Before you start your Independence Day celebrations, don't forget to add the next Agile Atlanta meeting to your calendar! On Tuesday, July 8th, Mark Isham will us a special sneak preview of the presentation he is delivering in August at the Agile 2008 conference in Toronto.
Agile Architecture IS Possible - You First Have to Believe!
Speaker: Mark Isham Date: July 8th, 6:45 PM Location: IBM-ISS (6303 Barfield Rd NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30328)
Have you ever been told “Agile works great for UI, but just doesn’t work for large scale systems architecture”? In this experience report, I will review a real world project to redesign a successful large scale ecommerce system that became plagued with growing pains. After the team initially ran to the comfort of a long term waterfall project, cost overruns and escalating problems necessitated a new approach. Enter in Scrum and a focus on iterations and frequent customer feedback, and a once failed project turned into a blazing success. Process/Mechanics
1. Review of the problems we were hitting 2. Overview of the initial “monolithic” redesign ideas 3. Discuss business pushback on those ideas 4. Discuss push to try agile technics to solve 5. Cultural resistance faced by original architects from #2 6. Talk about the points made and counter-arguments presented 7. Review the revised iterative approach to solving 8. Followup with results on how that approach worked.
Agile Atlanta group on LinkedIn (Thanks Al Snow!!): http://www.linkedin.com/search?search=&sortCriteria=3&groupFilter=120862
Upcoming Meetings: August 12th: Regular monthly meeting, topic TBA September 9th: Regular monthly meeting, topic TBA September 25th-26th: APLN Leadership Summit, Marriott Perimeter Center Upcoming Training: July 31st - August 1st: Certified ScrumMaster, trainer: Chris Doss, Innovel, LLC August 13th-14th: Certified ScrumMaster, trainer: Bryan Stallings, Rally Software Development
Thanks! Handly Cameron http://handly.blogspot.com " type="hidden"> Before you start your Independence Day celebrations, don't forget to add the next Agile Atlanta meeting to your calendar! On Tuesday, July 8th, Mark Isham will us a special sneak preview of the presentation he is delivering in August at the Agile 2008 conference in Toronto.
Agile Architecture IS Possible - You First Have to Believe!
Speaker: Mark Isham
Date: July 8th, 6:45 PM
Location: IBM-ISS (6303 Barfield Rd NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30328)
Have you ever been told “Agile works great for UI, but just doesn’t work for large scale systems architecture”? In this experience report, I will review a real world project to redesign a successful large scale ecommerce system that became plagued with growing pains. After the team initially ran to the comfort of a long term waterfall project, cost overruns and escalating problems necessitated a new approach. Enter in Scrum and a focus on iterations and frequent customer feedback, and a once failed project turned into a blazing success. Process/Mechanics
1. Review of the problems we were hitting
2. Overview of the initial “monolithic” redesign ideas
3. Discuss business pushback on those ideas
4. Discuss push to try agile technics to solve
5. Cultural resistance faced by original architects from #2
6. Talk about the points made and counter-arguments presented
7. Review the revised iterative approach to solving
8. Followup with results on how that approach worked.
Removing blog themes from Lotus Connections
Mon, Oct 20th 2008 8:51p Handly Cameron Today, Stuart McIntyre and I worked together to solve an issue that is not currently documented for Lotus Connections. We wanted to remove one of the pre-installed blog themes.
The Lotus Connections InfoCenter has instructions on how to make a custom theme available to your users.
While these instructions tell you how to add a page, it does not address how to remove one of the built in themes.
Here is the procedure we worked out to remove an existing theme:
Turn on class reloading for [read] Keywords: admin
connections
ibm
lotus
application
applications
enterprise
properties
websphere
14
Atlanta WebSphere on Oct 7th: Smart SOA World Tour
Thu, Sep 25th 2008 8:51p Handly Cameron In celebration of the WebSphere 10th birthday, the Atlanta WebSphere Users Group is hosting the local edition of the Smart SOA World Tour. Come join us on October 7th to learn about exciting new announcements for WebSphere and Smart SOA.
Date: October 7th, 9 - 11 am.
Location: Optimus Solutions (22 Technology Parkway South, Norcross GA 30092)
Prizes!: IBM is supplying a variety of door prizes. Learn about SOA and win stuff too!
