Agile adoption areas of concern

I'm at the Agile Comes to You seminar in Chicago, sponsored by AnthillPro, Rally Software and AccuRev.

Our hosts asked each table of attendees to come up with a top "current challenge, obstacle or area of concern you have while planning or scaling your Agile adoption." Then the collected them, put them on a slide and had a panel discuss the concerns.

I thought the room's collected concerns are an interesting snapshot of where agile adoption currently stands, so I present them here:

BARcamp starts in a week

I'm one of the organizers for...

What?	BARcamp Chicago 2008
Web?	http://barcampchicago.com
When?	20:00 (8pm) Friday Aug 15 - 20:00 (8:00pm) Sunday Aug 17
Where?	A University of Illinois at Chicago commercial space at 1240 W. Harrison St, Chicago, IL 60607 (pictures)
Who?	You and lots of others (http://barcampchicago.com/index.php?wiki=AttendeeList)
Why?	http://barcampchicago.com/index.php?wiki=WhyPage

Also, bring your instruments for a jam! (Yes, I'll be there with the banjo.)

Censorzilla

I am far too amused by this obscenity-filled list of source code comments from early Mosaic code.

Aspect-oriented SharePoint

Had a discussion today about whether aspect-oriented programming is supported in SharePoint. Kevin Hoffman has an interesting take on this topic: "Windows SharePoint Services v3's Features - Aspect-Oriented Administration?"

Scanning Grandma's photos

I spent a chunk of Labor Day weekend at Grandma's, scanning some great old photos. Here's a quick, techie outline of my approach. Comments are invited.

• I scanned to loss-less TIF for quality.
• I scanned at 600 dpi for most photos, 1200 dpi for the most important photos.
• I want to upload the files to a private area on Flickr so that family and friends can create their own prints.
• I plan to create a build script that will accept one XML file per photo (containing caption and such information) and will use...
  • IrfanView to convert the TIF to a JPG,
  • EXIFutils to add EXIF information like caption and tags, and
  • PowerShell to hook the whole thing together.

Fun with Ape Lad's HTTP errors photoset

I put together a little game you can play with Ape Lad's HTTP errors photoset. (Hat tip to BoingBoing.)

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Watch the slide show and guess what HTTP error code an image refers to. Then click. The slide show will pause and tell you the answer.

Goto considered harmful, the comic

xkcd.com has a comic strip update to Edsger Dijkstra's 1968 classic "Go To Statement Considered Harmful".

Good idea for conference evaluation forms

My business partner Don writes to tell me about a good use for SharePoint:

Now here’s a cool feature Microsoft implemented in their conference SharePoint communication site. Instead of passing out paper evaluation forms, your badge (a proximity card) is scanned when you enter a session. When you get back to your hotel and log onto the conference site, there is a list of online evaluation forms just for the sessions you attended and have not yet filled out an evaluation form.

Cliff's Notes for a Team System Install

One of AgileTek's tech leads just pointed me to Cliff's Notes for a Team System Install. He describes it as a "short and sweet" alternative to Microsoft's full-blown installation instructions and says, "I wish I had had them before I started the install."

Using Subversion clients with Team Foundation Server

Brian Harry tells us about SvnBridge, a server bridge that allows Subversion clients to connect to TFS.

Project sluts getting all the attention

The Business of Software interview with Tim Lister is getting lots of attention because of Lister's provocative term "project sluts." That's one of many project patterns that Lister and friends will be describing in their upcoming book, tentatively titled Project Patterns: From Adrenalin Junkies to Template Zombies.

Project sluts are teams that can't say no; the Ado Annie of software.

But I think several of his other project patterns are noteworthy, like seasons for change and -- surely to be one of my favorites -- testing before testing.

BARcamp, juggling and Java

It's been two busy weeks, but I'm finally organizing my notes from BARcamp Chicago.

I met Erik Costlow because he saw me juggling and, after we did a couple of partner juggling tricks (he's much better than I am), we got to talking and discovered that we were both alumni of Gamma Phi Circus.

Erik recommended several Eclipse plug-ins that sound pretty good:

Project	URL(s)
Format On Save	autoupdate
Groovy IDE	autoupdate
Spring IDE	autoupdate
Subclipse 1.2.x (Eclipse 3.2+)	autoupdate
Eclipse WTP (the eclipse plugin manager will resolve your dependencies)	???
Ivy - Java dependency manager - resolved the jars in your project through ibiblio	info
Eclipse IvyDE	autoupdate
JodaTime jars	info

Erik also recommends the Java Posse podcast and the Crypto-Gram Security Podcast.

OpenMoko

I almost hate to point this out to people because it looks like a great product with a shoddy website, but I really like the looks of OpenMoko.

Perhaps the site is just getting hammered because of the OpenMoko's mentions on Boing Boing and on Slashdot.