RubyOnda is a ruby news website in portuguese built by myself and Roberto.
Today Felipe Mesquita built a nice little widget for those interested in showcasing the latest community news posted to RubyOnda on their own site.
The code to insert the widget is:
< script src="http://rubyonda.com/widget-embedded.js" type="text/javascript">
Here is what it looks like:
At Todobebe we have adopted one of the Agile methodologies commonly know as XP (Extreme Programming). I remember a couple of years ago seeing a book called “Practicing Extreme Programming” and giggling to myself with the thought of “Isn’t programming extreme enough already, what’s next? Programming martial arts and a The coding black belt?”. All jokes aside, I really thought it was some sort of crappy idea by a big corporation like Microsoft or Sun. Little did I know had I picked up that book and studied it at that time, I would’ve been at a much better place to help my team during the past couple of months.
The principles of the extreme programming methodologies are fairly simple. Have the customer (he who holds the stake) in the room to decide which stories go in the current iteration. Complete stories (specially formatted requests) with the direct guidance of the customer. At the end of an iteration, conduct a retrospective, see what you can improve upon and repeat. There is also the concept of having managers, developers, customers and testers in the same physical room, which is not always feasible for non co-located teams.
XP definitions aside, with the methodology comes the need for a good electronic tool to aid in the management of stories, iterations, releases, retrospectives and of course, the beloved (by some) reports.
After some research we settled for Tracker, Pivotal Lab’s Agile Project management tool. It is a very simple tool, easy to learn and use. Composed of one main screen holding multiple containers for Done, Current, Backlog, Icebox, Search, etc. You can show/hide them as you please, the interface is snappy, ajaxy and usable (want any more cliche words?). You can drag and drop items between the buckets, quickly assign points and the system automatically calculates your future velocity. There is also a ton of other little features that I won’t mention here for the sake of brevity. Tacker is free at the time of this writing.
Pictured: Tracker
We have been using Tracker for about 10 weeks and it has been working fairly well. Our team is growing, and we have started to realized Tracker’s shortcomings. There seems to be no easy way to transfer stories between projects. Also release planning is very elementary, the interface does not help with this particular agile practice. Reporting is a bit deficient and time management is limited.
Since then I have done a considerable amount of research regarding Agile tools. Many players, a large array of losers and a few contenders. The last bucket included ThoughtWorks’ Mingle, a very expensive and complex web app, VersionOne a java web application both available as SAAS and self hosted, and lastly TargetProcess.
I have put together a comparisons table containing pros and cons for each application and their scoring categories suited for our needs. Your needs may vary but it should be a fairly good starting point.
Mingle is not available as a hosted solution. You must host the big boy on your own server. At first glance it was a bit disappointing, it seemed clunky, slow, and it requires 2GB of ram on the server to run well. Even if you go with an economical option like Linode you will be looking at a $200 monthly hosting bill. Mingle offers the first five user licenses for free, after that, it will run you $60 per month per user. The application also felt bloated, and not easy to understand at a first glance. Every time I tried to get into it, my eyes kept glancing over all the options. Mingle does have a really cool looking story card board which resembles a white board with Post-it notes on it. Perhaps the my reason why people get so excited about it at first.
Pictured: Mingle
VersionOne is both available as SAAS and a on-site app. This app is very customizable and versatile. The same customizability greatness arose my first concerns about it. It is incredibly bloated. Some nice features like a place to record individual retrospectives and extremely extensive reporting capability don’t quite offset how complex this thing is. Yet it is surprisingly easier to work with than Mingle, don’t ask me how. I did notice that VersionOne is not very Safari friendly, which was a small turn-off at the time, it did work fairly well in Firefox. Version one also integrates with Subversion which may be useful if you are still stuck in the land of non distributed source control management (god help you). VersionOne will run you about $30 per user per month.
Pictured: VersionOne
TargetProcess came to me in a late night google search rampant . I am not quite sure how I found it or what the search term was. I do know however that I had done a lot of searching on the topic before and it never came up. Perhaps they need to invest some more time on SEO. TargetProcess caught my attention fairly quickly with their quick start demo. What was premature excitement heighten as I uncontrollably watched all the available demos on their site.
