CM Journal - Vol. 5 No. 4 - April 2006
Agile Development Practices
Read it online http://www.cmc
rossroads.com/cmjournal/
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In This Issue
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- [Agile SCM]
Situational Code Ownership: Dynamically Balancing
Individual
vs. Collective Ownership
Robert Cowham, Brad Appleton and Steve Berczuk
- Feature-Driven Development - an Agile Alternative to
Extreme Programming
Brad Appleton
- CM Crossroads Webcast Series
Taking Control of Your Dependencies:
Dependency Management in Production Automation
- [Road to Quality] Agility and Quality
Alan S. Koch
- Managing Dispersed Development Teams for Productivity
Rich Bianchi
- CM Crossroads Webcast Series
12 Tasty 'Make' Recipes, Part 1
- Agile – It’s Not the Wild West
Mario Moreira
- CM: THE NEXT GENERATION - Agile Configuration Management
by Joe Farah
- [Product Review]
mValent Integrity 3.0.3 Facilitates the Management of J2EE
Application Infrastructure Environments
Michael Sayko
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=====================
Editors Note
=====================
Welcome to the Configuration Management Journal from CM
Crossroads a monthly publication that focuses on a wide
variety of configuration management and related development
topics.
In a recent CM Crossroads research study, we found that over
85% of the respondents were very interested in deploying
agile development practices in their projects, but we also
found that less than 10% had more than one agile development
project underway. This leads me to believe that while there
is great interest achieving agility in application
development, a great majority of organizations are
struggling to pull it off. So with these number's in mind,
the CM Journal writers focus this month on a variety of ways
that you can become a little more agile in your development
practices.
Also, because so many organizations are looking for
direction with adopting more agile development practices, we
decided recently to launch the new Agile Journal led by
Editor-in-Chief and former Giga/Forrester analyst Liz
Barnett - [ www.agilejournal.com ]. Agile Journal is
dedicated to helping developers use Agile techniques and
technologies to deliver successful software solutions. No
other publication or industry portal is providing such
substantive vendor-neutral content for Agile teams. In the
Agile Journal, you'll receive thought leadership and
pragmatic advice from a wide range of industry experts, as
well as direct feedback from hands-on developers and project
As always I look forward to your comments and suggestions.
Patrick Egan
Publisher / Editor
editor cmcrossroads.com
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Agile SCM - Dynamically Balancing Individual
vs. Collective Ownership
by Robert Cowham, Brad Appleton and Steve Berczuk
============================================================
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One of the commonly touted programming practices of several
agile methods is something called collective code ownership,
where anyone on the team can make any authorized functional
change or design quality improvement (e.g., a
"refactoring") to any file within the scope of
their task. The Agile method known as Feature-Driven
Development (FDD), featured in another article this month,
is one of the few agile methods that uses the more
restrictive model of individual code ownership to restrict
changes to a class/module to be made by its assigned
"owner."
[Read More]
http://www.
cmcrossroads.com/article/64809
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Feature-Driven Development
an Agile Alternative to Extreme Programming
by Brad Appleton
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Many people today judge all of "Agile
development" based on what they know about Extreme
Programming (XP), quite possibly because that is all or most
of what they've heard about agile development. I wish all
of those folks (especially agile skeptics) would take a
close look at Feature-Driven Development (FDD) if for no
other reason than because it is an example of an agile
method that is very different from XP. FDD is quite agile
while still employing of many of the traditional practices
that agile skeptics are probably more accustomed to seeing.
[Read More]
http://www.
cmcrossroads.com/article/64810
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============================================================
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CM Crossroads Webcast Series -
Taking Control of Your Dependencies:
Dependency Management in Production Automation
============================================================
===========
Thursday, May 04, 2006 - 2 PM Eastern - 11 AM Pacific
Dependencies are perhaps the biggest potential source of
problems for build teams. The improper handling of
dependencies cause build failures, impede build speed
improvement efforts and can create administrative headaches
for the build team. In these situations, the build team is
often left between a rock and a hard place: responsible for
delivering builds under conditions that are beyond their
ability to describe let alone manage.
The speakers will share their thoughts and experiences on
ways the build team can better characterize and communicate
build-specific dependency issues. Using these tools, the
build team can begin to influence development decision
making, increasing organizational performance and agility.
[Register now and enter to win an Apple iPod]
http://cmc.unisfair.com/index.jsp?id=820&code=cmj4
============================================================
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Road to Quality - Agility and Quality
by Alan S. Koch
============================================================
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What is "Quality"? There are many competing
definitions, mainly because the one that makes the most
sense, "Quality is in the eye of the beholder,"
is hard to make workable in a real business situation. Some
would say it is impossible to use. But the Agile methods beg
to differ.The Agile methods take just such an approach to
quality by letting the customer mould the quality of the
product that is being built. They acknowledge that different
people might see things in different ways, so the one party
to the project whose opinion counts most (the ultimate
customer) is the one to whom the Agile methods look.