Speaker: Andrew Sweet, Director of SOA Strategy for [read] Keywords: ibm
applications
email
soa
virtualization
web 2.0
websphere
17
Improving the Lotus Connections InfoCenter with Twitter
Tue, Sep 23rd 2008 8:52p Handly Cameron Here is a short success story of how Twitter has delivered direct business value for me: Back at the end of July, I was working on an upgrade of a Lotus Connections system to version 2.0. As I walked through the upgrade steps in the InfoCenter, I encountered several typos and procedural issues. I posted some of my issues on Twitter and the resulting conversations on Twitter and email have resulted in a call this Friday with the Connections InfoCenter team and a few others, including Mitch Cohen [read] Keywords: connections
ibm
lotus
email
twitter
13
Agile Atlanta on October 27th: Hyperproductive Distributed Scrum Teams
Fri, Sep 19th 2008 8:48p Handly Cameron Please join us for a special combined meeting of the Agile Atlanta group and the Turner Agile User group. This is a great chance to hear directly from one of the original Agile thought leaders! Hyperproductive Distributed Scrum Teams Jeff Sutherland, co-creator of Scrum and the Agile Manifesto, will share his experience and insight from helping many companies around the world adopt Scrum and increase the performance of their development teams. When: Monday, October 27, 6:00PM Location: Techwo [read] Keywords: development
linkedin
networking
security
Collaboration University Day 1 recap
Tue, Sep 9th 2008 7:59p Handly Cameron Collaboration University kicked off in Chicago yesterday. Here is a quick summary of the sessions I attended: Installing Sametime Advanced (Chris Miller) Chris (a.k.a. IdoNotes) ran through the complex and detailed Sametime Advanced install. It is nice that there is an easy Linux based appliance install to get things running for demos or small to medium deployments. Unfortunately, as soon as you need to separate a component like the database or spread out the components for scalability, you ar [read] Keywords: admin
administration
collaboration
connections
domino
lotus
notes
quickr
sametime
database
google
linux
networking
server
Agile Atlanta on September 9th: Agile Metrics and Measurement
Thu, Sep 4th 2008 8:07p Handly Cameron What better way to wrap up the Summer by coming to Agile Atlanta to hear Mike Cottmeyer help you learn how to use metrics and measurements with your Agile projects? Agile Metrics and Measurement Speaker: Mike Cottmeyer, leader of the APLN Atlanta group Date: September 9th, 6:45 PM Location: IBM-ISS (6303 Barfield Rd NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30328) Agile delivers value through iteration and inspection. Agile reporting is the key that will unlock that value and make your projects manageable again. [read] Keywords: ibm
linkedin
11
APLN Leadership Summit is coming to Atlanta!
Thu, Jul 31st 2008 12:27p Handly Cameron "Leading the Agile Transition" September 25th and 26th Marriott Atlanta Perimeter Center summit.aplnatlanta.org We are proud to announce that the next APLN Leadership Summit is coming to Atlanta! For the past few years, local APLN chapters have organized and hosted regional Leadership Summits. These events have been very well received and attract fantastic speakers and exceptional local thought leaders. This is your chance to attend an Agile conference specifically designed to address the nee [read] Keywords: blogger
community
development
network
networking
18
Agile Atlanta on July 8th: Agile Architecture IS Possible
Fri, Jun 27th 2008 2:39p Handly Cameron Before you start your Independence Day celebrations, don't forget to add the next Agile Atlanta meeting to your calendar! On Tuesday, July 8th, Mark Isham will us a special sneak preview of the presentation he is delivering in August at the Agile 2008 conference in Toronto. Agile Architecture IS Possible - You First Have to Believe! Speaker: Mark Isham Date: July 8th, 6:45 PM Location: IBM-ISS (6303 Barfield Rd NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30328) Have you ever been told “Agile works great for UI, b [read] Keywords: ibm
development
linkedin
30
What Twitter is for: Communities of Purpose
Thu, Jun 26th 2008 4:03p Handly Cameron David Cushman has blogged that Twitter Isn't About Conversation - It's About Forming Groups. This is a great point. Much of the value I get from Twitter is getting a feel for how the community is thinking about various subjects. Many times someone tweats on an idea or links to a new article which triggers a discussion and gets more new ideas flowing. ...Twitter is for forming groups - communities of purpose. Communities of purpose may be adhoc. They may come together to solve a shared problem [read] Keywords: community
