Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Agile Methodists

I have recently been researching the driving forces behind agile methods for a series of educational presentations I am making for a client.

I stumbled upon an image of a group of developers participating in the stand-up meeting which, I seem to recall, was on Kent Beck's site and was struck by the similarity between it and images I have seen in Mormon pamphlets, the ones that are obviously an image treated with a Photoshop style aquarelle post-process, that makes the image look as if it was the work of an impressionist painter.

I was startled to make the association between agile methods and religious fervour but re-reading the agile manifesto, which I always thought of as a sort of Marxist text, I see now is more of an evangelical thing.

Suddenly, the pieces fell into place and I felt a chill run up and down my spine when I realised that the morning meeting where everyone speaks a little about what they did the day previously, what they intended to do today and if they were having difficulty on some level or other, was a definite ringer for a witnessing.


Occasionally, meetings get a more conventionally religious overtone when a charismatic developer decides to expound upon hot theories during the sacrosanct fifteen minutes and extends it to forty five while people shift themselves into more comfortable leaning positions on walls and the backs of chairs.

There may even be a burgeoning market for cardboard cut-out pulpits!

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Is Apple's software quality slipping?

I recently succumbed to the lure of Apple's call when I bought an IPhone, largely because where I work it's difficult to get my mail during the day.
Aside from being locked to their view of the world, a situation that will be rectified very soon when I jailbreak the thing, I was astounded to find that the Apple reputation for thinking of everything and being easy to use falls far short of expectation.
I am a biker and do my daily commute on my Triumph Bonneville so I got a Bluetooth helmet kit and subsequently discovered that the iphone doesn't have an auto-answer function for when the headset is connected. Furthermore, for a touch device not to support handwriting recognition or voice command dialling yet have the processor power to do serious graphics is inadmissible.
I've hadthe thing for a week now and I am getting used to it's little foibles but to be honest, it shouldn't have any!

Posted from my IPhone...