What constitutes high quality on this project? Don't ask
me! Ask your customer!
[Read More]
http://www.
cmcrossroads.com/article/64626
============================================================
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ALM Expo
Online Conference for Application Development
May 24-25, 2006
============================================================
==========
You don’t have to leave your office to participate in the
industry’s premiere conference and technology showcase for
application lifecycle management. With keynote presentations
from noted analyst Liz Barnett and Eclipse Evangelist Kevin
Parker, educational conference sessions and an interactive
virtual expo center there is something for everyone at ALM
Expo 2006. Registration is Free and every hour during the
event one attendee will receive an Apple iPod.
Sign up today and you could be one of 20 iPod winners
http://www.almexpo.com/
============================================================
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Managing Dispersed Development Teams for Productivity
by Rich Bianchi
============================================================
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The traditional approach to managing productivity is that
employees punch a clock – in at 8, out at 5 – and employers
must assume work is being done during the intervening hours.
However, the current reality for many, if not most,
businesses, is that the traditional approach no longer
works. It has become unclear whether or not work is being
accomplished regardless of hours logged at the office. With
the increase in outsourced and offshore teams, many
developers are scattered across different states or even
different continents and throughout a variety of time zones.
As a result, it’s not possible for a manager to ‘swing by’
a developer’s cube to get a status update on a project or
even just to do a quick check that a team member is present
and productive.
[Read More]
http://www.
cmcrossroads.com/article/64751
============================================================
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CM Crossroads Webcast Series
12 Tasty 'Make' Recipes, Part 1
Thurs. April 27
1:00 PM Eastern / 10:00 AM Pacific / 1800 UTC
============================================================
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Expand your software build repertoire -- join us for the
first in a series of discussions of practical techniques for
enhancing and optimizing your GNU Make Makefiles. In this
session, John Graham-Cumming presents three
"recipes" for improving Makefiles. Recipe 1
shows how to find the name of the Makefile currently being
handled by make; recipe 2 shows how a build manager can
force an engineer to set the right options before running
Make; recipe 3 makes Makefiles self-documenting. If your
builds are not as fast or as reliable as you would like them
to be, this is one presentation you will not want to miss.
[Register now and enter to win an Apple iPod]
http://cmc.u
nisfair.com/index.jsp?id=755
============================================================
==========
Agile – It’s Not the Wild West
by Mario Moreira
============================================================
===========
Agile methods for software development are one of the
hottest movements in the methodology field. Agile methods
provide a means of adapting quickly for teams facing
unpredictable or rapidly changing requirements. Agile
introduces a structured approach to software development
(more structured than most "bandwagon"
enthusiasts realize). This structure ensures that the
customer gets early and periodic views of their solution for
continuous feedback, more assurance that they get a solution
that solves their business needs, and a working solution in
typically a shorter timeframe. Unfortunately, some folks
think Agile is the "wild west" of methodologies
and think it provides them license to throw-out all process
and documentation. Those who think this are sadly mistaken
and give Agile a black eye.
[Read More]
http://www.
cmcrossroads.com/article/64757
============================================================
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CM: THE NEXT GENERATION - Agile Configuration Management
by Joe Farah
============================================================
===========
What is agile CM? If you think it's doing the minimal
amount of CM, think again. Instead, it's minimizing and
streamlining the work to do all of the CM tasks that are
necessary. It adapts to changing CM requirements fairly
easily. Agile CM doesn't just happen - it's a combination
of good CM process, good CM tools, and CM automation. If you
fall short on any of these, your CM process will not be very
agile.
[Read More]
http://www.
cmcrossroads.com/article/64844
============================================================
===========
Product Review - mValent Integrity 3.0.3 Facilitates the
Management of J2EE Application Infrastructure Environments
by Michael Sayko
============================================================
===========
mValent Integrity provides configuration management support
in an area where it is very much needed, managing the
configuration of a J2EE application infrastructure
environment. Key features of this unique tool include:
- the ability to display a consolidated view of the
configuration files, spread across servers, that
comprise an application infrastructure,
- the ability to compare the same configuration file on two
servers,
- the ability to monitor changes to configuration files and
to
trigger an alert notification when a change occurs, and
- the ability to save a working configuration of
application
infrastructure configuration files and use this
configuration
when building a new environment.
These well thought-out features, implemented in a robust
software tool, represent a significant advancement for
viewing, troubleshooting, monitoring, and configuring a J2EE
application infrastructure.
[Read More]
http://www.
cmcrossroads.com/article/64815
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