Archive : August 2009

Kanban for Bench Projects

Dietrich Kappe, Monday, August 31, 2009 @ 4:51 am

photo credit: alq666

As a software development company, we mostly work on client projects. Occasionally one project doesn't start right when another ends. In that short interval, we would like to work on something useful -- in house products, R&D projects, etc.. Unfortunately, we can't run these "bench" projects the way we run a normal project. We can't do two or even one week iterations, because some folks may only be on the bench for a few days. So, how do you apply these resources efficiently? Here are a few tricks we use:

1. Divide work into very small pieces -- no epic user stories!
2. Keep your technology as vanilla as possible to reduce the learning curve.
3. Use Kanban to organize the work.

What is Kanban? There's some good explanations of it over at Wikipedia and InfoQ, but just like Agile and the feedback loop, it helps to know the basic principles so you can figure out how it will work for you. From the InfoQ article:

A Kanban is a signaling device (usually a physical card in a clear plastic envelope) that instructs the moving or creating of parts in a "pull" production system, invented and developed as part of the Toyota Production System (TPS).

[...]

Kanban's aim is to minimize WIP (Work-In-Process), or inventory, between processes by making sure that the upstream process produces parts only if its downstream process needs it. "Pull" means that the downstream workers withdraw or "pull" the parts they need from their upstream processes.

So, the basic principles are "pull" and minimizing "work-in-progress." Let's see how this applies to the bench.

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Chiphone Meeting: Chicago iPhone user group gets its TDD on

John McCaffrey, Friday, August 28, 2009 @ 10:25 am

Eric Smith from 8th light gave a hands-on TDD presentation at last night's Chiphone meeting, hosted at Obtiva's downtown office, (conveniently located near the the train).

There was a good crowd of people, most attendees have 'played around' with iphone development, 4 have actively developed apps (3 people have live apps in the store).  From my quick survey of those that have submitted apps, it seems most of them were free utility apps or simple games, with at least one commercial app Dash for Confluence. It also seemed that no one had yet needed to do any animation beyond the basics, with just a bit of core-animation, but no need for more lower-level openGL or animation engines.

Eric started off by saying that he's given talks on iPhone testing, but that just telling people what to do is not the same as letting them experience it for themselves,  so we did a Randori, where a pair starts working on some code, and every 3 minutes one person from the pair swaps out and chooses his replacement from the crowd.

What I liked about this was that I felt like I got to know the audience better, and actually watch people reason their way through the code or a testing/mocking issue.  (You know how sometimes you go to a user group, and it can be hard to get a chance to talk to others, or sometimes there is a 'know-it-all' guy, and you just want him to shut up. Knowing that you are going to have to go up there and code is a great way to silence those types)

When it was my turn,  there was an interesting issue with one of the tests that had us all stumped for a bit, but ultimately ended up being one of those problems where you need to deconstruct everything and build it back up. (The issue was that while we were trying to set fooController.textView.text = @"foobar", we hadn't instantiated a textView object, or set it on the controller yet.)
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Bridging the Gap Between Rails Developers and HTML Designers

Noel Rappin, Friday, August 28, 2009 @ 9:56 am

To make a cheap joke and paraphrase a common quote, web developers and web designers are two groups separated by common languages. In our case, the languages are HTML and CSS, which are the output of both the web design process and the web development process. Developers and designers produce their HTML/CSS in different ways and with different goals. Here are some ideas for bridging the gap so that the developers and designers on your team can work together smoothly.

Designers and developers obviously have different goals for their HTML -- developers have issues of reducing duplication, organization, and performance that are largely not the designer's concerns. The designer is primarily concerned with how the HTML looks and behaves to the user.

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Signs of the Nextpocalypse

Matt Nolker, Thursday, August 27, 2009 @ 1:11 pm

Q: What is the NewNet?

a) The increasing prevalence user-generated information on the Internet
b) Push-web triumphs over pull-web
c.) Social media
d) An attempt to sell subscriptions to Om Malik's new "research" service

Answer: d. GigaOm Pro: Fresh Internet buzzwords, unsullied by the taint of the latest crash. Can I have my Web 2.0 back, please?

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Making Vaadin, PureMVC and Grails Work Together

Dietrich Kappe, Thursday, August 27, 2009 @ 11:16 am

On seeing that someone had developed a Grails Plugin for Vaadin (the former ITMill Toolkit, based on GWT as a front end technology), I immediately grabbed it and started exploring. One of the first things I do when developing things that look like GUI's is apply PureMVC to it. It's sort of like a big MVC switchboard that lets you hook together the smaller MVC's of whatever framework you're using. Overkill for really simple applications. Crucial for big ones.

