Search Results

Search found 7541 results on 302 pages for 'team spirit'.

Page 35/302 | < Previous Page | 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42  | Next Page >

  • What are the advantages of a distributed version control for a team that is effectively never distri

    - by Luke CK
    When working remotely, our team only has access to our source code by remote desktop into our office PCs so we never really work in offline mode. Does a distributed version control system like Mercurial or Git still give us advantages over our current centralized Subversion set up? If so, what are they? Are there any drawbacks or pitfalls? I've read in numerous places that shifting to distributed version control requires a change in thinking. Can someone explain what needs to change in this regard?

    Read the article

  • How can I see who in my team are writing the most code and who is writing the least using TFS?

    - by kjm
    I am having a problem with one of my team members output. He seems to be always 'busy' yet I am unable to see exactly what code he has done and he seems be delivering very little and it seems to take a long time to do so. I'd like to investigate further using TFS and was wondering if there is any functionality in TFS that shows what has been written by an individual or similar? Just to clarify I am NOT spying I am trying to resolve situation. This is only a starting point. I un derstand that quantity of code does not equate to best programmer thanks for any answers

    Read the article

  • As a team should we develop locally and merge into the dev server, or develop on the dev server?

    - by CogitoErgoSum
    Hey, Recently I was tasked with writing up formal procedures for a team based development enviroment. We have several projects with multiple modules each. Right now there are only two programmers, however there are plans to expand to 4-6 programmers. Each programmer will be working on the same project and possibly pages which may cause over writing or error issues. So far the ideal solution I have thought up is: Local development (WAMP/VM or some virtual server instance on their own machine). Once a developer has finished their developments, they check it into the CVS Repository and merge it wih other fixes etc. The CVS version is then deployed to the primary dev server for testing by the devs. The MySQL DAtabases are kept on the primary dev server and users may remotely connect to it. Any Schema / Data alterations are run through a DB Admin who will notify all devs of any DB Changes (Which should be rare). Does anyone see an issue with this or have a better solution?

    Read the article

  • Should we be giving the client's management team direct access to our git hub repository so that the

    - by SharePoint Newbie
    Hi, We are presently working for a client who is new to working with distributed teams. We have teams spread across India and the UK. Although we have decent project tracking tools (Mingle), would it be a good idea to the give the PM at the client access to our git hub repo. Would this be make it easier for them (see what the devs are working on and an insight into what the team has been developing). I agree that noot all commit messages would make sense to them but would this be a good way to boost their confidence in what we are doing? They already can check out our fortnightly releases on our QA and UA environments, but this still is behind dev by 5-6 days. Also, is there any reporting for git hub which makes it easier for PM types to make sense of it all? Thanks

    Read the article

  • Can I work with Visual Studio Project and Solution files in a team using Subversion?

    - by flyx
    We're a team of students doing a software project. As some of us don't use Windows, but the product needs to run on Windows and .NET, we want to develop on MonoDevelop and Visual Studio which both use Visual Studio files; language of choice is C#. My question is: Can we check in the solution and project files into our repository without the possibility of severe conflicting problems? Example: Two guys add a new file to the same project, save and commit their changes. Will the project file get a conflict?

