Agile Complexification Inverter

Why do we always have to be #1? I've never understood it - the drive to call yourself #1 - when clearly it is only fleeting or a delusion in the first place (pun intended). Here's an example - do you think the US has the fastest Internet speeds? Are we #1? We invented the damn thing (well, Al Gore did and he was almost a US president). Why shouldn't we have the best internet? It's our right. Who could possibly touch us in download speed? Well the facts are not what perception might lead you to believe. The US has slow download speeds on average. Not even in the top 3, not the top 10, - yep we make the "also showed" list in the top 20. (2008 data) My down load speed is great - I pay for Comcast cable and get at times 30 Mbps (30 Mega bits per second - not bytes). Check your download speed with Speakeasy . According to The Wall Street Journal, "countries like Japan enjoy download speeds of up to 30 times faster than the average in the U.S." Howev...

The Aquatic Ape theory . An interesting talk at TED by Elaine Morgan. the naked link - hairless mammals are come from the water the subcutaneous fat link - like blubber we have it, apes don't the bipedal locomotion link - only animals to walk upright do it in water

Reading 'Managing Agile' blog - did you hear about a new Agile Software Craftsmanship Manifesto ? Charl Dreyer ask if we need a clarifying manifesto for the Agile Manifesto . I vote no. You can cast a vote also on his blog. I'm interested in the outcome. I like what the Craftsmanship group is saying, I think it well said. But just because you were late to the party, don't try to start your own party. Thereby spiting or confusing the group of party goers. I also believe they have started in the middle of a conversation. They are clearly (if you know the secret handshake) talking in reference to the Agile Manifesto, but have not given reference to it. If one doesn't know the Agile Manifesto then the Craftsmanship Manifesto doesn't have value. Now had they invited me to the Agile Manifesto meeting maybe they would have come up with the craftsmanship angle.... Why - because I would have been skiing up at Alta and having a blast. There is real craftsmanship...

Juliet:  What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet . Well you could look up Agile , then Complexification , then Inverter and concate the meaning - or - you could just say it's a blog trying to simplify Agile software development theory and practice. Along with other rants & ramblings I may have on the world at large. The name derives from a company I use to work for, where one of the developers noted that our software was a 'complexifier'. The term has sticking power with me; although its not a word in your store bought dictionary, you know what it means instantly.   So what's in a name...  many have asked this question... here's a great essay on naming from Grok Earth - Earthly Naming

Computers should never be compared to a human brain. Computer just don’t measure up. What we know about the brain is amazing, what we don’t is unknown (I can just hear  Rumsfeld now… [sorry down that path leads to insanity] ). One of the funny things about what we know about brains - most of it, the predominate research is upon American graduate students, so this may give a unique bias to much of what we think we know about the brain, how it is structured and how it learns. Rules of memory 'beautifully' rewritten By James Gallagher, April 2017 - BBC News "The US and Japanese team found that the brain "doubles up" by simultaneously making two memories of events. One is for the here-and-now and the other for a lifetime, they found. It had been thought that all memories start as a short-term memory and are then slowly converted into a long-term one." http://www.ted.com/talks/tom_wujec_on_3_ways_the_brain_creates_meaning.html In this video you can wa...

The mythical 2×4 stretcher analogy. When I was in high school I worked with the school maintenance crew. This was in the late 1970s when schools were growing and therefore tearing down old buildings to construct new modern building on the site. Given that construction of the new building would take several years the problem of where to house classrooms durning the destruction/construction years was typically solved by building classrooms in the gym and auditorium. The first summer I worked with the crew we were constructing one of these temporary classrooms in a gym. I was the gopher for Ike, and old codger who was always up to something. One fellow was measuring and calling out dimensions and Ike and I were cutting 2×4s to length, as fast as we could go. I would hold the 2×4 on the saw horses and Ike would measure, mark, and cut, then I would run the piece over to a pair that would nail it in place. We were all working fast, a well functioning team. When Ike, exclaimed, “$#!T, I...