Building a PureMVC app was pretty quick, but I ran into a small problem. Since PureMVC Multicore uses a Multiton pattern (essentially a map of Singletons), when Grails recompiles and restarts on code changes, the application barfs with a "Facade already constructed" runtime error. The solution is simple. In your subclassed org.puremvc.java.multicore.patterns.facade.Facade, change the following:

  public static ApplicationFacade getInstance() {
    if (instance == null) {
      instance = new ApplicationFacade(CORE)
    }
    return instance
  }

to this:

  public static ApplicationFacade getInstance() {
    if (instance == null) {
      // nuke the multiton so we can do the grails recompile
      if (ApplicationFacade.hasCore(CORE)) {
        ApplicationFacade.removeCore(CORE)
      }
      instance = new ApplicationFacade(CORE)
    }
    return instance
  }

And voila, your app now recompiles and runs without a hitch, just like a Grails app should. (CORE is a string constant to name your core.)

Related Services: Java Application Development, Custom Software Development

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Using Mocha for ActiveRecord Partial Mocks with Finders

Anthony Caliendo, Wednesday, August 26, 2009 @ 10:37 am

Mocha on sparklette.net

Mocha is the mocking library used by the Rails team, so it has understandably gained some traction among Rails developers. I have started using it over flexmock lately, but ran into some problems with partial mocks on ActiveRecord objects. The problem stemmed from the fact that ActiveRecord instantiates new records when returning records from finders, which meant that creating partial mocks for a particular record was difficult.

I created a helper method to make this easier, and so far it has cleaned up a bit of my tests.
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Building a High Performance Agile Team: Assume You Will Be a One Hit Wonder

Michael Walkden, Tuesday, August 25, 2009 @ 9:34 am

One thing about agile teams is that they constantly strive to get better. In my experience an Agile team takes 2-4 iterations to work through the forming stage. By iteration 10 or so the team is past forming and storming and is well into norming. At this stage the team is often moving fast enough or better than expected for the business’ needs. Now the team faces a dilemma: How to become a high performance team and why.

If you don’t keep improving and innovating your competitors will.  However, there is another reason to keep improving that is often missed.  The current success might be temporary or an anomaly.

Don’t fall into the trap of a one hit wonder.

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Software Development and Wasted Motion

Dietrich Kappe, Tuesday, August 25, 2009 @ 3:15 am

All the good stories in agile software development start "three manufacturing efficiency experts walk into a bar..." But seriously, I think it's clear that software development has a greater affinity to manufacturing than to construction. So, its good to see the Lean and manufacturing folks get a little blog buzz over at AgileSoftwareDevelopment.com with Jack Milunky's post The 7 Software Development Wastes - Lean series Part 5 - Motion:

Waste #5 in manufacturing is defined as Motion. And motion can be compared to "task switching" in Software Development - as defined by the thought leaders applying Lean thinking to software development.

[...]

I have found in many organizations, especially software companies where there is a real casual atmosphere, it's easy to always interrupt developers. Interruptions are prevalent with requests. All this interruption only serves to add to the Motion bucket of waste. This is where the importance of a Product Owner, ScrumMaster and Backlog come in. These roles and any artifact are there to buffer the development teams from the noise and chaos outside of the current sprint activities.

Sometimes being able to reference another discipline, like manufacturing, lends credibility to discussions with a stakeholder. More often than not, many consider themselves to be an expert on software development but wouldn't dream of challenging an expert on manufacturing.

Related Services: Agile Development, Custom Software Development

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Thinking about starting a SaaS or eCommerce business?

Paul Dittmann, Monday, August 24, 2009 @ 7:15 am

I’m approached by people every week that think they have a great “new” idea for a web startup.   The ideas run the gamut from those that aren’t yet technologically possible to those “new” ideas that I have received 10 similar calls on over the past year.   Here are some things to consider:

Think about the business need and revenue model first.  Who are the users (your “customers”), what is the application or service worth to them, how many of them are there, etc.   If you can’t envision generating a million dollars plus a year in SaaS (Software as a Service) revenue or in gross margin for an eCommerce business, it’s probably going to be an expensive hobby, not a business.

Make sure you can create a sustainable competitive advantage.  What are your differentiators?  If you have to say I want a site like “xxxxxx”, you are probably starting off on the wrong foot.   You already have at least one competitor with a customer base.   Continue reading »

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Rails Testing First Look: Blue Ridge

Noel Rappin, Friday, August 21, 2009 @ 10:26 am

Blue Ridge Mountains by eleda 1

So, I tried Blue Ridge for the first time yesterday and I thought I'd write down some quick impressions. Hence, Rails Testing First Look.

Disclaimer: We came into this tool so cold our toes froze. We fumbled, we made mistakes, we probably missed really great ways of doing things. I look forward to being enlightened.

Let's do this question-and-answer style: Continue reading »

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Developing Good Wireframes Ahead of Visual Design

Vena Chitturi, Thursday, August 20, 2009 @ 1:39 pm

In the design process, the wireframes focus on the structure/layout of elements on the screen, and the interaction that the screens will provide. The visual design focuses on aspects of design such as colors, graphics, branding and mood.

Design encompasses both of these, and both are equally important. But by first addressing the software's information design & interaction needs, wireframes help you make sure the user experience makes sense, including that the workflows are natural and intuitive for users, and that the interactions are easy and clear. Without these, a site may not be very usable. Developing good skeletal wireframes before fleshing out the visual design is important for several reasons.

