At the beginning of the year, the Integrum team compiled a list of company goals for 2008. One of our goals was to participate in a charity event in order to give back to the community. On June 7th, the Integrum team will be participating in Big Brothers Big Sisters annual Bowl for Kids Sake event.
If you'd like to help us reach our goal, please visit my page or our team page to donate online. Every little bit counts, and we really appreciate your support!
Last week I celebrated my twenty-fourth birthday, and my crossover into my 'mid-twenties.' Ahhhh I'm such an old fart! :) It got me to thinking about whether or not I'm happy with what I've done in the last 24 years, and I must say that overall, I'm pretty proud of myself.
I wanted to say thanks to everyone who celebrated my birthday with me and made it amazing. I must say I felt more appreciated than I have in a long time. The day was full of lovely birthday treats, just look at this stuff!!
Thanks to Heidmo&Aeree, Gist, Dan, Mom, Steph and Jenna for all the goodies, and everyone else for all the birthday wishes!!
Here's to the 25th year!
I’ve removed my stylesheet today to participate in CSS Naked Day. Here is the official description of this event:
The idea behind this event is to promote Web Standards. Plain and simple. This includes proper use of (x)html, semantic markup, a good hierarchy structure, and of course, a good ‘ol play on words. It’s time to show off your <body>.
So go get naked, everybody’s doin’ it!
I've been working on reading Agile Estimating and Planning by Mike Cohn, so I figured I would post my notes here as a follow up to my notes on Extreme Programming Explained. The book starts by introducing the purpose of planning, and why traditional methods of planning fail. Right from the beginning (even the title), it stresses that the estimating and planning process itself must be agile. Planning should reveal what should be done and when, and estimating should reveal how big a project really is.
The reason I picked up this book was to read about release and iteration planning, so those are the parts I will highlight here. I have never personally be involved in a release planning meeting, and we talk a lot at Integrum about how we need to be better about release planning. We've also tested out a handful of iteration planning techniques, so I was really interested in what this book had to say.
Release planning produces a high-level plan that involves about 3-6 months worth of work. It helps the product owner and the team decide how long it will be before they have a releasable product. It sets expectations about the time-frame for a project - what will be done, and when? The author says, "without the concept of a release, teams move endlessly from one iteration to the next." I can attest, it is disheartening to developers to work and work without a release in sight. The steps of release planning are as follows:
Iteration planning provides a short-term, detailed view of the work for one iteration within a project's release. It helps lead the team into a discussion about product design and set expectations for the customer about what features will be completed in the current iteration. The result of an iteration planning session should be a spreadsheet or index cards stating the stories, as well as tasks that go with each story. The book outlines two types of iteration planning; Velocity-driven and Commitment-driven.
Velocity-driven planning involves determining the target velocity based on an average of past iterations, then choosing the top prioritized stories that will fit within that velocity.
Commitment-driven planning involves choosing the top prioritized story from the backlog, writing tasks for that story, and then asking the team if they can commit to delivering that entire story in the current iteration. This process is repeated until the team can no longer add stories to the iteration.
The team at Integrum has tried both these methods of iteration planning. We recently switched back to velocity-driven planning, since the general feeling was that commitment-driven planning created too much overhead. Mike Cohn recommends commitment-driven planning because he feels it is more accurate than relying on story points and "yesterday's weather." What do you think?
These are just the highlights I took from Agile Estimating and Planning by Mike Cohn. For more information, go read it yourself! Please comment with thoughts or experiences on release/iteration planning. Thanks!
I mentioned before that I was still working on my six-word memoir. It's really hard to convey your life in only six words. After much thought, I came up with something that I think suits me pretty well. I can't explain it, because then it would be a 100-word memoir, so use your imagination. :)
What's yours?
Ruby/Rails developer and wannabe pastry chef. :)
Welcome to ooochie.com! I'm Lindsay Ucci, a web developer workin' my life away at Integrum Technologies, a rails consulting shop in Chandler, Arizona... and having tons of fun doing it.
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