Review: The Professional Scrum Masters Handbook
I was asked recently to review The Professional Scrum Masters Handbook. As I read this book there were times that I shouted at it and I almost stopped reading in disgust around chapter 4.
The great Team Foundation Server 2013 Upgrade Weekend
The product team have put some more engineering resources where their mouth is and the great Team Foundation Server 2013 Upgrade Weekend will be on September 13-15.
The evolution of naked ALM with Pagelines DMS for Wordpress
The evolution of naked ALM with Pagelines DMS for Wordpress is a story of successful change. All you have to do is learn to compromise and aspire to the easy 80%.
A change for the better #4 - Homecoming
Yet another change for the better as I move in a few months back to Scotland to join my family. My flights are booked. As a family we decided not to stay in the USA and while we had financial obligation here we also needed to make sure that the kids got back into the right point in School. In the UK School starts just after 4 years old where as in the USA its 5. As our kids are 4 and 6 now they started in the USA and were already a year behind. My wife and I decided that it would be best to get them into the last school year and so in January I sadly bid farewell to them all and have been relegated to Skype since then…
Integrate reporting and analyses services with Team Foundation Server 2013
Did you skip reporting and now you want to integrate reporting and analyses services with Team Foundation Server 2013? Lets assume for a minute that you did not install Reporting Servers or Analysis Services with your install of Team Foundation Server 2013. I often get asked if you can add it later… and the answer is a resounding yes. This might be the same procedure if you want to have Analysis Services and Reporting Services on separate server for performance or if you just choose not to install it or even if you started with TFS Basic.
Searching for self-organisation
Many companies have started searching for self-organisation. That ideal or nirvana where teams can figure out how to work together effectively with limited or little direction to solve problems. Many, including some of my colleagues, believe that this search for self-organisation is ultimately fruitless. While many of our customers don’t initially believe in its existence because they have never seen it my colleagues think it impossible because they see company after company fail to achieve it. This is mostly as companies that call use are not ding so because they are awesome but instead because they see that they have some problem that needs looking into. These companies, while realising the need to change, tend to have an organisational structure and culture that presents an anti-pattern for self organising teams to ever exist. Oh, you will occasionally find small pockets of self-organisation within an organisation but if anyone tries to roll this dynamic out, it is ultimately demonstrated as unworkable due to those anti-patterns and those required traits and patterns are then ground out of people.
Integrate SharePoint 2013 with Team Foundation Server 2013
You can integrate SharePoint 2013 with Team Foundation Server 2013 at any time and even link to your corporate SharePoint*. Although I use, install, and configure SharePoint often, I have a saying that I have used in relation to that work with SharePoint and I think it is very relevant now.
Review Part 1: Unboxing the Intel Haswell Harris Beach SDS Ultrabook
I was contacted just over a week ago and asked if I would like to review the new developer Ultrabook from Intel, a “Harris Beach SDS Ultrabook SDP - PVT2 ISV”. Geek stuff, wohoo… (composure) … Why sure, I would love to review your new device.
Quality enablement to achieve predictable delivery
You need quality enablement to achieve predictable delivery for your organisation which takes effort to achieve. I do a lot of ALM Assessments for companies and almost every customer that I speak to has unpredictable quality in the software delivery that they receive from their teams. This is not always the Development Teams fault and is often the result of an organisation that is finely tuned to minimise the ability to have a defined and predictable level of quality. In most cases this is due to a lack of a bar that quantifies the minimum things that need to be completed in order for and organisation to understand what i involved in each delivery.
Team Foundation Server 2013 is production ready
Did you know that Team Foundation Server 2013 is production ready? I have already deployed it at two customers with a grand total of zero problems so far. The product team are so confident that they have upgraded their main DevDiv server to 2013.
