Mahyar SEPEHR

Usually, when you need to mockup a user interface, you start working in a tool Photoshop or Illustrator and after hours of functional oriented ideas and some creative solution, you realize that your final user interface is not compliant with for some technical reason…Here is maybe a nice solution : an iPhone prototyping app tool that runs right on your iPhone.http://lesscode.co.nz/interface. I like the idea.

Little something which I always forget: the maven2 lifecycle

Source : http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Eclipse-and-Maven2/images/lifecycle.png

My current project is beeing managed in Agile Software Development.
I must admit that I was quite a little suspicious but my first steps are positive.

The main point, as part of the Game Team, is that i know far more about the activities of my collegues: it’s a Team Play. During the Stand-Up Meeting, everyone talks about his work yesterday and his plans today. It’s the moment to communicate on your trouble, most of the time others met them too. Usually, you are working on a functionality close to your collegue next door and you don’t even know. Or maybe you have a brillant idea that may interest. Anyway, your daily work is clear for the team. So, priorities can be followed.The development team follows “as much as possible” the Extreme programming best practices as Continuous Integration, Test Driven Development, Pair Programming, Design Patterns.
But I have also discovered some limitations. The functionnal specifications are divided in pieces into greenpeppers. Therefore, it is hard to build a global specification interpretation and get into the project.
Key Words: Greenpepper, Hudson, Checkstyle, Cobertura, PMD, FindBugs

This is the craziest way talking Data, and so modern.

Chris Sacca is not only an ex-Google head thinker, or part of Twitter board…This discussion took place in LeWeb`09:  if I was Superman I would have been there!

I have seen many confusing maps that try to “cluster” web technologies and have learned not to pay attention on them.

But CMSWatch has just created a drawing that classifies different CMS and Portal technologies in a simple and funny Subway Map. I found it interesting because of the apparent simplicity of the form and the correctness of the classification.

Last month i started a little open source project with google code
infrastructure. It is pretty exciting. The project is hosted in google code. It
includes a wiki,  a bug tracker, and you work on its svn repository.
We decided to work with Google App Engine which supports Java now. It
is the biggest benefit of this cloud. You can now deploy Java web
applications on the internet in few minutes!
The presentation layer is being done in Gwt. The gwt/gae Eclipse
plugin makes develpment easier. Since my first experience in Gwt,
there has been improvements in many fields and the community tries to
suggest useful design patterns as
Commands packaging asynchronous calls, Bus Events to resolve communication between widgets.
One best practice that is suggested is MVP, Model-View-Presenter and
not an MVC, Model-View-Contoller for the interaction is easier to
apply test cases.
The Dependency Injection is resolved with Guice framework or maybe
closer to Gwt: Gin which is being finalized.

Links:

• Design Pattern, Best Practices for GWT
• Deferred Binding
• Model-View-Presenter

As i said beforewhen i tested eXo Porta, i found it was an impressive portal with sophisticated functionalities and User Interface, nicely coded.But, it really seemed not used that much in the communities and thus not very  for the future.

That point seems to be corrected today!! eXo and Jboss Portal will be one and only project.

Now IT IS EXCITING to follow!

http://blog.jboss-portal.org/
http://blog.exoplatform.org/2009/06/10/exo-jboss-partnership/

This week took place the Paris Java User Group (JUG). It’s more and more crouded there and it’s a good place to be to know more about the hottest subjects around Java… This week the subject: SCRUM.

Three weeks ago, i had a two days training of some classical Project Management where we discussed about Product Breakdown Structure, Work Breakdown Structure, Pert Diagram, Gantt Diagram etc. Very interesting. It is interesting to realize that the same process can be applied in Aeronautics, Architecture, Automobile or in Software development. It sounds possible but it also sounds logical to thing that it can imply unnecessary costs when applied as a routine.

1st thing that catches my attention in Scrum is that some experts from software development asked them-selves: ok, but can we build some models optimized for some management of software development projects?
2nd : the Agile Manifesto focuses on communication. Here, communication is not mail or document written but people talking to each other.
3th : Scrum is based on iterative incremental process (N Sprints) with the recognition that the client will change its mind during the process

Roles:

• Product Owner: the voice of the customer, it is not always a same person.
• The Team (developers, but also architects!)
• A Scrum Master

Inconvenients:

• It is far from the classical company structure and people could be afraid of loosing their position in this new hierarchy. Are the Product Director or the Product Owner ready to see anything else than a Microsoft Project Chart? A Burn Down Chart which is a far more simple Chart compared to the Microsoft Project Gantt Chart is not always accepted…
• It requires that the client should be a weekly or daily actor of the project. But what if the client can not do that or does not want to have this responsibility?

The second part of the JUG Presentation discussed about use cases with some main questions that Scrum has to answer.

The main idea that interests me is that experts in Scrum do not consider a classical project as fake. They realize that frontiers are not easy to change and Scrum should represent sets of practices maybe some “Best Practices” that one can bring in to one project if needed.
For example, one method that i would try in involving users, customers, the Team is the “the Daily Standup”. It is a short meeting where people talk in few words about what they did yesterday, what they are doing today and if they find difficulties. This approach is clearly the Best. The Product Owner, if present, has a live feedback and the Scrum Master knows if everyone is accomplishing its goal. This meeting is timeboxed and should take only 15 minutes.

It was a pleasure to discuss with people who are experts and not fanatics!

Sitepoint has just added an article describing 16 Design Tools for Prototyping and Wireframing
It gives an idea of which tool is the best for your budget & your needs!

As far as i know, i would recomend different tools:

• Visio for its complete plug&play with Microsoft Word
• StarUML: it is quite complete for UML diagrams and easy to use AND it is opensource
• Illustrator & Photoshop for users who work quickly with them
• Powerpoint (yes, i mean it :)) for people who are not familiar with UI interfaces
• Axure: i did only use the trial version and it seems quite close to the html integration. Thus, it is very useful for the Scope Statement