From Build Engineering to DevOps

Executive Summary

This document is for Build Engineers, DevOps Developers, and the people who hire them: Software Development Manager, VP Software Development, Director of Software Development. The goal of this document is to show how to improve a software environment using modern tools, such as those used in a DevOps environment.

First is a description of Build Engineering, next, how Build Engineering can be modernized with today’s tools and processes, then a discussion of how DevOps relates to a modern Build Engineering system.

The conclusion is that much of DevOps tools and processes are required by modern Build Engineering and can be used to improve any software development environment.

Review: DITA for Practitioners, Vol. 1

Author: Eliot Kimber, XML Press

I will start this review with my conclusion:
I recommend this book for the DITA developer, and also for the person designing your DITA Information Model. Some parts are useful for the writer who is using DITA, but there are other books for them.

Agile Ottawa Nov meeting – Steffan Surdek

I always enjoy going to the Agile Ottawa meetings.
I enjoyed the talk and got a lot out of it.

The presenter was Steffan Surdek. He is a co-author of the IBM Press
book “A Practical Guide to Distributed Scrum”, that we are reading at my workplace, Exar Ottawa.

Points I felt important to me:

• Improve your conference calls by making sure everyone knows everyone’s voice.
• “Rob here. I agree with …” – say your name each time you speak
• Help staff get to know each other
• Provide pictures and video of yourself on the internal web site
• Use more voice calls
• No, most companies can’t afford to bring teams together from China to Ottawa. One or two people in each direction is a realistic limit.
• Share the pain of 12 hour time differences. Meet or phone in their work hours, not just yours.
• Share information. Write down what happened, and what especially was decided, and wikify it.

It was great to have a chance to chat with Steffan after the meeting. Thanks for sticking around, Steffan!

Codestriker – Peer Code Review with software support

Migrated. Originally posted: 2008-01-01

There are a lot of people out there who would like to do code review at their company, but there is no time for the meetings. Now there are several software products that allow you to do the code review without the meetings.

Languages to consider for your next project

Migrated. Originally posted: 2007-12-23

The Bugzilla project has recently discussed whether to continue writing Bugzilla in Perl. As far as I can tell, they are not likely to abandon Perl, but there was discussion about what language would be best.

I am mentioning this because Build Systems have some of the same characteristics as Bugzilla: