Category Archives: Organizational

System integration requires breadth of knowledge

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As a system integration engineer you need a broad range of skills. These skills are probably more likely to be defined by a breadth of knowledge rather than a depth of knowledge. Skills must include general software engineering (or plain coding…), knowledge about protocols, but most importantly general problem solving skills. Plus it helps if you can’t stand the words ‘I think that will never work’, because a lot of times it takes a fair bit of tenacity to pull it all together.

Purple Pancakes

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This weekend me and the kids decided to do something different. Something a bit crazy. We decided to make purple pancakes. At the grocery store we bought some purple coloring, and after making the batter we added some purple to it (and yes, I knew the kids might get a bit overexcited from this, but sometimes you have to take the risk).

The intended effect really came to life and Saturday evening we ate some delicious deep purple pancakes!

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Freedom of Choice

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Software development is a creative engineering process. Successful software projects require teams of highly skilled modern day craftsmen. Each individual has her/his way of getting into that creative state of mind and has their own environment preferences.

Why should a company’s choice of tooling stand in the way of these creative minds. One person might really be into NetBeans and another into IntelliJ. Why decide for them?

This is why we think that each developer should choose her/his own toolset/IDE.

An interesting observation however is that most developers end up converging to the same toolset in the end…

To Boldly Retro Where no one has Retroed Before!

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Several years ago I picked up a copy of Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great at a used bookstore. I’ll be honest, the main reason I bought it was that it was cheap. Yep. That and the fact I liked Pragmatic Thinking and The Pragmatic Programmer so much, two other books from the same series.

After reading it, I remember not being overly convinced and my general opinion was that it was a bit shallow and obvious. Not on par with those other books from the Pragmatic Bookshelf I read previously anyway. I put it on my shelf and never really used it again.

A few weeks ago I agreed to lead a retrospective for an Avisi team I used to be a member of. Knowing the team and their circumstances so well, I felt comfortable to finally try to use Agile Retrospectives for real…

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Security is Important, but how Important is It?

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Is security important? Of course it is, but it seems like a lot of people don’t really occupy themselves with it too much. I understand that of course because security can definitely be a hassle. I guess the most important thing regarding security though is that people are consequent in their actions.

So let’s do a bit of self reflection on the issue:

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The Royal Goodbye

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Yesterday we had to say goodbye to someone we collaborated with on a couple of projects for almost 3 years. The 3 party project we were recently working on together is done and his employer found a new challenge for him elsewhere.

As is our tradition, we like to say goodbye properly and take the opportunity to thank people for their contributions when they leave us. Of course it’s also a good opportunity for all of us to get together and have a good time outside of the office.

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A bug’s life

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It turns out not to be an easy task to control issue databases. Without proper care, they turn into big cabinets filled with bugs that nobody looks after.

Just as with bugs in real life, make sure issues are short-lived. That is… unless you are dead-sure that your issue will pupate and turn into a wonderful butterfly in a year from now.

 

Preserving Documents Forever

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The goal of my current project is to save documents forever. Yes, forever! I know that can sound a bit silly, but the idea really is that these documents should be preserved (and be usable) for generations to come.

The Background

So first, a look back at recent history… Think about a document created in 1991, about twenty years ago. There’s a very good chance it was made in WordPerfect 5.1. The old-timers reading this blog will no doubt have fond memories of that one… But back to today, how on earth are we going to open that file? Well it’s Google to the rescue!

But I guess you do get my point.

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