Netflings

Changing Address

2006-05-30T08:39:00.000-04:00

I have moved my blog to wordpress, offers a number of benefits over and above blogspot. I can now be found at http://netflings.wordpress.com

See you there.

End of an Era

2006-05-29T08:42:00.000-04:00

After almost 10 years with Finetix, it has come time to say goodbye. I started at Finetix as a c++ coder, and leave as a Partner. It has been a ride, I have had the honour of working with some great people, and wish to thank everyone I have worked with for making my time at Finetix a pleasurable one.

Needless to say that this has been a hard decission to make, leaving a firm that I helped build and direct, but it had to be made. I wish Finetix all the best for the future.

What next you may ask? I need time to chill and reflect, I will be doing this from my upstate home, enjoying a couple of cool beers whilst watching the world pass by on my deck. Certainly the 10 years has given me much to think about, both from a technology perspective, and also a process perspective, some of which I will blog in comming weeks.

2006-04-26T12:23:00.000-04:00

PInvoke'd

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vcsharp/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dv_vstechart/html/pinvoke.asp

Until Microsoft provides a complete wrappering of the Win32 API, you will find the need to hook into unmanaged code, and for all those of you out there that will need to integrate with unmanaged C/C++ code, like analytics libraries and device drivers, then the above url is a must read.

2006-04-07T13:52:00.000-04:00

SPOIL'd

A great article on Database Persistance, ADO.Net and Stored Procedures,
http://msdn.microsoft.com/architecture/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnbda/html/SPOIL.asp, I have been going thru a little mental battle between the ideas behind Hibernate and other alternatives like DAAB, as far as I am concerned, all are fairly good alternatives, depending on your view point. I dislike hibernate more because it is very heavily configuration oriented where as SPOIL, utilizes Custom Attributes to provide the binding between C# and SQL. I have also been watching the LINQ discussions, this is yet another approach to bringing the database and the .Net environment closer together. I for one would like to only have to deal with one language, and not the minium of two at the moment, i.e. C# and TSql, SQL92 or equivalent.

2006-03-27T09:19:00.000-05:00

There be trouble in them hills

Even the management at Microsoft are not without their share of criticism, check out the following article, http://internetweek.cmp.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleId=183702795

No matter how small or large an organization is, there will always be individuals that will look to sling dirt, sometimes this is necessary to force management into taking action, other times it is just for the sheer pleasure of dishing the company.

Now what does a company do when met with such an attack? You can ignore it, and hope it goes away, or you can take action, by re-assuring the public that there is no merit to the views, or you can react by acknowledging that there are elements of truth and look to work with the employee's to resolve the issues. Now it will be interesting to see the road that Microsoft will take this time around.

2006-02-27T16:57:00.000-05:00

Dr Who

For all those Dr Who fans out there in, Sci Fi channel has just released this

http://www.scifi.com/doctorwho/

It is finally in the US, about time to if you ask me.

2006-02-26T07:08:00.000-05:00

WinForms on Speed

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/06/03/WindowsFormsPerformance/default.aspx

For all those trying to squeeze more and more performance out of the UI.

2006-02-24T14:08:00.000-05:00

Hedge Fund's and Integration

With any buisness solutions these days, it requires the integration of multiple vendors, services and products, Hedge funds are no different. I have now worked for Hedge Fund Administrators (Citco), worked with Hedge Fund Administrators (globeop) and had dealings with a number of prime brokers ( Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America to name but a few ) and also those all important order entry systems, Bloomberg, TradeWeb , Kondor, and others.
Each of the above have their advantages and disadvantages, which is not the subject of this post, all of them have one thing in common, they stand alone, as products and services, i.e. their connectivity is limited or non existant between them.
So, a day in the life of a hedge fund on the operational side (approx and no comment here on trading stratgey, analytics, etc ) is as follows;

1. Trade is booked into an Order Entry System, there may be multiple order entry systems, depending on the product mix of the Hedge Fund and the capability of the products being used.

2. Orders are submitted to Prime Broker where appropriate, there may be more than one prime broker involved. If no Prime Broker, then need to deal with the Dealer's directly.

3. Orders are submitted to a Fund Administrator, like Citco, or depending on the needs of the hedge fund there may be multiple Fund administrators involved, for example think Managed Accounts.

