Agile Pain Relief

April 7, 2009 in Software Development by Mark Levison

Ok I’m going completely mad with CCNET and Visual Studio 2005. We’ve got CCNET running from the command line – but wanted to migrate to running it as a service so that it would always be run after a machine restart. The service has the login credentials of the user that runs the command line version today. So in theory they’re the same people.

The ccnet config file:

<cruisecontrol>
 <project name="EndManager" webURL="http://localhost/EndManager">
  <intervalTrigger name="continuous" seconds="30"/>
  <sourcecontrol type="vss">
   <project>$/EndorsementManager_Net</project>
   <workingDirectory>C:\GLOBEXDOTNETVSS\ENDORSEMENTMANAGER_NET</workingDirectory>
   <timeout units="seconds">600</timeout>
   <ssdir>\\vss2\share2\GlobexDotNet</ssdir>
  </sourcecontrol>
  <tasks>
   <devenv solutionfile="C:\GLOBEXDOTNETVSS\ENDORSEMENTMANAGER_NET\Source\EndorsementMgr.sln" configuration="debug" />
   <nunit path="C:\Program Files\NUnit 2.4.8\bin\nunit-console.exe">
    <assemblies>
     <assembly>C:\GLOBEXDOTNETVSS\ENDORSEMENTMANAGER_NET\Source\EndmBaLayer\EndmBaComponentUnitTest\bin\Debug\EndmBaComponentUnitTest.dll</assembly>
    </assemblies>
   </nunit>  
  </tasks>
 </project>
</cruisecontrol>

This contains the much maligned devenv task which we use because its easier than writing an msbuild script for all of the assemblies. The devenv task trys to do the following on the command line:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\devenv.com "C:\GLOBEXDOTNETVSS\ENDORSEMENTMANAGER_NET\Source\EndorsementMgr.sln" /rebuild "debug"

Net result – I get the following wonderfully descriptive error: “the application data folder for visual studio could not be created” What’s up? Is this an environment variable problem? Shouldn’t having the login credentials of the user mean that we get their environment variables?

Any ideas?

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April 6, 2009 in Software Development by Mark Levison

Recently a few good friends have been laid off and I’ve been left thinking what to do after that happens. First up I don’t have any jobs in my back pocket. I don’t know anyone hiring right this second. My thoughts are more general than that.

January 29, 2009 in Software Development by Mark Levison

Moving Stuck Projects Forward: The Clinic Method …The Clinic Method.  What’s this?  It’s a nurses’ station for projects that are sick.  If a project manager or product owner or scrum master or anyone feels that a project is in trouble, it’s a place to go for help.  Get five or six of your best people and have them meet for half a day, once a week. … What does this team do when someone brings a problem?  They don’t solve the problem.  They help that person come up with a positive step to move forward…

The Magic Chemistry of Teams – examines some of the characteristics required to build and renew great teams.

Multi Tasking Myth – we’re often trained to believe that multi-tasking is good either in the small: doing email and answering the phone. Or in the the large working on two or more projects. This item from Jeff Atwood demonstrates the falsehood of both. This picture illustrates the problem:

Handling Large Stories in Agile – a short item on approaches to splitting large stories/features so that they can be completed in a single iteration.

Track Velocity, Not Time Spent on Tasks – reminds us that we ship features/stories to customers not task. While tasks are useful in helping the team plan, estimate and organizing itself – it really doesn’t matter how much time is spent on any one task. Instead what matters is whether the stories are getting completed.

January 28, 2009 in Software Development by Mark Levison

Friday will be my last day at IBM and on Monday I will become an Agile Coach/Trainer for hire, via my open little company: Pure Agile Consulting (sorry no website yet).

I've had a nearly eight year run with a great bunch of people. First at Databeacon and our .NET Rich Client (tip of the hat to Robi, Dave, Marc, Tony, Patrick, Suzzane, Ralph and briefly Hans) – little did you know how far I would take those crazy ideas around unit testing, milestones and reflection. Then Cognos for the death of Corinth and rebirth of PMRC (add to the list Sasa , Viktor, Daniel and Johnathan), PMMT (Brenda, Brian and Steve – aka Chad). Finally IBM and Agile Coaching with people too numerous to name.

Sometime ago I realized that I was no longer passionate about coding and that my interests lie in coaching and mentoring Agile Software Development, TDD etc. Along the way many of you have given me the chance to do coaching/mentoring work and for that I'm grateful. I'm also grateful to everyone who put with my all to frequent harangues about why Agile/TDD etc was better than what we do today. One of the things I have learned since is to ask questions, listen and then harangue Thanks to everyone who helped me evolve

Special thanks to:

• Robi for teaching me a lot about quality and for helping me to get better at writing good code
• A big thanks to Sasa who took a chance on Scrum and put up with a someone who was telling him how to organize his team.
• Ralph for giving me a chance to coach and for keeping me through three rounds of layoffs.
• Guillaume (and the whole BUDDI team) for letting me use BUDDI as an occasional test bed for my coaching and facilitation skills.

An interesting side story on the number of people at each company: Databeacon was ~60 people when I joined and ~30 when we were acquired. Cognos was about 3,500 and IBM is about 400,000. So each time I've been acquired I've joined a company that was 1,000 times larger than its predecessor.

It's been great working with everyone and I look forward to crossing paths again.

My permanent email address is . I would delighted to connect with anyone on Facebook or LinkedIn (yes I've dissed LinkedIn before).

If you want to bring Mark into your organization for Training, Coaching or
Consulting please visit the corporate site: The Agile
Consortium.