    Read the article

  • Agile Awakenings and the Rules of Agile

    - by Robert May
    For those that care, you can read my history of management and technology to understand why I think I’m qualified to talk about this at all.  It’s boring, so feel free to skip it. Awakenings I first started to play around with the idea of “agile” in 2004 or 2005.  I found a book on the Rational Unified Process that I thought was good, and attempted to implement parts of it.  I thought I was agile, but really, it wasn’t.   I still didn’t understand the concept of a team.  I still wanted to tell the team what to do and how to get it done.  I still thought I was smarter than the team. After that job, I started work on another project and began helping that team.  The first few months were really rough.  We were implementing Scrum, which was relatively new to everyone on the team, and, quite frankly, I was doing a poor job of it.  I was trying to micro-manage every aspect of the teams work, and we were all miserable. The moment of change came when the senior architect bailed on the project.  His comment to me was: “This isn’t Agile.  Where are the stand-ups?  Where are the stories?”  He was dead on, and I finally woke up.  I finally realized that I was the problem!  I wasn’t trusting the team.  I wasn’t helping the team.  I was being a manager. Like many (most?), I was claiming to be Agile and use Scrum, but I wasn’t in fact following the rules Scrum.  Since then, I’ve done a lot of studying, hands on practice, coaching of many different teams, and other learning around Scrum, and I have discovered that Scrum has some rules that must be followed for success, even though the process is about continuous improvement. I’ve been practicing Scrum right for about 4 years now and have helped multiple teams implement it successfully, so what you’re about to get is based on experience, rather than just theory. The Rules of Scrum In my experience, what I’ve found is that most companies that claim to be doing Scrum or Agile are actually NOT doing either.  This stems largely because they think that they can “adopt the rules of Agile that fit their organization.”  Sadly, many of them think that this means they can adopt iterations (sprints) and not much else.  Either that, or they think they can do whatever they want, or were doing before, and call it Scrum.  This is simply not true. Here are some rules that must be followed for you to really be doing Scrum.  I’ll go into detail on each one of these posts in future blog posts and update links here.  My intent is that this will help other teams implementing scrum to see more success. Agile does not allow you to do whatever you want A Product Owner is required A ScrumMaster is required The team must function as a Team, and QA must be part of the team Support from upper management is required A prioritized product backlog is required A prioritized sprint backlog is required Release planning is required Complete spring planning is required Showcases are required Velocity must be measured Retrospectives are required Daily stand-ups are required Visibility is absolutely required For now, I think that’s enough, although I reserve the right to add more.  If you’re breaking any of these rules, you’re probably not doing Scrum.  There are exceptions to these rules, but until you have practiced Scrum for a while, you don’t know what those exceptions are. Breaking the Rules Many teams break these rules because they are the ones that expose the most pain.  Scrum is not Advil.  It’s not intended to mask the pain, its intended to cure it.  Let me explain that analogy a bit more.  Recently, my 7 year old son broke his arm, quite severely (see the X-Ray to the right).  That caused him a great deal of pain.  We went first to one doctor, and after viewing the X-Ray, they determined that there was no way that they’d cast the arm at their location.  It was simply too bad of a break for them to deal with.  They did, however, give him some Advil for the pain and put a splint on his arm to stabilize the broken bones.  Within minutes, he was feeling much better.  Had we been stupid, we could have gone home and he’d have been just as happy as ever . . . until the pain medication wore off or one of his siblings touched the splint.  Then, all of that pain would come right back to the top.  Sure, he could make it go away by just taking more Advil and moving the splint out of the way, but that wasn’t going to fix the problem permanently. We ended up in an emergency room with a doctor who could fix his arm.  However, we were warned that the fix was going to be VERY painful, and it was.  Even with heavy sedation (Propofol), my son was in enough pain that he squirmed and wiggled trying to get his arm away from the doctor.  He had to endure this pain in order to have a functional arm. But the setting wasn’t the end.  He had to have several casts, had to have it re-broken once, since the first setting didn’t take and finally was given a clean bill of health. Agile implementation is much like this story.  Agile was developed as a result of people recognizing that the development methodologies that were currently in place simply were ineffective.  However, the fix to the broken development that’s been festering for many years is not painless.  Many people start Agile thinking that things will be wonderful.  They won’t!  Agile is about visibility, and often, it brings great pain to surface.  It causes all of the missed deadlines, the cowboy coders, the coasters, the micro-managers, the lazy, and all of the other problems that are really part of your development process now to become painfully visible to EVERYONE.  Many people don’t like this exposure.  Agile will make the pain better, but not if you remove the cast (the rules above) prematurely and start breaking the rules that expose the most pain.  The healing will take time and is not instant (like Advil).  Figuring out what the true source of pain and fixing it is very valuable to you, your team, and your company.  Remember as you’re doing this that Agile isn’t the source of the pain, it’s really just exposing it.  Find the source. My recommendation is that ALL of these rules are followed for a minimum of six months, and preferably for an entire year, before you decide to break any of these rules.  Get a few good releases under your belt.  Figure out what your velocity is and start firing as a team.  Chances are, after you see agile really in action, you won’t want to break the rules because you’ll see their value. More Reading Jean Tabaka recently published a list of 78 Things I Have Learned in 6 Years of Agile Coaching.  Highly recommended. Technorati Tags: Agile,Scrum,Rules