4. End of Day, each system that has a record of the trade needs to send enough information back out so that each system can the reconcile between each other, this activity is usually thje responsibility of the Hedge Fund, not of the ssystems/products that you are using. This is crazy

So much of my day to day life is spent discussing file formats with each vendor, and testing the process, i.e. generating the data, deliverying the data, and reconcilling the data, and for each system you interact with it is the same process.

I have seen FPML file formats, all kinds of delimited text files, even Database dumps from systems.

Each vendor assures me that they are trying to improve the process, i.e. some are looking to offer Web Services as a way to deliver information, others are wanting to standardize on FpML format, and others are just trying to keep up with the volume of clients that they are servicing.

What it sounds like to me is that there should be a service offering that removes the integration effort from the Hedge Fund, more to come ...

2006-02-23T15:06:00.000-05:00

Check out the following link http://adsate36.blogspot.com/

Hello this is my first

2006-02-22T19:07:00.000-05:00

This is my first blog entry from a mobil phone, this is a great way to post thoughts, etc with minimal effort

Like it

2006-02-21T12:57:00.000-05:00

Managed Accounts

http://www.thestreet.com/_email/markets/hedgefunds/10267663.html

The above link is worth a read, it discusses the use of managed accounts as a way to avoid hedge fund fraud.

There are some interesting operational ramifications regarding managed accounts, much of this related to how trades are booked and then flow to down stream applications, like Prime Brokers and Fund Administrator's.

I am currently looking at what is needed to be done for one of my clients, so watch this space, as I understand more, I will share with you.

2006-02-20T21:15:00.000-05:00

Hedge Fund Master
Steven A Cohen, a force to be reckoned with in the Hedge Fund industry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_A._Cohen
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_29/b3842001_mz001.htm

2006-02-20T19:42:00.000-05:00

Hedge Fund Links

There are many web sites now that focus on the Hedge Fund business, below are a couple that may be of interest;

http://www.hedgeco.net/

http://www.hedgefund.net/

http://www.thehfa.org/

http://www.hedgefundcenter.com/

http://www.hedge-funds.big.com/

The above are just a few of the resources that are now available on the web. For more just google "Hedge Fund" +http and browse.

2005-10-29T17:22:00.000-04:00

Microsoft and Grid Computing

Check out this recent article, http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5889460.html, looks like things at Microsoft are starting to heat up around Grid. It has some ground to make up, if it is looking to compete with offerings from DataSynapse and Platform to name a few, but knowing Microsoft, once they focus, they are a force to be reconded with

2005-10-29T16:39:00.000-04:00

Windows WorkFlow Foundation

If you are thinking about WorkFlow needs for your current application then this may be for you, checkout http://www.WindowsWorkflow.net for all your workflow needs. This is still in Beta, with the next beta release towards the end of the year, but it's a good start. This was a very hot topic at the PDC this year

2005-09-16T14:38:00.000-04:00

PDC Downloads

All of the presentations done during the week are available here. Worth a browse. Check out the presntation by Don Box, discussing the integration of Windows Workflow Framework and Windows Communication Framework, 'COM325 Workflow + Messaging + Services: Developing Distributed Applications with Workflows' As always Don Box gave a great presentaion.

2005-09-15T12:41:00.000-04:00

PDC 2005 KeyNote Wed

Eric Rudder started out the Keynote, detailing all the new cool tools available for the developer, 'Tools for Inovation'. Visual Studio and SQL Server 2005 will be launched early Nov 2005, and all attendees will be recieving a free copy of SQL Server 2005.

Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF, not the Worldwide Wrestling Federation) was anounced, this has been a long time comming, we shall see if it was worth the wait. The WWF has tight integration in with Visual Studio, so that workflows can be graphically constructed, and also debugging is made simple as well, with the integration into VS. I managed to get a free copy of the WWF Beta 2 developers guide, and the Beta is also available on the msdn website, so I will be playing with this very shortly.

Also Anounced was Microsofts Expression's suite, this includes (codenames), Acrylic, Sparkle and Quartz, essentially a suite of tools aimed directly at the UI designers, both WinForms and Web Apps. As with WWF tight integration with Visual Studio has been a priority so that files can be shared between the developer and the designer with no issues, a demo of the tool set was provided, and it certainly removes much of the work that is currently done when designers hand over images/design to the developers.

