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If you find this solution, I'd love to learn it, too.
My problem with Agile is that it is a simple concept: get a piece of work done and make sure the user likes it before doing too much that needs to be changed. The very core of the concept hates processes and procedures, yet every discussion of how to do Agile results in a war, every time, about which processes and procedures to use to accomplish it. Quite enigmatic!
My Agile experiences are that more time is spent meeting, planning, talking and dreaming than is actually spent DOING anything! I suspect others are coping better at this, but then again, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Anyway you look at it though, it is JUST grass.
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FWIW, here is my view on agile. I am sure to get disagreement, especially from the purists, but that is OK.
Agile Principles
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Skip the entire Agile thing since so much of it is nonsense in any event.
Your best bet would be to pick up a copy of Stephen MccConnell's, "Rapid Application Development", which to this day is a bible of the development world. It has everything you need to develop budget conscious and timeline oriented development techniques.
The only drawback is that it describes the old way of doing Function Point Analysis so you will have to get McConnell's more recent book on the subject, which describes modern techniques on project estimation.
Stephen McConnell is one of the leading software engineering analysts in the United States. If you go to his site at Construx Software, you will note that everything is termed around Agile concepts. However, they are really software engineering concepts wrapped in an Agile wrapper. I corresponded with Stephen a few years ago on the matter and he told me that if he used software engineering terms, no one would buy into it. As a result, he simply shows software engineering in a way that Agile mindsets can understand.
The books are the core of quality software engineering. If you supervisor cannot understand the concepts, he definitely won't understand Agile except for the fact that it will allow you to work faster, which is about the only thing technical management wants to hear these days...
Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer
Black Falcon Software, Inc.
blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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The varied responses you have received so far, confirms for me what I have always believed. No on knows what "Agile" is or how to implement it. It is like trying to tackle fog.
It seems to me to be a manifesto designed to relieve the project manager, and members of all responsibility for their actions and inactions, inevitably leading to finger pointing and failure in most cases and success buy pure chance.
Project groups need all members from the top down to:
accept and embrace personal responsibility,
cooperate with, and help, each other,
go into the project knowing that requirements will change,
and be ready to put on their big boy pants and not whine about it.
Never trust a dog with red eyebrows - Terry Pratchett (RIP)
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I think in many respects it comes back to the Extreme Programming book I read long ago. There were two nuggets I pulled from that book. The first was "The customer does not know what they want until they see it." This tosses waterfall development on it's head and more importantly declares the fact that no one wants to admit.
Second was you have 3 choices, pick two. It should be in every meeting room. Rules... any system should document when violating the pick two rule.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Your reply certainly agrees with my 40+ years of experience.
I don't know anymore. I just don't. Get me some coffee and I might be able to figure it out...
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All - I appreciate all the feedback, salty any otherwise. Been in the business long enough to have some thick skin.
Living in a Dilbert world
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Don't take on anything that you can't "complete" within 2 weeks (i.e. have "something" to show for).
Anything longer, and it says you're out of control.
"(I) am amazed to see myself here rather than there ... now rather than then".
― Blaise Pascal
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We use Visual Studio Team Services, now Azure DevOps [^]. It's essentially the online version of TFS. You can create projects as either Agile or Scrum. Lots of visual, drag and drop support and it directly links stories, tasks, bugs, etc. to TFS/VSTS repository check-ins.
Left-handed in a right-handed world....
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I got myself volunteered to create a new website for a pool league we just started, and I've got about three weeks to get up to speed on the product. I've seen some good sites based on WP, and haven't the time to fire up all the MS tools to make one from scratch, Can anyone recommend a site or book I can use to learn how to use this beast?
Will Rogers never met me.
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Start here[^]. Basically, copy a theme directory to another directory, rename it, and start modifying the files until you get what you want. The default Wordpress themes (2016, 2017, etc.) have had reflow built into them, for responsive websites. I had to modify that a bit to get the main site width I wanted for desktop use, and it was a huge learning experience, but not too difficult.
Good luck! (If you are really lucky, you can just use a default and give it a custom header, footer, etc, without having to touch a line of code or css.)