    Read the article

  • Git workflow for small teams

    - by janos
    I'm working on a git workflow to implement in a small team. The core ideas in the workflow: there is a shared project master that all team members can write to all development is done exclusively on feature branches feature branches are code reviewed by a team member other than the branch author the feature branch is eventually merged into the shared master and the cycle starts again The article explains the steps in this cycle in detail: https://github.com/janosgyerik/git-workflows-book/blob/small-team-workflow/chapter05.md Does this make sense or am I missing something?

    Read the article

  • "Not enough free swap" error when trying to hibernate

    - by Spirit Zhang
    I recently upgraded from 11.04 to 11.10, but I get "Not enough free swap" error when trying to put my laptop to hibernation. I have 2G of physical memory and 3G for swap. Besides, the hibernate works fine in 11.04. So what might be the problem ? Thanks in advance. UPDATE: The error happens when I try to hibernate. And the memoinfo is here: SwapCached: 0 kB SwapTotal: 4028604 kB SwapFree: 4028604 kB

    Read the article

  • LUKS no longer accepts my my passphrase

    - by Two Spirit
    I created a 4 drive RAID5 setup using mdadm and upgrading from 2TB drives to the new Hitachi 7200RPM 4TB drives. I can initially open my luks partition, but later can no longer access it. I can no longer access my LUKS partition even tho I have the right passphrases. It was working and then at an unknown point in time loose access to LUKS. I've used the same procedures for upgrading from 500G to 1TB to 1.5TB to 2TB. After the first time this happened a week ago, I thought maybe there was some corruption so I added a 2nd Key as a backup. After the second time the LUKS became unaccessible, none of the keys worked. I put LUKS on it using cryptsetup -c aes -s 256 -y luksFormat /dev/md0 # cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/md0 md0_crypt Enter LUKS passphrase: Enter LUKS passphrase: Enter LUKS passphrase: Command failed: No key available with this passphrase. The first time this happened while I was upgrading to 4TB drives, I thought it was a fluke, and ultimately had to recover from backups. I went an used luksAddKey to add a 2nd key as a backup. It happened again and I tried both passphrases, and neither worked. The only thing I'm doing differently this time around is that I've upgraded to 4TB drives which use GPT instead of fdisk. The last time I had to even reboot the box was over 2 years ago. I'm using ubuntu-8.04-server with kernel 2.6.24-29 and upgraded to -2.6.24-31, but that didn't fix the problem.

    Read the article

  • Running SQL Server Jobs using a Proxy Account

    In most companies, roles and responsibilities are clearly defined for the various teams, whether it is the database team, application team or the development team. In some cases, the application team might own a number of jobs but they ... [Read Full Article]

    Read the article

  • Unable to install MS Office, wine1.7, and getting updates

    - by spirit
    I am a new ubuntu user, just installed 12.04 LTS. Learned a lot from ubuntu users suggestions on the webs. I am a student and frequent user of MS office. However, I am unable to install MS Office as failing to get updates plus installing wine1.7. sudo apt-get update shows something about unable to connect archive.ubuntu.com and some files failed to download, they have been ignored or older ones have been used instead. sudo apt-get install wine1.7 shows something about unmet dependencies and broken packages.