twitter
82
Cool Enterprise 2.0 chart
Wed, Jun 18th 2008 11:05a Handly Cameron Michael Pincher linked to a cool Enterprise 2.0 Blueprint by R. Todd Stevens. This chart brings together a model of Business Drivers, Actors, Technology, Methods, and Value-Add for Enterprise 2.0. I have printed a copy for my wall as a great reference of all of the things to consider when bringing organizations up to speed with the latest in social and collaborative technology. Thanks R. Todd! [read] Keywords: collaboration
blogger
enterprise
IBM shows Microsoft that social computing is about the people
Mon, Jun 9th 2008 1:55p Handly Cameron This morning, IBM and Microsoft presented Lotus Connections and Sharepoint in a head-to-head demo of social networking platforms. Of course, the play by play got published instantly on the public social networks. Apparently Microsoft focused on email and document management, which did not wow the crowd. IBM got points for talking about how social networking is about the people. Quotes included "MS failing dismally at showing off Sharepoint collab tools. IBM totally ate their lunch.". A few blo [read] Keywords: connections
document
ibm
lotus
community
email
enterprise
microsoft
networking
sharepoint
Agile Atlanta: Executable Specification and Behavior Driven Development
Thu, Jun 5th 2008 4:05p Handly Cameron June's Agile Atlanta meeting is coming up on Tuesday! Executable Specification and Behavior Driven Development Speaker: Bob Vincent Date: June 10th, 6:45 PM Location: IBM-ISS (6303 Barfield Rd NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30328) Bob will be presenting a paper he is delivering to the IBM Academy of Technology Agile Practices and Methods Conference. Upcoming Meetings: July 8th: Agile Architecture IS Possible - You First Have to Believe!, presented by Mark Isham (see http://submissions.agile2008.org/n [read] Keywords: ibm
development
50
Setting up a WebSphere 6.1 cluster to restart automatically
Wed, May 21st 2008 8:43a Handly Cameron Starting with WebSphere 6.1, the node manager and servers are no longer automatically installed as Windows services. This actually can resolve a lot of headaches caused if the services start in the wrong sequence. However, in many situations you do want everything to restart automatically, especially if your production server gets rebooted in the middle of the night! Here are the instructions to get the servers in a WebSphere cluster to recover automatically. We set these up on a Lotus Connecti [read] Keywords: agent
connections
ibm
lotus
nd
application
java
php
server
websphere
17
Agile Atlanta on May 13th: Delivering Quality Software
Mon, May 12th 2008 11:37a Handly Cameron May's Agile Atlanta meeting is coming up tomorrow night! Delivering Quality Software Using Agile Development Practices Speaker: Jann Thomas, a Development Manager for DataPath, Inc. in Duluth Date: May 13th, 6:45 PM Location: IBM-ISS (6303 Barfield Rd NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30328) Delivering quality software on time is an art. Using development methods where weeks of testing follows weeks of development may have the following issues: The software team does not know when it is done, there is no [read] Keywords: ibm
development
79
An elephant never forgets?... but Exchange does
Wed, Apr 30th 2008 9:13p Handly Yet another article on how migrating from Lotus Notes to Exchange destroyed the White House's ability to properly archive their email, as required by law. An elephant never forgets? George W. Bush's lost e-mails Maybe the headlines should be something about how using Exchange can lead you to criminal behavior ... [read] Keywords: lotus
notes
archive
email
exchange
exchange
35
MilkSync: Remember the Milk for Blackberry
Thu, Apr 24th 2008 5:02p Handly Remember the Milk is a wonderful service for managing my to do lists, for home and for work. I am not quite up to full GTD speed, but RTM is helping me get closer. Until now, I have been using the Blackberry's browser (or Opera Mini) to manage my lists while I am mobile or otherwise can't get to the nice AJAX UI on the main site. Yesterday, MilkSync for Blackberry was released which synchronizes my online tasks into the Blackberry Tasks application. Previously, I found Tasks to be not very usef [read] Keywords: ajax
application
blackberry
blogger
email
mobile
Agile Atlanta: Project Steerage, Sliced Icebergs and Boiled Frogs