Finally VSTA (Visual Studio Tools for Applications) was announced, this is the next version of VBA.

Steven Sinofsky then walked thru some of the changes made to Office, that provide better integration between the Office suite and SharePoint. If you are an office developer, or an Excel junkie then it is worth checking out the Enterprise solutions provided by the new version of Office.

2005-09-14T13:06:00.000-04:00

PDC 2005 Keynote Tuesday

The atmosphere was electric, charged by the thumping of rock/rap and dance music. The audience sat with anticipation as they waited for the Keynote to start. The lights dimmed and a hushed silence swepted across the audience, as we where now only seconds away from the entrance of the man himself.

Bill Gates entered with a thunderous applause from the awaiting audience, the PDC had now official started. Check out the KeyNote online at PDC 2005 KeyNote

Bill gave a quick history lesson, where we were 30 years ago, when Microsoft first started, and now where we are today. When you compare it is amazing the progress that has been made in such a relatively short period of time, about half a developer’s career. Very impressive. He thanked the audience for their continued support of the .Net platform, and even went as far to say that the .Net framework is the most popular development environment today, (this I will take with a pitch of salt). A key comment in his speech was ‘Software is an Enabler’, to make the best usage of improvements in hardware and telecommunications infrastructure, software is a key element, as this enables users to make the most out of these improvements, better ways to communicate, richer user interfaces.

We got to see a quick demo of Vista, nothing blow away here, we have seen this all before, but still impressive when the 3d Task List was demonstrated. We also got to See a demo of the new Office 12 offering, the changes are manly user interface related, there is currently 1500 functions in the current Office product, most of which users never knew exist, so the new interface concentrates on making those functions more readily available.

Jim Allchin was the second speaker; he introduced some interesting things, AJAX, ATLAS and LINQ. AJAX and ATLAS are aiming squarely at providing much richer user experiences via the browser, some cool demos here. The more interesting topic is LINQ; the idea here is to provide tighter binding between the database and .Net, so ultimately you would no longer need to write SQL to access the database, and that this will all be done via your favorite .Net Language.

So what do we have to look forward to, Longhorn has been renamed to Vista, Avalon to Windows Presentation Framework, Indigo to Windows Communication Framework, so this is so far somewhat of a rehash from the last PDC in 2003, with a couple of juicy toolkits thrown in, but I will defer final comment until the end of the conference, as many of the session look very interesting. Tomorrows Keynote will be interesting.

A couple of additional items, it was good to see that subtitles where provided, in real-time. The audience is still very male dominated, whilst there are women in the audience, it is a small fraction of the overall attendee population, and this I hope in future PDC’s will change.

2005-09-11T23:03:00.000-04:00

MSF

Microsoft has provided in Visual Studio 2005 Team System, Agile Process Templates, based around the MSF, Microsoft Solutions Framework. This provides opportunities for individuals & groups to create appropriate templates to facilitate the integration of many differing work flows, so for example, within Capital Markets you can conceive of several templates that can be developed to help guide developers to use best of breed practices and guide them to providing the appropriate solutions, these templates could consist of Messaging Templates, Trade Entry Templates, Distribed Processing Templates. There are many re occuring patterns when you build the same systems, over and over again, if you can recognise and describe them, then you could potential include them into a Template, and make it easier to build the next system. Certainly much to think about.

2005-09-11T20:14:00.000-04:00

Microsoft PDC 2005

Just arrived at this years PDC, the list of Sessions is impressive, if you are not going to be there I would suggest you check out the WebCast of Bill Gates Key note speach which is on Tuesday the 13th of September.

I am staying at the Hilton Checkers which is less than a mile away from the Conference Center, very nice small hotel, with very nice rooms. Complimentory bus service to the Center, but the only excercise I will be getting is the walk to and from the conference, so will be skipping the Bus service.

Keep an eye on the PDC Blog, this is always a great source of interesting views and commentary on the PDC.

2005-08-27T08:33:00.000-04:00

Ken Schwaber

Ken Schwaber, one of the creators of Scrum, is going to be spending a day at Finetix in September 2005. During his visit he will be giving an overview of Scrum to the entire company during his visit.