    Read the article

  • New site – and a special offer

    - by Red Gate Software BI Tools Team
    SSAS Compare has a brand new website! The old page was thrown together in the way that most Red Gate labs sites tend to be — as experimental sites for experimental products. We’ve been developing SSAS Compare for a while now, so we decided it was time for something a bit prettier. The new site is mostly the work of Andrew, our marketing manager, who has all sorts of opinions about websites. One of the opinions Andrew has is that his photo should be on every site on the internet, or at least every Red Gate site on the internet, and that’s why his handsome visage now appears on the SSAS Compare page. Well, that isn’t quite true. According to Andrew, people download more software when they have photos of human beings to look at. We want as many people to try SSAS Compare as possible, so we got the team together for an intimate photoshoot directed by Red Gate’s resident recorder of light, Dom Reed (aka Mr Flibble). The photo will appear on the site as soon as Dom is finished photoshopping us into something more palatable, which is a big job. Until then, you’ll have to put up with Andrew. We’ve also used the new site to announce a special offer. Right now, SSAS Compare is still a free beta, but by signing up to our Early Access Program, you’ll get a 20% discount when we release SSAS Compare as a fully-fledged product. We’ll use your email address to send you news and updates about business intelligence tools from Red Gate (and nothing else). If that sounds good to you, go to the SSAS Compare site to sign up. By the way, the BI Tools team wasn’t the only thing Dom photographed last week. Remember Noemi’s blog about the flamenco dance? We’ll be at SQL Saturday in our home town of Cambridge this Saturday (8th September), handing out flyers of a distinctly Mediterranean flavour. If you’re attending, be sure to say hello!

    Read the article

  • A Poem Before OpenWorld

    - by Oracle OpenWorld Blog Team
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} (with apologies to Clement C. Moore) By Karen Shamban ‘Twas the days before OpenWorld, and all through the city Many people were working, for them not take pity; At Moscone the reg booths were built with true care, Knowing that thousands would soon be right there; The riggers on Howard were raising the tent, The results are all worth it, the money well spent; ORACLE TEAM USA sails into YBG, Knowing that many the team will come see, Backstage the techs and designers do work, Ensuring the keynotes will see not a quirk; Here many things social will come to fruition, Use Twitter or Facebook or your intuition, Exhibits there are many in two great big halls, Moscone West, Moscone South—who needs those malls? There will be great music throughout all the town, See some or see all and you won’t wear a frown, The sessions are thousands, and demos, it’s true, Labs, lounges, and meetups there are more than a few; You can shuttle, and hustle, and pedicab while there, Getting from one place to another can take quite a flair, So let the conference begin and the thousands descend, Throughout San Francisco their ways they will wend; It’s Larry’s big keynotes they all come to hear, Let Oracle OpenWorld begin - it's the best of the year!

    Read the article

  • It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over

    - by Oracle OpenWorld Blog Team
    Oracle OpenWorld 2012 is behind us. Well, for San Francisco, anyhow. The team is already working on the Latin America event which takes place in December in Sao Paulo, and an OpenWorld in Asia for 2013 as well. And of course they're already working on the next San Francisco OpenWorld for 2013. So what happens after the conference is over? People pack up demo and network gear and ship it out to wherever it's going next; take down and recycle signage; strike the keynote set, the exhibition and demo halls, the street tents, and anything else that was constructed just for the conference. There's a lot of post-conference analyis going on too. Oracle and partner marketing teams are looking at and following up on the leads they got from booth, demo, and lounge traffic. The events team is evaluating the session and conference surveys you filled out if you attended -- looking to identify the best speakers, what worked and didn't work, how you liked the venues, the food, the entertainment, the presentations. From all of that information will come recommendations for next year on what to keep doing, what to do better, and what not to do at all. The goal for each year's conference is to be better than last year's. If you attended and haven't filled out the surveys yet, you have until October 19 for them to be counted, and for you to be entered into a daily sweepstakes. Click here for more information. Posts to this blog will slow down for a while, but we'll post news about Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco and around the world when we have it. Any suggestions about future blog topics are welcome. Oh - I forgot to mention that you can sign up to be notified when registration for Oracle OpenWorld 2013 goes live. If you register at that time you'll get the best discount available on attending next year. So sign up, and stay tuned.

    Read the article

  • What do you do when your team leader doesn't know something simple?