Mon, Apr 7th 2008 2:44p Handly April's Agile Atlanta meeting is coming up on Tuesday! Project Steerage, Sliced Icebergs and Boiled Frogs: How you can introduce Scrum and save your ship Speaker: Ken Ritchie Date: April 8th, 6:45 PM Location: IBM-ISS (6303 Barfield Rd NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30328) Did you ever find yourself working on a company internal project? Were there any risks or issues concerning requirements, scope, budget, tools, expertise, team turnover, progress, or expectations? Was the project ever re-scoped, re- [read] Keywords: ibm
, development
17
Heading to Impact 2008, getting started with Twitter
Sat, Apr 5th 2008 1:17p Handly I am packing this afternoon to go to IBM's Impact 2008 conference in Las Vegas. After a few slow years of too much marketing hype, this year's conference is packed full of good technical content. Using the online scheduling tool, I have 3 - 4 conflicts on almost every presentation slot. Even better, they have great keynote speakers, Drew Carey is hosting the whole week, and the B52's are playing the party as one of the first shows after their new album release. During the conference I will be [read] Keywords: ibm
, soa
, twitter
, websphere
34
Essentials of Test Driven Development (TDD)
Sat, Apr 5th 2008 8:45a Handly Over at Object Mentor, Tim Ottinger has a great post giving a quick reference for Test Driven Development. TDD on Three Index Cards I'll be sure to reference this the next time I'm in coding mode. [read] Keywords: development
41
Dan Reeves Comes to You
Tue, Feb 19th 2008 11:52a Handly The Atlanta Lotusphere Comes to You Event has landed legendary NFL coach Dan Reeves as the keynote speaker! I remember being at Lotusphere in 1999 watching the Falcons seal their trip to the Super Bowl. Coach Reeves record speaks for itself: Was an All-Pro player for Dallas immortal Tom Landry. Led the Falcons to the playoffs (twice) and the Super Bowl, and became the NFL’s most successful coach with 167 wins. Won NFL Coach of the Year honors in 1993 (Atlanta) and 1998 (New York). Coached th [read] Keywords: lotusphere
20
Upgrading Lotus Connections Profiles to 1.0.2, take 2
Mon, Feb 18th 2008 3:19p Handly I posted previously on how to update the Lotus Connections database schema from version 1.0.1 to 1.0.2. Over on the Lotus Connections Forums, Henry Walther posted that he found the original files in the TDI directories. For others, here is the location of the files: C:\Program Files\IBM\TDI\V6.1\tdisol\TDI\database\db2 I did a comparison between my version and this one and the EMPLOYEE columns are the same. Interestingly, the Lotus version does not include expanding the description and experi [read] Keywords: connections
, ibm
, lotus
, database
, db2
9
Agile Atlanta on Feb 12th: Lightning Talks
Fri, Feb 8th 2008 11:55a Handly Wow, it has been a great month for Agile in Atlanta! We have heard great presentations from both Mike Cohn and Mary Poppendieck and next week, we get to hear from yet more great speakers! Meeting details: Lightning Talks Speaker: You! Date: February 12th, 6:45 PM Location: IBM (6303 Barfield Rd NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30328) What are Lightning Talks? Lighting Talks are quick presentations, usually 5 minutes, but we'll probably be fine with anything from 1 - 10 minutes. Basically, you have time t [read] Keywords: ibm
, best practice
, community
, wiki
Upgrading Lotus Connections Profiles to 1.0.2
Fri, Feb 8th 2008 7:08a Handly In the last week, I've been upgrading several Lotus Connections 1.0.1 installations to version 1.0.2. As part of this process, there is a missing sql script needed to upgrade the Profiles database to include a few column changes and updates. The only script that is provided by the update is peopledb.db2, which is used to create a whole new Profiles schema using create table and related statements. This script will not work to update existing data tables since you would have to drop your tables [read] Keywords: connect
, connections
, lotus
, database
, db2
, sql
11
Upcoming Agile events in Atlanta
Fri, Feb 8th 2008 7:07a Handly January is turning out to be a very Agile month in Atlanta! In addition to the APLN board meeting being held here this week, there are two presentations and a couple of courses coming up that should help people working on implementing or improving Agile with their organization: January 15th: Mike Cohn presents at Agile Atlanta on Succeeding With Agile: A Guide to Transitioning and Improving Transitioning to an agile development process is unlike most transitions an organization may make. Many t [read] Keywords: development