I have yet to get my hands on it (currently waiting for a trial password), but what I saw brought back the hope that perhaps there is a good tool out there. TargetProcess is both available as a hosted solution and on-site application. At a fair price-point of $25 per user per month it is much more achievable than most of the other solutions described above.
Even though it is a massive application somehow it feels very intuitive. Reports are easily customizable, processes can be changed to fit your style such as XP or SCRUM. You can comprehensively organize your stories into iterations by dragging and dropping. In-place editing almost everywhere allows for super quick updates. Overall the app seemed extremely configurable yet uncluttered. Also available is a public API, support for Subversion integration and a rich story card board that seems easier to use than Mingle’s. I should have the login credentials for the test account shortly and will be posting an extensive review on TargetProcess in the near future.
Pictured: TargetProcess
We will be picking a tool to work with in the next couple of weeks. At this time my heart is leaning towards TargetProcess but I can’t be sure until I get in there and conduct a proper colonoscopy. I will make sure to report my findings and hopefully provide a conclusive resolution to this dilemma.
Correction: VersionOne is built in ASP.NET
Also check out TargetProcess’ new UI
UPDATE - Jan 2009: I have since gone back to Pivotal Tracker for it’s simplicity and easy of use.
I know I have blogged about Mix 1 all natural drinks before but I felt compelled to emphasize how great these drinks are. They are 100% natural, taste delicious and only cost about $2 each. I have tried every flavor available and they are all very tasty. Chilled or over ice these make for a great meal replacement. I usually consume one for breakfast and sometimes another one as an afternoon snack.
Great before and after a workout, gives you energy without the huge carb and sugar overload that others do. Mix 1 also contains a fair amount of whey protein which aids in muscle build and accelerates recovery time. At exactly 200 calories, 15 grams of protein and 23 vitamins & minerals is also a quick way get your daily servings of fruit/vegetables as well.
Lactose free, gluten free and caffeine free the energy kick comes mainly from the vitamins and antioxidants.
Go grab some and enjoy!
Most of us often pull our hair out and cry uncontrollably when it comes to dealing with Internet Explorer 6. I have no doubt that it will eventually go away but in the meantime we each need to contribute to help speed up the process.
I am not sure why people still use such junk, if by not knowing better, we, the web developers must educate them. If they haven’t yet upgraded to Internet Explorer 7 because their copy of windows isn’t Genuine; Microsoft please give them a break, or better yet, go download Firefox and tell me it doesn’t kick some serious ass.
Web developers, if you can please either A. Stop supporting IE6 or B. Include a little friendly note at the top of ALL pages on your site letting the unfortunate user know that his experience will suck and that his personal information is unsafe on the web.
Here is a quick template I used in the past:
Feel free to make it , IE users probably love that :-)
I kept seeing tweets and comments about different upcoming conferences and decided to put together a small list.
Ruby Hoedown
August 8-9, 2008 - Huntsville, AL
erubycon
August 15-17, 2008 - Columbus, OH
RailsConf Europe
September 2-4, 2008 - Berlin, Germany
Love Star Ruby Conference
September 4-6, 2008 - Austin, TX
WindyCityRails
September 20, 2008 - Chicago, IL
Rails Summit Latin America
October 15-16, 2008 - Sao Paulo, Brazil
Rubyconf
November 6-8, 2008 - Orlando, FL
Voices that Matter
November 17-20, 2008 - Boston, MA
Let me know if I have missed any and I’ll update the list.
Sponsored in part by:
To be held in São Paulo, Brazil, the summit holds an incredible line-up of speakers such as, Chad Fowler, Jay Fields, Chris Wanstrash, David Chelimsky, Obie Fernandez and many more. The summit takes place in this beautiful venue which is located in the heart of Brazil on October 15-16.
The cost of the event is about $190 USD ($300 Brazilian Reals). The auditorium is located midtown with access to metro and plenty of public transportation. Hotels around the area are selling out fast as the conference is expected to gather around 700 attendees.
If you can make it don’t miss it. While you are down there, make it a vacation out of it. Brazil is a beautiful country with great beaches, food, and lots of fun.
São Paulo
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