    - by leppie
    What do you do when your team leader does not know why the following is wrong: a.SomeProp = a.SomeProp; // no funny side-effects, plain old property He claims 15 years of programming experience, and 7 years of C#/.NET. To me, someone of 3-6 months experience should know this. What I have done: Tried to make him understand why it is wrong. He told me not to criticize him. Told him it's not about criticism, but project risk. He got upset with me. I have addressed the risk of this person with our manager (few weeks back). I have addressed my concerns with this person with our manager several times, since 1 month after I started there (7 months now). Currently, I just feel like just not going back to work... I hardly have any nails left, and this is really just the tip of the iceberg. As nothing has changed after I have spoken to the manager for the last 6 months, I feel like I need to make some sort of ultimatum. Do you have any suggestions? PS: Please do not make this subjective. I have no need for arguing. The level of incompetence is pretty clear. I just need some advice before going insane. Update: Thanks for all the answers (trying to update before close, buggers). I think I will forward this thread to our manager :) Update 2: I sent my manager another mail with my concerns, and a link to this question. Awaiting response.

    Read the article

  • What are some strategies for maintaining a common database schema with a team of developers and no D

    - by Mahmoud Abdelkader
    I'm curious about how others have approached the problem of maintaining and synchronizing database changes across many (10+) developers without a DBA? What I mean, basically, is that if someone wants to make a change to the database, what are some strategies to doing that? (i.e. I've created a 'Car' model and now I want to apply the appropriate DDL to the database, etc..) We're primarily a Python shop and our ORM is SQLAlchemy. Previously, we had written our models in such a way to create the models using our ORM, but we recently ditched this because: We couldn't track changes using the ORM The state of the ORM wasn't in sync with the database (e.g. lots of differences primarily related to indexes and unique constraints) There was no way to audit database changes unless the developer documented the database change via email to the team. Our solution to this problem was to basically have a "gatekeeper" individual who checks every change into the database and applies all accepted database changes to an accepted_db_changes.sql file, whereby the developers who need to make any database changes put their requests into a proposed_db_changes.sql file. We check this file in, and, when it's updated, we all apply the change to our personal database on our development machine. We don't create indexes or constraints on the models, they are applied explicitly on the database. I would like to know what are some strategies to maintain database schemas and if ours is seems reasonable. Thanks!

    Read the article

  • Should we migrate from svn to Team Foundation Server 2010?

    - by Florian
    We are with 6 developer and currently use Visual Studio 2008 Professional with SVN and Visual SVN. As soon as vs2010 is released we will upgrade from vs2008 pro to vs2010 premium. However if Team Foundation Server has a proper source control included in vs2010 premium, then it does make sense to use it. We like SVN, but like tight integration of tools even better. On the internet information on SVN versus TFS 2010 seems to be scarce. Hence my question here. EDIT: This video looks very compelling. Is this marketing talk or real? Thank you all for your replies! I absolutely appreciate this. A little more background info. This is our current stack; vs2008 pro, Visual SVN, SVN, Jetbrain Teamcity. My main problem is that we use a lot of tools from different vendors which more or less integrate. Sometime more, mostly less. At least it takes a lot of time to set it up correctly. We currently do not use branches, but we want to. Therefore we have to set up SVN from scratch (we looked into it carefully). So let me rephrase my question: Should we set up SVN or start using TFS?

    Read the article

  • How did your team customize Stylecop (and perhaps other tools) for .Net for a good result?

    - by Hamish Grubijan
    Our team is still in a love / hate relationship with it. I am hoping to put an end to the debate by having an internal vote on what rules should be excluded and which rules should be added. Before doing so, I wanted to ask others SO users. To standardize (but not limit) the responses: What is your current StyleCop version? What .Net version do you currently target? Which default rules did you turn off? Which non-default rules have you turned on? Have you coded your own rules? Please describe. Do you have any other StyleCop tricks worth sharing? Do you use Resharper? What version? Is it a good bang for the buck? Do you use any other tools for .Net / C++ which integrate with Visual Studio and aid development? Did you get your money's worth? Anything else you like to add? ... Thank you!

    Read the article

  • How can one convince a team to use a new technology (LinQ, MVC, etc )?

    - by Atomiton
    Obviously, it's easier to do with some developers, but I'm sure many of us are on teams that prefer the status quo. You know the type. You see some benefit in a piece of new technology and they prefer the tried and true methods. Try, for example, DBA/C# programmer the advantages of using LinQ ( not necessarily LinQ to SQL, just LinQ in general ). For example, When a project requirement is to be cross-platform... instead of thinking about how one can run Windows on a Mac through a VM Machine, introducing the idea of using relatively new Silverlight or creating it in Java ( as an option to look into ). I know most people don't like to be out of their comfort level, so it takes a bit of convincing, and not ALL new technology makes business sense... but how have you convinced your team to look at a new technology? What technologies have you successfully introduced to your workplace? What technologies do you think are hardest to introduce? ( I'm thinking paradigm-shifting ones, like MVC from WebForms... or new languages ) What strategies do you employ to make these new technologies appealing?