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Thanks, David! I'm hoping for easy, a little paint here, and bit of wiring there, and done. I'm retired, and don't have time for too much.
Will Rogers never met me.
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You are welcome! Actually, thinking back on it, I believe I was a bit wrong. You don't have to copy everything to another directory - just any files you want to modify. Hope it goes well. There are other sources around with more details. A google of "modifying wordpress themes" unveils some. Also look into iThemes security and Bulletproof security for locking down your site.
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You get quite a lot of customizability from the basic themes without having to do any coding or css work. Go into 'Appearance -> Customize' and play around!
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Most likely your web site host will have a number of blog engines you can install.
From there you can use the templates that allow you to add blog posts.
I know you said WordPress but I can't stand by and allow it without saying anything.
I used WP a long time ago and kept security updates and then it was compromised.
Since then I've used either DasBlog (.NET based) or the one I'm using now and I highly recommend : BlogEngineDotNet BEDN.
Check and see if your web host supports BEDN and if it does I'm sure you'll find it super easy to use.
However, I do openly admit there are numerous more WP plugins and if you need those I understand.
Good luck.
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Actually, they don't; Wordpress is all we get. But they have a full range of plugins available. I just have no idea how to put them all together.
Will Rogers never met me.
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Darn, I wish I'd seen that before they committed to a hosting service. Thanks, though!
Will Rogers never met me.
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Hi All,
Thought I mutter about being in the orfice late(ish) on a Friday typically POETS day. I got in late as I had a bed interface issue this am. I must stay a bit longer to make up the hour late this am, I can't get any further with the test I was doing as I have come across an issue that has stopped me dead. Until this bug gets cured I can't get any further... I have spent an hour trying to operate the various time sheets we have use, internal, external, government project, private project, internal tasks?, All this as the previous time sheet could be filled in quickly. I have run out of things to do!... Friday afternoon is pointless...
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"bed interface issue"
You should trade mark that
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Same over here, had to stay an extra hour on thursday and friday because of the "ISO certification".
And guess what ? no ISO inspectors to be seen on our development department
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A longtime customer of mine recently switched receiving/inventory software and was having trouble reconciling between a specific report from the new system against values that my software imports. For some reason we have imported almost $300K more that their report shows for last month. Of course the assumption is that my import is wrong. The customer is unhappy, my colleague who has been trying to figure this out for a couple of days now is unhappy and they decide that I should get involved which makes me unhappy.
Narrowing the focus, it became clear that the records their report is missing all fall on the ending day of the month. Looking closer, those missing records actually all have a datetime of 2018-09-30 23:59:59:000. Further, the time part of the datetime field for all records is either all 0s or maxed.
Getting back to the source system and the report in question, I set the ending date to 2018-10-01 and viola, there are the missing records, however they are showing a date of 9/30 in the report. Interesting...now run the report for just 10/1 and they are gone. OK, got it...somebody forgot to make the ending date inclusive!
I explain this all to the customer...my numbers are right, yours are wrong and here's why, along with 'you need to show this to the other software vendor'. Instead, they asked if I would send an email with the explanation that they could share with management and the other vendor. (so wtf did I just spend 15 minutes explaining it! ) Sensing that I was about to say something sarcastic, my colleague agreed to do it...of course I had to explain it all over again and basically dictate the message anyway. That's almost 2 hours spent chasing problems in someone else's software. Can I please just work on my own stuff now?
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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"somebody forgot to make the ending date inclusive!"
This is correct behavior. Personally, I can't stand SQL's BETWEEN behavior.
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: This is correct behavior.
Really, explain that to the customer that expects to see transactions that occurred at any time on the ending date they selected.
You are correct in terms of a SQL query, but not from a UI perspective. My habit when filtering on a single datetime field is to use BETWEEN and apply the max time to the ending date. This is why my import was correct. The problem is with the other vendors report and there's nothing I can do about it. Even advising them to simply extend the ending date by a day will not work because most records simply have all 0s as the time part. The ball is in their court.
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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