new ThoughtStream("Derick Bailey");

Using ROI As A Constraint, Not An End In Itself

I had a fun conversation over instant messenger yesterday. The original subject matter revolved around a problem that the other person was having and how that problem was consuming a number of minutes per day with repetitive, tedious work. At the start...

Published Sat, Feb 06 2010 9:25 AM by derick.bailey

Filed under: Philosophy of Software, Management, Metrics, Coaching, Kaizen (Continuous Improvement)

Can PDCA Help Us Improve Our Test-First Development Efforts?

I was thinking about target conditions and the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle earlier today when a code related issue that I was having popped into head and decided to meld with the current string of thoughts. The resulting thought was leading me toward...

Published Wed, Feb 03 2010 11:42 PM by derick.bailey

Filed under: Community, Agile, Philosophy of Software, Standardized Work, Lean Systems, Kaizen (Continuous Improvement)

Branch-Per-Feature: How I Manage Subversion With Git Branches

Anyone that follow me on twitter likely knows that I’m a big fan of Git these days. I’ll spare you the gushing heart felt nausea of how it’s so awesome and skip right to the point, though: I don’t always have the luxury of being able to use Git...

Published Wed, Feb 03 2010 4:37 PM by derick.bailey

Filed under: Git, Subversion, Branch-Per-Feature, Source Control

Are We Continuously Improving Or Just Continuously Changing?

Don’t confuse activity – even when it has a visible, measurable effect – with productivity. Without a clear picture of where we are going and why, our best efforts at improvement (though they may be ‘continuous’ efforts) are likely to be change for the...

Published Mon, Feb 01 2010 6:14 PM by derick.bailey

Filed under: Management, Lean Systems, Productivity, Coaching, Kaizen (Continuous Improvement)

“The purpose of kanban is to eliminate the kanban”

I found the quote that title’s this blog post in Mike Rother’s Toyota Kata book – the origin is simply stated as “a Toyota person”. Kanban: We’re Doing It Wrong The title quote plays hand in hand with a quote from The Toyota Way : “kanban is something...

Published Sat, Jan 30 2010 11:49 AM by derick.bailey

Filed under: Management, Kanban, Kaizen (Continuous Improvement)

My ‘Decoupling Workflow’ Presentation Was Accepted For #LSSC10

I was notified yesterday that my ‘ Decoupling Workflow ’ submission for the Lean Software & Systems Conference in Atlanta was accepted! This will be a complete re-write of the presentation, by the same name, that I gave at the 2009 Austin CodeCamp...

Published Wed, Jan 20 2010 11:55 AM by derick.bailey

Filed under: Community, Lean Systems, Kanban, Presentations, Workflow

Active vs. Activist

Update: There’s a now apparent disconnect between what I intended in this post, and what it came across as. The poor choice of labels and tasteless examples are getting in the way of what I was trying to say. My intention was to cry out against celebrity...

Published Tue, Jan 19 2010 4:01 PM by derick.bailey

Filed under: Community, Principles and Patterns, Craftsmanship, Coaching

Understanding The Application Controller Through Object Messaging Patterns

Earlier in the year, I posted a few times on the Application Controller pattern that I was implementing, including some workflow service related posts, all leading up to the presentation on decoupling workflow from forms that I gave at Austin Code Camp...

Published Tue, Dec 22 2009 10:06 PM by derick.bailey

Filed under: Analysis and Design, Principles and Patterns, .NET, Model-View-Presenter, AppController, Workflow, Messaging

Albacore: All A-Twitter With A New Logo, Tag Line, And URL

There’s been a lot of fun things happening with Albacore over the holiday weekend. The Discussion Group First, there was the Google Groups announcement to coordinate the community. It’s taken off fairly well with our first call for help, and an answer...

Published Fri, Nov 27 2009 3:24 PM by derick.bailey

Filed under: Community, Rake, Ruby, Albacore

Albacore: Come join the discussion!

There’s been a whirlwind of activity around the Albacore rake tasks recently. Steve Harman has started using it at VersionOne . Ben Hall has been contributing some great patches and tasks. My friends and former coworkers at my previous job are using it...

Published Tue, Nov 24 2009 8:58 PM by derick.bailey

Filed under: Community, Rake, Ruby, Albacore

Electronic Kanban Tools and WIP Limits: LeanKitKanban and AgileZen Get It!

Most of the electronic Kanban boards that exist simply don’t understand what WIP limits are really about. They all seem to go down the path of forcing any step (column) in the process to have a maximum limit that is very hard and fast. They set it up...

Published Mon, Nov 09 2009 12:55 PM by derick.bailey

Filed under: Management, Kanban, Metrics, Tools and Vendors

A Time For Change

Change comes in groups of three, right? Well, I have a 4 week old baby girl (I can hardly believe she’s 4 weeks old already). That would be change #1. For change #2, I turned in my two week notice to my current employer on Monday. Starting on November...

Published Wed, Nov 04 2009 10:36 AM by derick.bailey

The Ultimate ‘Hello World’

So… my blog may be going dark for a while… I don’t think I’m going to have a lot of free time for at least a few weeks, due to the ultimate ‘Hello World’ baby girl that my wife delivered on Wednesday morning @ 1:45am. I’ll get back to blogging some time...

Published Thu, Oct 08 2009 4:42 PM by derick.bailey

Filed under: Quality, Craftsmanship

A Basic YAML Config Module For Ruby

In the process of working with Albacore and creating a task to wrap around SQL Server’s SQLCmd.exe , I wanted to ensure that I could allow individual developers the ability to easily provide their own database server connection information, so that they...

Published Mon, Oct 05 2009 12:39 PM by derick.bailey

Filed under: Principles and Patterns, Ruby, Albacore

Albacore: Breaking Changes In Location Of Executables

I was working on cleaning up Albacore this weekend, and I noted that both the NCoverConsole and MSBuild tasks in Albacore both require the location of the .exe, to execute. The MSBuild task defaults itself to the .NET 3.5 SP1 folder, if none is specified...

Published Sun, Oct 04 2009 3:20 PM by derick.bailey

Filed under: Refactoring, Rake, Ruby, Albacore

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