Ken's books (software development, project management) are required reading material in Finetix.

2005-07-28T16:25:00.000-04:00

Agile 2005: Distributed Agile

Interesting morning session today, (Thursday 28th July 2005), the topic is Agile in a distributed workforce, three case studies where presented, that gave insight into the way that three separate organizations are leveraging Agile in a distributed workforce.

In summary, each case study concluded that distributed Agile, with the right collaboration tools, and the correct leadership, can work, and work very successfully. A couple of tools where mentioned, Interwise and Twiki. One very clear aspect of making this work was the investment by both the client and also the service organization in each case, investments where generally centered around the following hi-level items, investments where both monetary and also time.

1. Collaborative tools, Wiki, Video Conferencing, Virtual White Boards, and Instant Messaging.

2. Convening the entire team in one physical location for up to 6 weeks at the start of a project, to build relationships and trust within the team, so that once the team breaks into separate parts there is a strong relationship between the remote team members and local resources.

3. Compromise within the team, when dealing with differences in time zones, i.e. a team is allowed to decide its own working hours to ensure the optimal interaction between the distributed team members

4. Training, to ensure that the team as a whole is at the same level of experience using the organizations Agile approach.

Each case study demonstrated improvements in the quality of the product, the speed of development, and most importantly the improvement in the quality of life of all team members.

Two of the three case studies where presented by companies that develop product, either for external consumption or for internal usage. The third was Valtech, a consulting company, which has a very large offshore offering, they are utilizing Agile in their offshore development projects so that they may better server their clients, specifically those that are starting to use Agile practices.

2005-07-28T03:54:00.000-04:00

Agile 2005: Future of Scrum

Scrum is dead long live Scrum, Jeff Sutherland gave a very interesting report on what will follow scrum. Check out the full paper Future of Scrum: Support for Parallel Pipelining of Sprints in Complex Projects.

If you are currently a ScrumMaster then read the above document, as this may be where you will be heading.

2005-07-28T03:38:00.000-04:00

Agile 2005 : Agile in Capital Markets

David Chapman and I held an Open Space session today, Wednesday 27th of July at the Agile 2005 Conference. We wanted to discuss issues and resolutions to bringing Agile to Capital Markets, a key issue we had and wanted to get traction on was, ‘how do you sell the Agile approach to an organization that is predominantly waterfall’, and ‘how do you sell Agile when the client is looking for Fixed Price & Fixed Scope contracts’

We expected no one to show up to our Open Space, as we have heard nothing relating to the Finance industry at all so far during this conference. We where pleasantly surprised when a single person showed up to discuss the topic with us, the individual was from Algorithmics, currently starting to roll out Agile techniques on his projects.

In Summary, there are no easy solutions to the two main questions;

Q: How do you sell the Agile approach to an organization that is predominantly waterfall?
A: You need to pick your battles carefully and identify a project that has minimal risk to the client, and that has a reasonable price point, i.e. keep the cost low. To do this you need to know your client well, so that these opportunities can be spotted and discussed with the client. Bottom Line is that results sell, so if you successfully deliver an Agile project, then the next one will be easier to sell.

Q: How do you sell Agile when the client is looking for Fixed Price & Fixed Scope contracts?
A: This is a tough one, as for me the idea of Fixed Price and Fixed Scope is a bad combination to start with, irrespective of approach. Part of the sell of Agile is the need to educate the client that Fixed Price / Fixed Scope projects are bad for both sides, as it is a very rigid contract, that ends up needing many additional requests added at additional expense to the client, and what can become a very adversarial relationship between the client and the service provider..

There are no easy answers to the above two questions, this will be addressed over time, as the client starts to realize the value of Agile, and become more Agile them selves regarding the way that the contracts are drafted, so that it becomes a collective effort to achieve the end business goals and needs.

Check out the Wiki for the agile 2005 conference, and click on the Open Spaces link for a summary of the discussion we had during our Open Space, this site also contains links to all of the other Open Space topics that where discussed and reported on.

