ACE! Conference 2015 is (unfortunately) over. Great time, great people, great event! It was the first time I attended an agile conference, and I have to admit, I enjoyed it. I listened to few really interesting talks, and I had some interesting conversations with other attendees. There were also some very interesting discussions during the…
Ending Life of Kanban Cards (Vlad The Impaler Fatality)
The question is what to do with the kanban cards after they were taken from your kanban board? The simplest answer is to “throw them away”. Well, yes, sure, they are not needed anymore. My colleagues from the next-door team (hello @tkowalcz!) have a different idea. The cards end up on a stake. Sweet, isn’t…
Retro Game – New Year Predictions
The beginning of a year seems like a good time for some predictions. Today I planned a very short and simple game for my team to check our future telling abilities. I have printed out a short form with some questions related to our product and the team. The questions were are aimed at the…
Thinking in Systems – Book Review
I’ve been reading “Thinking in Systems” by Donella H. Meadows recently. A good book, definitely worth my time (and yours probably as well). Among many interesting things I have found three, which draw my attention, because of some IT/programming connotations. Big Black Box Well, yes. A poem. It is about systems, but fits quite nicely…
Finding Latest Versions of Dependencies With Maven
From time to time it is good to see what are the latest versions of the libraries you use (because maybe you would like to upgrade). You can use the Versions Maven Plugin like this: mvn versions:display-dependency-updates versions:display-plugin-updates but the output is too verbose. And for multi-module project you will get flooded with same information…
KDE vs. Gnome vs. Unity vs. Windows 3.1
Recently during the lunch at work, we have discussed the operating systems. You know, the usual Windows vs. Linux vs. Mac stuff. The discussion wasn’t very interesting, because no one opted for Windows. 🙂 So, lacking an opponent, we moved to some Linux related issues. [from: http://guide.notizie.it/come-evitare-una-flame-war/] During the discussion I realized how I do…
4 Cool Online Tools
It amazes me how many great tools you can find on the web! In this post I describe 4 of them. I hope you find them useful. Decode and Encode Base64 I know it is only a line of two of coding, but this comes quite handy when you need to decode/encode base64 stuff: http://decodebase64.com/….
Ishikawa Diagram
Today I have learned about Ishikawa diagram (AKA fishbone diagrams, herringbone diagrams, cause-and-effect diagrams, or Fishikawa). And I started to wonder whether it makes sense to use it to diagnose the issues related to the production of software. (I will not explain Ishikawa diagram in this post, so please have a look at Wikipedia description…
Code Reviews Mindmap
Code reviews. Very helpful if done right, completely useless if done recklessly. Below you will find a mindmap of “code review” (using Xmind). I simply sat down and tried to gather everything related to code reviews. Hopefully you will find some food for thought here. Some comments: I knew one team lead (hello Marcin! 🙂…
Taking Over a Project
So I’m taking over a new project as a technical team lead. This team has been working for some time (for a long time). Now my task is to lead its further development. I’m excited and worried at the same time. I spent some time wondering about what should I know about this new project…