SOA Manifesto

I have signed the SOA Manifesto. I think it is the right thing to do:

http://www.soa-manifesto.org/

Kanban Values

A new article on Kanban I have seen on the blog of Dr. Arne Roock of the IT-Agile GmbH. Dr. Arne Roock translated the article in german:

"Introducing Kanban through its values"

• Original Version
• German Version

Background information: Dr. Arne Roock is well known for his participation of the german translation of the book "Kanban" by David J. Anderson.

Being Assertive

I thought about calling assertiveness the golden hammer in management, leadership and teamwork but that is pure exageration. If you do not like to work with people at all then forget it. The ability to be assertive should only be applied by people who strife in a team for a common goal.

Assertiveness is a social and communication skill that summarizes everything we want on us and others in our environment. Especially in IT projects. It is a term formed by psychology, communications and anthropology.

Nice article on being assertive: Skills you need
More articles: Assertiveness

After reading several books about agile Processes, Teamwork, Communication, Management and Work, I realized that assertiveness pretty summarizes all you need in one term. Start of Disclaimer - A master of assertiveness should be able to achieve any goal and assertive people are successfull people. - End of Disclaimer.

The problem is the high entry barrier in being assertive. It is comparable to pursue the way of buddha in enlightement. You can pursue it your whole life and still end up as a cow in the middle of nowhere in your next life.

Tools in Software Development

What you should have used inside your processes:

• Continuous Integration -> Jenkins, Bamboo 
• Dependency Management -> Maven, Gradle
• Test Driven Development (TDD) -> Arquilian, Mockito, TestNG
• Documentation -> Maven Sites, Gradle Sites, Confluence
• Build Management -> Maven, Gradle
• Ticket-/Issue/Taskmanagement -> Jira
• Source Code Version Management -> Git, Subversion, Git-Stash
• Code Review ->Crucible

Yes, I Kanban!

I think I have not mentioned it before. But well, Yes, I Kanban. I like that slogan :) I mean I do software Kanban. Kanban is a methodic in mass production. Mass production is a discipline in production management. I think its the perfect buzz word and people want to imply some things.

First of all Kanban kind of rescued the automobile industry. So it will be able to rescue your software development, or? Secondly, it implies that software can be mass produced which is just wrong. So forget that and stick to the virtues of Software Kanban.

How does Software Kanban work? Follow this comic "One Day in Kanban Land".

Do not be misled by the buzz word, Kanban is not just buzz. Kanban is one of many software development methodologies. It can be aligned or combinated with Scrum and Xtreme Programming. It is higly adaptable and can be easily applied to new and running projects. It is considered as the entry stone to agile development.

It belongs in your tool box.