you keep up with televsion shows you would otherwise skip withour remorse, for instance talk shows. Zapping through the channels I stumbled upon a stupifying interview with the Australian actor Dominic Purcell who plays one of the main characters in the television series Prison Break, that, to be quite honest, I’ve […]
Het is warm in de RAI als ik de zaal betreedt waar ik mijn verhaal over project anti-patterns ga vertellen. Het is verreweg de minst technische presentatie tijdens de Microsoft DevDays 2006 en ik verwacht dan ook een handjevol mensen. Een eerste blik in de zaal doet echter anders vermoeden. Er staan ruim driehonderdvijftig stoelen opgesteld. En dat voor een […]
On the highway on my way to Meppel to visit a customer, I passed a truck. A yellow truck. From Gentbrugge, Belgium. Although I hardly ever read the signs on trucks, passing this truck it immediately caught my eye. On the back of the truck a clear sign stated: mail me about my driving, followed by an email address, of […]
On many projects, developers are included to build their software from the ground up, layer by layer. This is argumented by the developers stating that “we really need to build the database access layer first, otherwise we are unable to realize the domain layer”. So the software is built layer by layer. There is a big risk involved in building […]
Earlier this week I had a long talk with Silvain, the software architects / lead developer on one of our agile projects – being executed using the Smart methodology (see links below). Silvain is concerned about the quality of the software architecture in his agile project. His project is implementing a large number (over 50) work processes and associated forms […]
It is quite remarkable. Over the years I have gathered a lot of experience in use case modeling. That’s where smart use cases came from – if you want to know more on those, please read the book. Along with smart use cases comes a pragmatic and easy applicable estimation technique, which I’ve called smart estimation. With this technique every […]
It’s half past five as I enter city hall in Rijswijk. I’m due at the Bouwstenenfabriek of the Department of Defence, which resides on the 9th and 10th floor. Invited along some Capgemini hot shots to give an inspiring presentation on innovative software development. At a practice meeting of one of our ASP practices. How about that. I always considered […]