In a comment to my earlier article Thoughts on Kanban someone brought up the subject of end dates. Businesses obsess about the “When can we have it?” question. Dates and deadlines trump all. Let me tell you a secret: dates are bullshit. It is a prohibitive mentality in today’s world. Technology needs to reframe the question. Stakeholders need to change their engagement. No company ever succeeded because they made dates. Companies succeed when they continuously deliver innovation. It is not about the destination. It is about the journey and where you end up.
Agile: It’s a War on Dates
January 15th, 2012 § 3 comments § permalink
Building for the Web: Understanding The Network
January 6th, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink
My first post on web technology talks about what we are trying to accomplish when building for the web. There are four ways we can break down the standard flow of client action/server action/result: delivering, serving, rendering and developing. This post focuses on delivering content by understanding the network. Why use a [cdn][cdn]? What’s all the fuss about connections and compressed static assets? The network is often overlooked but understanding how it operates is essential for building high performing websites. A 50ms rendering time with a 50ms db query is meaningless if it takes three seconds to download a page.
Building for the Web: What Are We Trying to Accomplish?
January 4th, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink
The web technology landscape is huge and growing every day. There are hundreds of options from servers to languages to frameworks for building the next big thing. Is it [nginx][nginx] + [unicorn][unicorn] + [rubinus][rubinus] or a [node.js][nodejs] restful service on [cassandra][cassandra] running with [ember.js][ember] and html5 on the front end? Should I learn [python][python] or [scala][scala]? What’s the best nosql database for a socially powered group buying predicative analysis real-time boutique mobile aggregator that scales to 100 million users and never fails?
Thoughts on Kanban
December 14th, 2011 § 5 comments § permalink
One of my favorite achievements in the agile/lean world has been the progression from standard Scrum practices to a Kanban approach of software development. In fact, Kanban, in my opinion, is such an ideal approach to software development I cannot imagine approaching team-based development any other way.
My post about image delivery on the Getty Images Blog
December 7th, 2011 § 1 comment § permalink
I wrote an article covering how we move images to our customers on the new Getty Images blog.