2005-07-26T23:42:00.000-04:00

Agile 2005 Open Spaces Part II

One of the sessions today, discussed the use of Open Spaces within an organization to address cross team issues. Any large organization that has many teams that depend on common infrastructure and have common requirements, need to ensure that they are addressing those requirements in a manner that is consistent across the teams. The use of the ‘Open Spaces’ concept provides a forum in which to allow teams to raise concerns and through a collaborative effort come to a solution, that is the responsibility of the members of the Open Space to ensure is correctly implemented, this is beneficial not only to the teams (as now they have a solution), but also the business, as an issue that could have easily stalled development efforts in a more Waterfall approach has been resolved quickly.

One thought that I had regarding the potential use of the same idea for my company, was the idea of a Virtual Open Space, a virtual version of the Open Space approach. We have consultants that are graphically dispersed across 4 locations, and getting people together in a single physical place, is a logistical nightmare, so a logical extension of the Open Space idea, would be the construction of a Virtual Open Space. What I am not completely clear about at the moment, is how this would actually work, and if this is not just a wiki or blog, it certainly has given me some food for thought, and I will provide feedback once I have come to a conclusion if this is something that actually makes sense, and how this would actually be implemented.

2005-07-25T22:19:00.000-04:00

Agile 2005 Visual Studio 2005 Team System

Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition, was shown to me in brief today by a Microsoft representative, the demo was awesome, check it out now, if you have not already done so. I have installed a Beta 2 version on my laptop, provided at the conference, and will start using this on a couple of internal projects that I am working on. One aspect that has peaked my interest is the fact that many of the tools bundled with this version of Visual Studio will work on .Net 1.1 release, i.e. the test coverage tools, the code analysis tools to name a couple. This would certainly make this a viable platform for me to use on existing .Net 1.1 projects.

2005-07-25T22:11:00.000-04:00

Agile 2005 Speakers part I

So far I have been impressed by two speakers, Bob Martin, who in the keynote speech presented with passion, humor and conviction, certainly had the audience in the palm of his hand, the other presenter I have been impressed with is Mike Cohn, he presented on Sunday as part of the preconference sessions. He spoke with conviction and authority that certainly caught my attention. Mike's discussion was on agile estimating and planning, and what information is needed to allow for reasonableness of estimates (further details will be provided in a later post)

2005-07-25T21:11:00.000-04:00

Agile 2005 Project Management

The Agile Project Management Leadership Network (APLN) is a newly formed sister group to the Agile Alliance that concentrates on the Project Management aspects of Agile, intersecting with the Agile Alliance (this group is more focused on the Agile development/testing movement) where applicable. If you are a project manager facing the challenges of having to understand and manage Agile development projects, or are about to embark on a new project using agile techniques, then this is a site that you should visit and quickly, even join and become a member.

The Declaration of Interdependence, has been authored as the equivalent to the Agile Manifesto, but for the Agile Project Managers of this world, it is well worth reading.

I will be posting more on this topic in the next couple of days, as this is a very important aspect that is not fully appreciated and understood yet, in the future of agile adoption within organizations. The Project Managers play a key part in ensuring that teams are fostered the right environment and that progress is reported with clarity and visibility to the business. New approaches, new terminology and new work practices need to be employed, this is the brave new world of Agile Project Management, gone are the days when project managers just tweak and fiddle with Project Plans, and we are now where the Project Managers, need to manage, and facilitate and remove obstacles for the teams that they are managing.

2005-07-25T21:05:00.000-04:00

Agile 2005 Open Space

‘What are the issues and opportunities for making agile practices business as usual’. This is the mission goal of this session, an opportunity for conference participants to form working groups to discuss issues and opportunities for agile practices, some of the topics are listed below;

Agile Adoption, what are the barriers?

Agile in the Medical Industry

Project Management Roles in an Agile environment

Is XP Sustainable

Agile Pod Casts

Distributed Agile development

Agile in Capital Markets (A Finetix sponsored Topic)

This is just a small hand full of the 30+ topics that are out for discussion at this conference. There will be a follow up on all topics suggested in the open space forum, posted to a Wiki sponsored by the agile conference. I will provide an update on what comes out of our session ‘Agile in Capital Markets’ after we have hosted the session, which is scheduled at the moment for this Wednesday at 1:30pm that is 3:30pm EST.