    Read the article

  • In Scrum, should a team remove points from (defect) stories that don't result in a code change?

    - by CanIgtAW00tW00t
    My work uses a Scrum-like process to manage projects. I say Scrum-like, because we call it Scrum, but our project managers exclude aspects of Scrum that are inconvenient (most notably customer interaction). One of the stories in our current sprint was to correct a defect. After spending almost an entire day working on the issue, I determined the issue was the result of a permissions issue, so I didn't end up modifying any code. Our Scrum master / project manager decided that no code change equals zero points. I know that Scrum points are supposed to measure size / complexity and not time, but our Scrum master invests a lot of time in preparing graphs and statistical information from past sprints (average velocity, average points completed, etc.) I've always been of the opinion that for statistics to be meaningful in any way, the data must be as accurate as possible. All of our data is fuzzy to begin with, because, from time to time, we're encouraged by the Scrum master to "adjust" our size / complexity estimates, both increasing and decreasing them. I'd like to hear some other developers / Scrum team members thoughts on the merits of statistics based on past sprints, and also whether they think it's appropriate to "adjust" size / complexity estimates in the middle of a sprint, or the remove all points from a story all together for situations similar to what I've just described.

    Read the article

  • Is the Subversion 'stack' a realistic alternative to Team Foundation Server?

    - by Robert S.
    I'm evaluating Microsoft Team Foundation Server for my customer, who currently uses Visual SourceSafe and nothing else. They have explicitly expressed a desire to implement a more rigid and process-driven environment as their application is in production and they have future releases to consider. The particular areas I'm trying to cover are: Configuration management (e.g., source control) Change management (workflow and doco for change requests, tasks) Release management (builds and deployments) Incident and problem management (issues and bugs) Document management (similar to source control, but available via web) Code analysis constraints on check-ins A testing framework Reporting Visual Studio 2008 integration TFS does all of these things quite well, but it's expensive and complex to maintain, and the inexpensive Workgroup edition doesn't scale. We don't get TFS as part of our MSDN subscription. Those problems can be overcome, but before I tell my customer to go the TFS route, which in itself isn't a terrible thing, I wanted to evaluate the alternatives. I know Subversion is often suggested for its configuration management/source control, but what about the other areas? Would a combination of Subversion/NUnit/Wiki/CruiseControl/NAnt/something else satisfy all of these requirements? What tools do I need to include in my evaluation? Or should I just bite the bullet and go with TFS since we're already invested in the Microsoft stack?

    Read the article

  • How best to present a security vulnerability to a web development team in your own company?

    - by BigCoEmployee
    Imagine the following scenario: You work at Big Co. and your coworkers down the hall are on the web development team for Big Co's public blog system, which a lot of Big Co employees and some public people use. The blog system allows any HTML and JavaScript, and you've been told that it was a choice (not by accident) but you aren't sure if they realize the implications of this. So you want to convince them that this is a bad idea. You write some demonstration code and plant a XSS script in your own blog, and then write some blog posts. Soon after, the head blog admin (down the hall) visits your blog post and the XSS sends his cookies to you. You copy them into your browser and you are now logged in as him. Okay, now you're logged in as him... And you start realizing that it maybe wasn't such a good idea to go ahead and 'hack' the blog system. But you are a good guy! You don't touch his account after logging into it, and you definitely don't plan on publicizing this weakness; you just maybe want to show them that the public is able to do this, so that they can fix it before someone malicious realizes the same thing! What is the best course of action from here?

