IT Shopkeeping

I recently spoke at SharePoint and .NET Saturday Bermuda,  a one day conference co-hosted by the Bermuda SharePoint Users Group and the Bermuda .NET Users Group. The keynote by Joel Oleson focused on the trends of mobile and tablet use in the enterprise, and ways that Sharepoint development addresses this trend. Responsive Design is the order of the day.  Enterprise web applications must be constructed in a flexible, adaptive manner that detects and responds to the device type.  That is, the web pages should look different and display appropriately different content depending on whether they’re …

When it comes to native mobile development, .NET shops are in a pickle.    Mobile and tablet use is estimated to make up 90% of new device adoption by 2015 (Gartner).  Steve Jobs saw this coming and had this to say:
“When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, because that’s what you needed on the farm, but as vehicles started to be used in the urban centers, cars got more popular.

I have found these books to be useful for agile coding practices in .NET:

It is a mistake to think that Agile is merely a project management methodology or worse, a buzzword.  

The Agile/XP notions of frequent releases and constant redesign can be worrying.  There was a day, not far in the past, that code changes, any code changes, struck fear into the heart of a developer or project manager.  In many cases this fear was justified.  The majority of code was quite brittle and fragile.  The smallest of changes could bring an application to a grinding halt.   That’s why, when we’re doing things the Agile/XP way, we use Test-driven Development(TDD).   As we destabilize the code with refactoring and destabilize …

Software development is important to many of us, so we strive to find better ways to do it.
In the late 20th century we spent a great deal of time and money developing requirements and specifications, thinking through each case and documenting possible uses and outcomes. We would plan a glorious plan before beginning development.
Wait, that never happened.

Project managers and analysts converge on Boston in October for a conference on management and specifications for software. Software consultant Dan Hermes will speak on the topic of human communication in the software industry, presenting material from his publication How to Interact with People.
Mastering Human Communication Patterns by Dan Hermes
Project Summit & Business Analyst World
October 21, 2013, 3:45pm
Boston Marriott Burlington Hotel
details

New England Microsoft Developers will feature Dan Hermes as a speaker on Thursday, May 2nd, 2013, 6:30pm in Waltham, MA.  He will cover material from his forthcoming books, Softwareball: How to Play as a Team in the Software Industry and How to Interact with People: Human Communication in the Software Industry.

1st Floor Conference Room
201 Jones Rd., Waltham, MA

1st Floor Conference Room
201 Jones Rd., Waltham, MA
http://www.meetup.com/NE-MSFT-Devs/

REGISTER

Topic: Mastering Human Communication Patterns

Dan Hermes served on a panel of advisors for Art Technology New England’s (ATNE) Growth Resource Meeting for small businesses on the morning of April 17th. Three firms in early stages of growth presented their business plans for review. This event is sponsored by the Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development CreativeNext series run by Helena Fruscio, the Creative Economy Industry Director.

Video from Dan Hermes’ talk on human communication in the software industry at MIT. The material is from Mr. Hermes’ book How to Interact with People.