So I finally was able to complete the installation of TFS and started the creation of my first team project which introduced me to the process template. After following to the link to Microsoft's site for process template information I was inundated with new information to consider. What templates have all of you had experience with tha...
Being relatively new to the software industry I have come across a question of deadline enforcement: Back in the idyllic age of academia, the deadline was the end of the semester and the penalty was a well defined 'F' (or local equivalent). Out here in the real world we need to make code our current and future peers can work with, I fa...
What is the difference between a Program Manager and Product Manager? Is there actually a difference in the roles/responsibilities or our the terms mostly used interchangeably. ...
I recently read this post regarding how "Agile Fails Better" and found myself wondering if anyone out there had good examples of how their project under an agile management process failed...and more importantly how they got the project back on track. Question: How did your agile project fail? Were you able to recover from it? How did yo...
I have been a consultant for many years now and find myself crossing the barriers of being at client A while working on client B...then taking part in a meeting over the phone for client C, etc. I was curious what methods other people in my shoes used to track the time across many clients, projects, and tasks. Preferably something that...
Can someone with Kanban experience tell me how Kanban and Scrum differ? What are the pro's and con's of each of the different project management methodologies? Kanban seems to be getting a lot of press these days. I don't want to miss the hottest new way of tracking my teams failures (...and successes). Responses @S. Lott - What par...
What kind of characters can promote the person more likely to be a leader in the team ? Also, what do you think the responsibilities a leader should have? ...
A co-worker has been going on about how cool Mylyn is for Eclipse. I want to give a task management tool a try but I use Netbeans. Is there a Mylyn like plugin for Netbeans? Preferable with integration to Redmine or Trac? ...
So you're striving for a job, then you have two to choose from: Job A: You have direct contact with the customer. You get the user requirements. You design and develop being able to contact the customer for whichever issue you have. You receive the bug reports directly from the client, for whichever issue they have. Job B: You don't h...
Say, one Employee is leaving the company in one week. What all we must demand from this employee before he leave? Documentation of Application/Module he was handling Source Code Source Code must be well commented Access details of Machines, FTP, etc. What else? ...
I am in the processes of setting up a 4 to 6 person development team (3 countries). Basically what I need is a subversion scm to integrate with visual studio and a project management (tasks, wiki etc) web tool. Are there any pros and cons about using "FogBuz + Beanstalk" OR just use "Assembla" for my source code and project management?...
Has anyone used Google gmail, docs, calendar, gadgets, etc. for managing software development projects? If so, what was your setup? how many clients how many software developers on your project (in-house? out source?) how did your sponsors, clients and developers like it? Did you find it beneficial? or would you rather have used a c...
I am looking after some ways to measure the performance of a software development team. Is it a good idea to use the build tool? Let me explain. We use Hudson as an automatic build tool. I wonder if I can take the information from Hudson reports and obtain from it the progress of each of the programmers. Thanks for any advice. Miguel. ...
We have 32 people. 4 product, 20 engineers, 4 web developers, and 4 designers. We are currently using the green hopper pluggin for jira to track/ manage projects. In the past we have used a white board and cards and to some extent played with basecamp. What other tools are available that would be a good fit for us? Suggestions welcome...
I am relatively new to the world of Java and Maven, but I couldn't imagine starting a new Java project without using Maven. The idea of providing a human-readable project model is something that I would imagine is universally desirable across many languages. This is especially true when your application relies upon numerous external lib...
As a professional programmer I work daily with a species known as the "PM". While they usually go by that common acronym, it seems there are actually several discrete varieties: product managers, project managers, and program managers. There may be other species yet undiscovered. Through years of close observation and study, the subtleti...
As a developer, I sometimes come across the term 'Critical Path' in the context of development execution. From wikipedia I know it has to do with identifying the necessary tasks that must be completed in a project. Is my understanding correct? What is the best definition of Critical Path you have encountered? How would identify the Cr...
I was in a meeting today with a consultant (consulting us on internal procedures) and we went through an exercise of planning out the next three months of development. I'm not opposed at all to doing this, I think it is essential to have an understanding of what is coming next, in what order, and their relative magnitudes. I also think i...
What naming conventions do you use when creating work items in your task/bug tracking tools? For example: Do you prefix the items with an area/subject? How do you begin scenarios/use cases? E.g., "The department manager can..." How do you make it easier to detect duplicates? ...
What is the good resolution of time to use for estimating duration of your tasks? is it like 0.5, 1, 2, 5 days or should you go down to hours like 0.5, 1, 2, 4 hours and then continue up to days? should a change to a label text be task at all? ( ETA < 1min ) Suggestions? ...