    Read the article

  • SSAS Compare: an intern’s journey

    - by Red Gate Software BI Tools Team
    About a month ago, David mentioned an intern working in the BI Tools Team. That intern happens to be me! In five weeks’ time, I’ll start my second year of Computer Science at the University of Cambridge and be a full-time student again, but for the past eight weeks, I’ve been living a completely different life. As Jon mentioned before, the teams here at Red Gate are small and everyone (including the interns!) is responsible for the product as a whole. I’ve attended planning sessions, UX tests, daily meetings, and everything else a full-time member of the team would; I had as much say in where we would go next with the product as anyone; I was able to see that what I was doing was an important part of the product from the feedback we got in the UX tests. All these things almost made me forget that this is just an internship and not my full-time job. First steps at Red Gate Being based in Cambridge, Red Gate has many Cambridge university graduates working for them. They also hire some Cambridge undergraduates for internships each summer. With its popularity with university graduates and its great working environment, Red Gate has managed to build up a great reputation. When I thought of doing an internship here in Cambridge, Red Gate just seemed to be the obvious choice for my first real work experience. On my first day at Red Gate, David, the lead developer for SSAS Compare, helped me settle in and explained what I’d be doing. My task was to improve the user experience of displaying differences between MDX scripts by syntax highlighting, script formatting, and improving the difference identification in the first place. David suggested how I should approach the problem, but left all the details and design decisions to me. That was when I realised how much independence and responsibility I’d have. What I’ve done If you launch the latest version of SSAS Compare and drill down to an MDX script difference, you can see the changes that have been made. In earlier versions, you could only see the scripts in plain text on both sides — either in black or grey, depending on whether they were the same or not. However, you couldn’t see exactly where the scripts were different, which was especially annoying when the two scripts were large – as they often are. Furthermore, if parts of the two scripts were formatted differently, they seemed to be different but were actually the same, which caused even more confusion and made it difficult to see where the differences were. All these issues have been fixed now. The two scripts are automatically formatted by the tool so that if two things are syntactically equivalent, they look the same – including case differences in keywords! The actual difference is highlighted in grey, which makes them easy to spot. The difference identification has been improved as well, so two scripts aren’t identified as different if there’s just a difference in meaningless whitespace characters, or when you have “select” on one side and “SELECT” on the other. We also have syntax highlighting, which makes it easier to read the scripts. How I did it In order to do the formatting properly, we decided to parse the MDX scripts. After some investigation into parser builders, I decided to go with the GOLD Parser builder and the bsn-goldparser .NET engine. GOLD Parser builder provides a fairly nice GUI to write, build, and test grammar in. We also liked the idea of separating the grammar building from parsing a text. The bsn-goldparser is one of many .NET engines for GOLD, and although it doesn’t support the newest features of GOLD Parser, it has “the ability to map semantic action classes to terminals or reduction rules, so that a completely functional semantic AST can be created directly without intermediate token AST representation, and without the need for glue code.” That makes it much easier for us to change the implementation in our program when we change the grammar. As bsn-goldparser is open source, and I wanted some more features in it, I contributed two new features which have now been merged to the project. Unfortunately, there wasn’t an MDX grammar written for GOLD already, so I had to write it myself. I was referencing MSDN to get the formal grammar specification, but the specification was all over the place, so it wasn’t that easy to implement and find. We’re aware that we don’t yet fully support all valid MDX, so sometimes you’ll just see the MDX script difference displayed the old way. In that case, there is some grammar construct we don’t yet recognise. If you come across something SSAS Compare doesn’t recognise, we’d love to hear about it so we can add it to our grammar. When some MDX script gets parsed, a tree is produced. That tree can then be processed into a list of inlines which deal with the correct formatting and can be outputted to the screen. Doing all this has led me to many new technologies and projects I haven’t worked with before. This was my first experience with C# and Visual Studio, although I have done things in Java before. I have learnt how to unit test with NUnit, how to do dependency injection with Ninject, how to source-control code with SVN and Mercurial, how to build with TeamCity, how to use GOLD, and many other things. What’s coming next Sadly, my internship comes to an end this week, so there will be less development on MDX difference view for a while. But the team is going to work on marking the differences better and making it consistent with difference indication in the top part of comparison window, and will keep adding support for more MDX grammar so you can see the differences easily in every comparison you make. So long! And maybe I’ll see you next summer!

    Read the article

  • How do I reward my developers for the little things they get right?

