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Reflections on Executive Briefing: Natural User Interface and Social Media

Once again, we brought together a small group to discuss two more upcoming topics for the software industry. This time it was Natural User Interfaces and Social Media. The most interesting observation is that there is a bigger gap between the future-oriented...

Posted 25 June 2009 11:56 AM by wwagner | 1 comment(s)

Filed under: Me, local interest, Software Engineering

Reflections on Executive Briefing Event: Cloud & RIA

Last Tuesday, we hosted our first executive briefing on upcoming technology trends.  The first two topics were Cloud Computing and Rich Internet Applications (RIA). We chose those topics because examples of RIA applications are already around, and...

Posted 19 June 2009 05:43 PM by wwagner | with no comments

Filed under: SRT Solutions, local interest, Software Engineering, Azure

Reflections on our Software Development Jam

Yesterday, we hosted a Software Development Jam at Automation Alley in Troy, MI (North suburbs of Detroit, MI for those readers not in the Michigan area). We billed the event as a way for developers to learn something about those software techniques that...

Posted 16 June 2009 03:28 PM by wwagner | with no comments

Filed under: SRT Solutions, Me, local interest, Software Engineering

On craft, dogma, pragmatism and better analogies

I’m leaping into a lengthy discussion, so I’ll start with the links: Steve Smith wrote this post discussing the craftmanship vs. pragmatism. Corey Haines wrote this response defending the craft movement. And Steve responded again with this real world...

Posted 24 February 2009 02:43 PM by wwagner | 3 comment(s)

Filed under: Software Engineering

Notes from Poppendieck “Value Stream Mapping”

Wow.  I went to Mary Poppendieck’s CodeMash Precompiler talk on Value Stream Mapping. That was great. It’s rare that I take 5 pages of notes during one conference session. To be fair, the precompiler sessions are three hours, but still, that’s much...

Posted 07 January 2009 03:02 PM by wwagner | 2 comment(s)

Filed under: books, Software Engineering

Paint Wars at CodeMash

One of our engineers, Chris Marinos , has some interesting content to discuss at CodeMash: Paint Wars . Paint Wars is a game that Chris some of his classmates wrote for a senior project at the University of Michigan. The original game was written in C#...

Posted 05 January 2009 10:47 PM by wwagner | with no comments

Filed under: SRT Solutions, upcoming attractions, Software Engineering

The Technology Industry in 2009 (One man’s opinion)

It’s time to consider what 2009 will bring for the technology industry. It’s more than just an idle exercise: In order to stay relevant, I need to make some reasonable predictions about what I should be learning as new technology becomes available. So...

Posted 04 January 2009 11:05 PM by wwagner | with no comments

Filed under: Me, Software Engineering

Book Review: Working with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers

  I don’t think Working With Legacy Code gets the respect and readership that it should.  I believe that’s because most of us have a working definition of legacy code that implies something we want to avoid: We want to work on the cool new stuff...

Posted 31 October 2008 08:41 AM by wwagner | 2 comment(s)

Filed under: books, Software Engineering, BookReviews

Software Projects Do Fail for Technical Reasons

It's been repeated so often that now it's not even questioned: Software projects fail not because of technology missteps, but because of 'business issues'. That's a catch all phrase for misunderstanding business needs, implementing...

Posted 17 July 2008 11:36 AM by wwagner | with no comments

Filed under: Software Engineering

On Software Tools and Pricing Models

Last month, during an event on software tools, we discussed whether it was better for a company to mandate a set of tools, or let every developer choose their own tools. To be sure, there are some tools that have to be common: source control is a great...

Posted 05 June 2008 10:49 PM by wwagner | 4 comment(s)

Filed under: Software Engineering