Focuses the Conversation
Visual designs tend to elicit more of an emotional response than wireframes. Hence, putting a fleshed out visual design in front of a client can divert attention from the structure and interaction of the page, and tilt the conversation more towards the color and graphic choices. Skeletal wireframes help you and your client focus the conversation on the business goals and the needs of the user. Continue reading »

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Software Development and the Construction Analogy

Dietrich Kappe, Thursday, August 20, 2009 @ 9:59 am

Dan Vanderboom has a thoughtful post up about software development methods. I especially like his takedown of the building construction analogy that is overused and abused in the world of software development:

[...] this is completely at odds with how homes are normally built.  People typically choose a previously-implemented design, and only customize superficial features like countertops, cabinets, floors, and railings.  Houses from this plan have been built before, and the labor and materials cost are known from previous experience.

Building software is usually more like constructing something that’s never been built before: the first sky scraper, the Golden Gate Bridge, or the Hoover Dam.  The requirements are unique, the pieces have never been assembled in such a way before, and there’s an inherent level of risk in creating something new.  When this is the case, the Customer needs the services of an Architect, not just a Builder who stamps out deliverables in a cookie-cutter style.

I would add two points to his post:

• One additional reason that building construction is not a good metaphor for software construction is that it breaks down along scale. You can construct a scale model of a house to validate the concept, but a scale model of the software is the same as the software itself. An application's size is measured in features, not feet. That's why agile development seeks to deliver a minimal set of features as quickly as possible.
• We've folded User Experience Design (UXD) into our agile process as a way of getting to value more quickly. Feedback in agile is important, but if you can improve the quality of that feedback, you converge on good features more quickly.

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Rails Test Prescriptions to be Published by Pragmatic

Bernhard Kappe, Wednesday, August 19, 2009 @ 3:33 pm

Rails Test Prescriptions, the eBook put out by Noel Rappin, Director of Rails Development at Pathfinder, has been picked up by Pragmatic.

Congratulations to Noel - he's done a great job of furthering testing best practices in rails, and this is a great reward. As he said "I’m very excited by this. I’ve wanted to work with Pragmatic for as long as they’ve been publishing books, and I’m thrilled that this particular project will be able to get wider distribution and access to Pragmatic’s editorial expertise and skill."

* The current free “Getting Started with Rails Testing” ebook will continue to be available. If, at some time in the future, there’s a better Getting Started tutorial in the Pragmatic book, it may be offered as a replacement.

* The update site for current Rails Test Prescription owners will continue to be available for the foreseeable future.

* There will be one more official update to the current Rails Test Prescriptions, probably around the end of August. This will wrap up the chapter or two I’m working on, and tie up some other loose ends.

* After that, errata and information about changes to test tools will most likely be handled via this blog and an errata page on the rails test prescriptions site.

This is Noel's 4th book with a major publisher, following Professional Ruby on Rails, wxPython in Action and Jython Essentials. We're happy for Noel and happy to have him at Pathfinder.

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Javascript debugging and testing in the wild (Prototype bug when using array.flatten in IE)

John McCaffrey, Wednesday, August 19, 2009 @ 10:49 am

I had to dig into a production issue the other day that presented itself like this:
There was a piece of javascript code that iterated over some dom elements, gathered ids into 2 arrays, ran a validation check, and then flattened the arrays to add them to the url.

On firefox, opera, and chrome this was working correctly, and had been tested by the developers, but on IE 7 it isn't working, and the problem wasn't detected until it made it out to production. (Which raises a point about testing in IE during QA, which I'll get to in a sec).

I started my investigation doing what I'd call "poor man's debugging", putting some alerts in, breaking up the code a bit to make it easier to inspect, etc. Normally I don't do this when testing in Firefox, because I have Firebug, but in IE I always seem to start with the basics to get my bearings, then quickly move to a more pragmatic approach.

Then I started using firebug-lite, confirming that I can see the info I need, and I reverted my changes to the code so that I could verify that I hadn't introduced any issues.
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UI Views – Include or Exclude from Code Coverage

Karega Scott, Tuesday, August 18, 2009 @ 2:06 pm

My post today comes after watching the code coverage hover just over 70%, constantly asking myself is it possible to get

100% coverage and a discuss with a few internal colleagues on the subject. Interesting to know is if I exclude the views from code coverage,  I hit a high of just over 90%.  So, is not testing your UI the end of the world? Not at all, as long as you use good development practices and aim to make your UI as slim as possible, without any business processing, branching or conditional type logic.

I've been very pleased with using the PureMVC framework on my current project, and haven't running into any Ah! Ha! I gotcha scenarios yet and frankly can't envision any as we continue to add new features to this application.  In fact using PureMVC has helped me think more about testability of our code and its single messaging bus has been just what the doctor ordered in terms of eliminating Publishing/Subscribing to events between the various components of the system, namely Mediators, Proxies and Commands.  But with great power comes great responsibility.

One could easily access the Singleton Facade of the PureMVC framework directly from your view and send a system wide message to any component interested in that message. The problem here is testability of the UI event required to trigger that system notification.

For instance in the code snippet below you would have to create an instance of the UpgradeView and simulate a click of the download button in order to test sending this notification.
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