2005-07-25T20:15:00.000-04:00

Agile 2005 Key Note

An excellent turn out, 675 people register for this event, unprecedented for this type of conference, and expected to grow for next years Agile 2006, the audience is a cross section of developers, testers, product owners, project managers, etc. Encompassing many differing business verticals, insurance, finance, medical, ISV’s, Trainers, and Consultants. The mix of the audience a clear indication that Agile is not just a process for developers, it is applicable across a company’s organization, and across verticals. It has certainly struck a cord, and is growing in popularity.

As an aside a very funny opening presentation called ‘Into the tornado’ set to selected clips from the movie ‘The Wizard of Oz’ set the right tone for the rest of the key note content. You had to be there to appreciate it fully; it was certainly popular with the attendees.

Bob Martin gave a very energetic speech, discussing the path that agile has taken over the last couple of years, and where the movement is going. In summary the adoption of agile is growing, where once it was assumed that it worked best for small teams of no more than 10 people, it is now being used to manage graphically disperse teams of 1000 or more. Software is best done at home, i.e. more and more organizations are coming to the conclusion that to build good quality software that satisfies the needs of the business; it needs to be done within the organization and not out source to external parties. Agile is moving away from brands, i.e. Crystal Clear, XP or Scrum and that practioners are selecting the best parts of each brand and creating a home grown version that works best for them. What has transpired though is that organizations, many if not all are ending up creating very similar approaches independently of each other. This means that Brand is out, and that there will be a slow convergence of the current best practices that are currently in use, into a more appropriate and universally accepted approach.

2005-07-24T23:47:00.000-04:00

Day 1 Agile 2005

I arrived in Denver and checked into The Oxford, very nice, worth a stay if you visit Denver.

I made my way to the Marriott City Center complex, and wait in line with all the other eager participants to register for this event and get all my free goodies, everything seems to be in order, there are separate lines depending on your lastname, I thought this was a nice touch, should make life easier, and the registration process faster. I was somewhat discouraged as several people in front of me, who where on the registration list, but did not have badges printed, stood waiting whilst the people registering us, hunted for the name tags for the individuals, only then to be told to come back in an hour and the badge would be ready. (So much for organization, you would have thought that if you had registered, there should be a badge printed). Then it came to my turn, and no badge for me, so I go back after an hour, and still no badge, they ask me to come back again in another hour, and now I have my badge. I may be being a little harsh, but I was very surprised at how many people had the same issue, as myself, and how through a little more planning and checking, that this could have been avoided. I anticipate that this will be the only discouraging aspect of the event.

I attended the preconference session, Engineering Practices of Agile Teams. Impressed in general by the content and the pace of the session, the speakers where articulate and enjoyable to listen to. Only one critic was the lack of a microphone for those asking questions, but only a minor critic, the presenters did repeat the question, even if in a briefer format.

One thing new that I walked away with today was a better understanding of FIT and FitNess, something that makes great sense in what I do day to day, the challenge for me at this moment is getting a better understanding how this would actually work in my circumstances.

I am looking forward to the rest of the week, as there is much content that I am interested in listening to.

2005-07-20T19:30:00.000-04:00

XML Tool

Liquid is worth a look if you are using XML extensively

2005-07-19T20:50:00.000-04:00

XP & Hedge Funds

Much of my work these days is with small to medium sized Hedge Funds, and I have been using a subset of the 12 XP Practices check http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules.html for a more detailed view of these practices.

I would like to share which of the 12 are being used, and the value that it has added to the business.

Small Releases.
An important aspect of working with the client, is to provide continuous feedback to the users, this is necessary as it provides the client with visibility into the progress of the team, and builds confidence with the business that the efforts of the team are focused to the good of the business. We push out new releases into production on average twice a week, some of the changes are minor other fairly sizable, but each is an important increment of functionality that resolves a business need.

Simple Design.
The client has a small group of developers, with varied skill sets, so a key concern is that the design of the system needs to be understood by the entire team, so simple is good, as it allows full participation by all team members. The team participates on a daily basis with regards to ensuring that we all obey this practice.

Refactoring.
Once business functionality has been added to the system, we review and refactor, this has allowed the team to keep the code base small and compact and has allowed for additional requirements to be added very quickly with fewer defects. This has benefited the client, by the team being able to move quickly on many new requirements.

