Xebia Blog

Why is it that so many people in the IT industry explain themselves using metaphors? The more manager you become the more metaphors people tend to use. I have heard them all the past years: From trains leaving the stations, to riding in the wrong cars, shaking the porcelain closet, building houses (sometimes complete cities), playing with lego, making food, flying birds and so on (feel free to post your favorite metaphor)....
Of course metaphors have their use, but please don't use metaphors by default. Interestingly enough according to Dave Thomas at QCon (unfortunately I missed this talk) especially highly intelligent people tend to explain themselves using metaphors. Keep that in mind the next time someone uses a metaphor to explain themselves to you...
So I say only use metaphors when you are not understood. Instead of saying that the train is almost at the station, just say the deadline is coming close. Don't say how many miles per hour you'd expect us to program (which is of course silly unless the team is actually in a train), but say I thought you would go twice as fast. People can understand that. Try us!

Lars

Filed under: General
3 Comments

Part 2 of our SCRUM Podcast series has just been posted on podcast.xebia.com.

This episode covers;
- Roles within SCRUM - SCRUM Master (see episode 2 for the other 2 roles)
- How the sprint works - Product backlog
- How the sprint works - Planning and Sprint Meeting
- How the sprint works - the rest...
- The burndown chart
- Daily standups

You can get the episode here or subscribe to our podcast here.

Filed under: Agile, Podcast
No Comments

It's wednesday again! and that means a new Xebia Podcast!

This week we continue the Enterprise Java Application Performance Top 10, numbers 8 and 7 with Vincent Partington and Jeroen Borgers.

Number 8 - Incorrect usage of Java EE
More information about number 8 can be found here.

Number 7 - Unnecessary use of XML
More information about number 7 can be found here.

So download the podcast here or better yet! subscribe to one of our rss feeds on http://podcast.xebia.com

Filed under: Java, Performance, Podcast, XML
No Comments

We're not just off, we're rolling on!!

Episode 1 was the first of a series on performance, Episode 2 is the first of a series on Scrum. Grab the episode directly here, or even better, subscribe to one of the feeds at http://podcast.xebia.com

Filed under: Agile, Podcast
3 Comments

Planning is a major aspect of proper project management. Plans are used by project management to direct the project and to monitor if the project is progressing in the right direction. To run a project successfully, you need to have a plan that describes what needs to be done. Without at least an idea of what needs to be done, it is impossible to determine if the project is successful. Hence we need a plan. However, there are many differences in the way that the project plan is used in different project management approaches. The status and role of the plan is not consistent across approaches, which can lead to miscommunication in project teams and to different views on how unexpected situations should be dealt with.

(more...)

Filed under: Agile, Project Management
1 Comment

In the previous two episodes in this series we described the position of Java in the Telecommunications industry, Telemanagement Forum and the basics of OSS/J. This episode focuses on the Order Management API (JSR 264), this is one of the OSS/J APIs being developed using the JCP process (proposed final draft 2 will be released May/June '07). It is also the API we covered during last weeks session at JavaOne.

Order management is a common process and virtually every organization does some sort of order management to ensure that it can process requests from it's customers and deliver the requested product (for example book, car, drivers license) or service (for example telephony, health insurance, TV). The Order Management API is (as far as we know) the only open and standards based API available for order management and therefore is relevant for many organizations developing an order management solution (not telecommunications only). By using this API as a basis for your order management solution you can reuse the knowledge of others (not reinventing the wheel) and reduce your integration costs.

(more...)

Filed under: Java, Telecommunications
1 Comment

And we're off! We've started a podcast geared towards Java, Agile and anything else we find interesting in our line of work. In that sense it has the same focus as this blog. If you like the blog, we hope you like the podcast too!

You can find everything on http://podcast.xebia.com/, including three RSS feeds with different quality files: Enhanced, High quality and Low quality.

The first edition is online, where colleague Vincent talks about the number 10 and 9 of his performance top ten.

Subscribe to get the casts as they come. We have already recorded some sessions that are currently in post-production state. One notable item is an interview with Scrum creator Jeff Sutherland. So subscribe, check out the podcast, and give us feedback on our podcast email!

Filed under: Agile, General, Java, Podcast
3 Comments

The role of the project plan is a hot item in the debate on Agile versus more conventional project management styles. The status or purpose of a plan for the execution of a project is pivotal and indicative for the style and atmosphere in which a project is executed. Personally I have a number resentments towards the way in which the plan is used in traditional led projects. The most important of which is that the plan is leading and everything should be done in accordance with the plan. If something is not in the plan it cannot and should not be done, and everything in the plan needs to be executed diligently. Deviations from the plan are bad and are seen as indicators for failure of the project.

In a series of blog entries we will investigate the role of plans in a project management and try to find some answers on what the role of the plan should be, how the use of a plan affects the effectiveness of a project management approach and how it affects the way you deal with people.

As you can judge from the title, in my opinion one should not try to map the plan to the day to day reality of the project. Unexpected things will always occur and new insights will blossom. Project management must and should want to deal with that in the most constructive way, even if it was not part of the plan. The success of a project greatly depends on how one deals with unexpected events. Reality can be a real pain, especially if it does not stick to the plan.

Filed under: Agile, Project Management
1 Comment

For a current project I use maven 1 as build tool. I always generate the eclipse plugin for generating the .project and .classpath file because I do not want to add dependencies both in the project.xml and the eclipse classpath. The eclipse plugin can also link the source files to the dependencies in your project, I find this a handy feature because you always need to debug and step through the code of some dependency.
However since the maven 1 repository is maintained even worse as the maven 2 repository you won't find any sources jars for the newer versions of dependencies (for instance Spring 2.0). Besides this being very annoying the eclipse plugin also takes ages to finish because it gets a lot of time-outs about not being able to download the sources jars from the maven 1 repository. That's why I created a small Jelly script that made it is possible to traverse through the maven 2 repository and grab the sources jars from there. Here's the smelly Jelly that made it all possible:
(more...)

Filed under: Eclipse, Maven
No Comments