    - by Nat
    I am in a tech lead role and my developers get stuff right most of the time. How do I communicate to them thier value to me? (I.e. they have value because I do not have to go through and point out mistakes which means I do not have to watch them like a hawk which frees me to do more useful things). In summary For doing the mundane well on a day to day basis, it is good to recognise the developers effort verbally to them. An honest thankyou that mentions the specific behaviour and its positive repercussions to you personally will be well received, adjust the language to suite each individual. (Note that other developers within earshot may also respond to this by increasing their efforts in this specific activity.) Other things that should be done regularly are: Team drinks In many cultures this is an entirely worthy way of giving the team some time to socialise and relax. Be sure that you do not exclude people who do not drink or are not keen on pub culture. Shared meals are another option. Formal written (email) acknowledgment and praise to senior managers of the teams efforts and successes. (Note that acknowledging individuals alone may damage team spirit) Work the hours you expect your team to do. If they absolutely must work late for a deadline, be there in support Go to bat for the team. Refuse to let them be forced to work long periods of overtime without compensation. Protect them from level politics and stress. Give your team the best equipment you can afford. Good tools show respect and improve productivity. Small or large team rewards where appropriate can consist of many interesting activities/ items. If it allows the team to get together in a fun and even lightly competitive manner it will work (foosball table, go-karting, darts board, video game console etc). Don’t forget to listen to what the team wants, each team will have different ideas. Ensure they are getting a fair deal financially from the company. While different people may have different expectations of their pay, someone being paid unfairly will rot morale for the entire team

    Read the article

  • Incentivizing Work with Development Teams

    - by MarkPearl
    Recently I saw someone on twitter asking about incentives and if anyone had past experience with incentivizing work. I promised to respond with some of the experiences I have had in the past so here goes... **Disclaimer** - these are my experiences with incentives, generally in software development - in some other industries this may not be applicable – this is also my thinking at this point in time, with more experience my opinion may change. Incentivize at the level that you want people to group at If you are wanting to promote a team mentality, incentivize teams. If you want to promote an individual mentality, incentivize individuals. There is nothing worse than mixing this up. Some organizations put a lot of effort in establishing teams and team mentalities but reward individuals. This has a counter effect on the resources they have put towards establishing a team mentality. In the software projects that I work with we want promote cross functional teams that collaborate. Personally, if I was on a team and knew that there was an opportunity to work on a critical component of the system, and that by doing so I would get a bigger bonus, then I would be hesitant to include other people in solving that problem. Thus, I would hinder the teams efforts in being cross functional and reduce collaboration levels. Does that mean everyone in the team should get an even share of an incentive? In most situations I would say yes - even though this may feel counter-intuitive. I have heard arguments put forward that if “person x contributed more than person Y then they should be rewarded more” – This may sound controversial but I would rather treat people how would you like them to perform, not where they currently are at. To add to this approach, if someone is free loading, you bet your bottom dollar that the team is going to make this a lot more transparent if they feel that individual is going to be rewarded at the same level that everyone else is. Bad incentives promote destructive work If you are going to incentivize people, pick you incentives very carefully. I had an experience once with a sales person who was told they would get a bonus provided that they met an ordering target with a particular supplier. What did this person do? They sold everything at cost for the next month or so. They reached the goal, but the company didn't gain anything from it. It was a bad incentive. Expect the same with development teams, if you incentivize zero bug levels, you will get zero code committed to the solution. If you incentivize lines of code, you will get many many lines of bad code. Is there such a thing as a good incentives? Monetary wise, I am not sure there is. I would much rather encourage organizations to pay their people what they are worth upfront. I would also advise against paying money to teams as an incentive or even a bonus or reward for reaching a milestone. Rather have a breakaway for the team that promotes team building as a reward if they reach a milestone than pay them more money. I would also advise against making the incentive the reason for them to reach the milestone. If this becomes the norm it promotes people to begin to only do their job if there is an incentive at the end of the line. This is not a behaviour one wants to encourage. If the team or individual is in the right mind-set, they should not work any harder than they are right now with normal pay.

    Read the article

< Previous Page | 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42  | Next Page >