Testing.
We are using NUnit in conjunction with CruiseControl to allow for automated test sweeps of the system, each time a build is performed. Each programmer is responsible for developing the appropriate test suites for the components that they are primarily responsible for. Many of the tests that are run, correspond to the verification of analytical calculations, this is highly visible to the client, and the continually testing that is provided has built confidence with the business that releases are of a good quality, this being key when your business relies on the results of the analytical calculations.

Collective Ownership.
The team is collectively responsible for the system, there is a primary contact person for operational issues, this is only to aid the business users. All of the code belongs to the team, this has allowed the team to move very quickly, without impedance from external forces. The client sees that the team as a whole is responsive to business demands, and no one individual is seen as a bottleneck, or as a hero. The team is seen as the hero.

There is a notable practice that’s missing from the above list and it is

40-hour Week.
This is one of the XP practices that is not followed, the reasons are many, primarily the team is very small, and acts as both developers and operational support for the business. The business will start to see a reduction in quality, as the system grows and more functionality is added and needs to be supported, more and more of the time that the team spends will be dedicated to operational support. Hence fewer new features will added with the same level of quality as they are today. This becomes a vicious circle that can only be broken by investing in additional resources that can provide the necessary operational support.

Summary.
The XP practices that we have employed at our Hedge Fund clients have allowed the client to start seeing results within the first two weeks, and continue to see results on a regular basis. This has built confidence with the business that has allowed a very good working relationship between the IT staff and the business users, there is trust and mutual respect that re-enforces the relationship between the two groups.

2005-07-09T22:51:00.000-04:00

RSS Feeds the next level

Check out what is being included in Longhorn, RSS Feeds

2005-06-30T01:36:00.000-04:00

Agile, Development and Support

It is now 1:26am and I am still checking my current clients environment, to make sure that when the traders come in tomorrow morning at 6am that everything is running smoothly. As I sit here watching my GUI for updates to indicate when I can finish for the night, I wonder how Agile fits into my world at the moment.

The Agile approach to development is very clear to me, XP and Scrum are very compeling approaches to use during the intial analysis and development phases, but what methodology, other than long hours and patience can I employ for my time as a support person?

2005-06-22T22:42:00.000-04:00

Flash

Interesting alternative technology, Flash MX Web Services. I also think that the winks functionality (Flash Driven) introduced in Messenger 7.0 has some very interesting applications for trading/financial applications, i.e. showing animated graphical content.

2005-06-22T21:24:00.000-04:00

Agile, Agile, Agile

I will be attending this Agile conference, check out the sessions, there is good coverage, and there is something for everyone, from the beginner to the expert.

I am personally most interested in the Scrum sessions, check out Scrum link. I am currently reading this book Agile Project Management with Scrum, its a very worth

2005-06-22T20:32:00.000-04:00

Have you seen Eclipse lately

Eclipse is a universal tools platform, highly extensible and supported by a very large development community. I have been very impressed by the speed at which eclipse has gained momentum over the past couple of years. One of the key reasons for its success is its ability to be arbitarily extended.

A number of companies now realise that they can leverage Eclipse as a client side UI Framework that would allow them to provide conistancy across the business in terms of look and feel and also the same deployment model across the enterprise, clever use of this approach would also allow this to reach out across, not only the LAN but also the WAN and ultimatly across the Internet.

Check out the Eclipse Rich Client Platform

Also check this link out at well, IBM tries to eclipse .Net with open source

Notes is already doing this Notes New Client

2004-05-24T08:00:00.000-04:00

Resurrecting this blog, I also have another blog at NetFlings

2004-02-03T16:25:00.000-05:00

Starting to learn yet another Data Grid Control, SyncFusion, this appears to the default Grid Control, due to its performance characteristics, which appear on the surface to be very good, ideal for high bandwidth updates etc

2004-02-02T14:43:00.000-05:00

Bad day today, team building is a very important if not crucial part of the development process especially when dealing with teams that are split between locations, i.e. New York and London. Communication channels need to be clear, to allow a common shared view when developing applications, otherwise the development process starts to collapse in on itself as remote developers become wary of their counterparts.

I am currently in a situation where there is far too much politics between locations, and this equates to low moral and reduced productivity

2004-02-01T18:37:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the netflings stream of thought