So you use a Fist of Five consensus building technique to make decisions. That’s great! Does everyone in your group know what a five really means? While reading about building a shared vision in the organization today, I ran across several words that the authors made a particular point to define and distinguish between them. Those words were: commitment , enrollment , and compliant . When discussing a corporate shared vision the distention between these is very important! For to have your organization truly committed to the vision is very different that enrolled in the vision or just compliant with the vision. The author states that real commitment is rare in today’s organizations. In his experience “90 percent of the time, what passes for commitment is compliance” ( Senge, 2006 ). The committed person brings passion and energy to the endeavor, they don’t play by the rules of the game, they feel responsible for the game itself, and if required change the game to achieve the go...

Have you ever found yourself using a tool in a most unusual way? A way in which you are sure that the designer of the tool never intend the tool to be used. Is this behavior a good thing or a bad thing? Is this new usage a testimonial to the original design of the tool, or to your lack of judgment in selection of the tool, or perhaps a statement of frustration at the situation? What do these images bring to mind? Who needs a box-end wrench when you have channel locks? Beat it or pull it. Is it Hammer-Time? Who's calling? Pardon me while I see if you are on the level. So which iPhone application do YOU use the most? Is it the phone? I’ll bet it is not! Was that the original intention of this wonderful device? Certainly of the tools above I have used the hammer the most in my life and in the most creative ways beyond the intention of the designer. After all Mr. Hammer (inventor of the tool) did not intend it to be used as a weight tied to a rope and thrown over a tree l...

I think Joel was the first I heard this sage advice from – you can live with a cheap desk, but you need an expensive chair. Oops - by Jake Cress Yes, I too want that really impressive desk in the corner office. But day-in and day-out what I need is a really expensive (read well designed) desk chair. What is the cost ratio of desk to chair? Where is the sweet spot? I’d really like to find this data and see a plot. So let’s talk about the desk/chair issue, wants versus needs. I need a desk that meets my needs. At SolutionsIQ we have arrived at a desk that allows us to pair program (it is wide enough), to arrange and rearrange in minimum of time (about 2 hours max for a team of 7 – 12 people), to move a container (the desk) not items to a new container (personal items to a new cubicle), all for around $800 – $1000 per desk. It has met the needs of hundreds of developers for years now in the development bays of our office. They are not perfect (no built-in personal sound sy...

What’s the guy that invented the Web up to theses days? No, not Al Gore, he’s saving the world one climate at a time ( Repower America ). I’m referring to Tim. It has only been 20 years ago that Tim Berners-Lee had this crazy idea of hyper linked documents that became a paper, then an implementation, and grew into a movement. A movement that you are involved with as you read this page. He now has another crazy idea about the underlying data of all these documents on the web. Watch his TED video where he explains Linked Data, join the movement at the grass roots level. How can we create linked data? If you think you can not because it is our clients data, not ours; then I’d ask you to re-think that, and change your paradigm. That’s what happened 20 years ago. Here's Tim's 2010 TED talk , where he shows how quickly the community built the map for Port Au Prince after the Haiti earthquake.

I’ve noticed a new trend—people have been gaining titles. When I was younger, only doctors had initials (like MD) after their names. I always figured that was because society held doctors, and sometime priests (OFM) in such high regard that we wanted to point out their higher learning. I hope it was to encourage others to apply themselves in school and become doctors also. Could it have been boastful? Achievements for "the Great" post-nominal The Wikipedia describes these “post-nominal initials”: Post-nominal letters, also called post-nominal initials, are letters placed after the name of a person to indicate that the individual holds a position, educational degree, accreditation, office, or honor. An individual may use several different sets of post-nominal letters. The order in which these are listed after a name is based on the order of precedence and category of the order. That’s good enough for me. So I ask you: is the use of CSM or CSP an appropriate use of ...

The TelephoneNumber class was designed to use the java.text.MessageFormat class to format a US phone number with the proper characters and spacing. The class excepts numbers any many different ways and parses them into it's internal data so that it can display the phone number in the standard way, i.e. (800) 555-1212. It can even accept an alpha number like "877 HOLY-COW" and with the right options format it as alpha or numbers. The TelephoneNumber class represents a US telephone number. This class contains many constructors for various uses. It then stores the telephone number internally in seperate codes (area code, exchange, etc.). This encourages use of the format method to output the telephone number in any style the programmer wishes. [needs i18n work] Example usage: long number = 8005551212L; TelephoneNumber phone = new TelephoneNumber(number); StringBuffer msg = new StringBuffer("Call me at "); msg.append(phon...