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Useful Resources on the Web:

 



General Interest and Management

 

 » Joel On Software Essay Archive

 

Software Management Essays

Joel used to work on the Excel team. He has a very pragmatic outlook on software development and I have a lot of time for that. Useful words, tips and insights.

 

 » Andrew Johnston

 

General IT interest

Good for a browse and some good book reviews.

 

 » Val's Blog

 

General IT interest

Another good site to browse and has lots of book reviews

 

 » Scott Berkun

 

Software Management Essays

To be honest Scott can waffle a bit in places but his essays are well thought out and of use. Much more of a technical project management tip.

 

 » Paul Graham

 

Start-Ups + Assorted others

Paul is the author of the renowned book Hackers and Painters. Essays recently focus on start ups but earlier ones cover an assortment of geeky subjects. Interesting if not all that useful.

 

 



Technology and Programming:

 

 » Martin Fowler

 

Design, Methodology, Refactoring and New Paradigms.

Martin Fowler needs little introduction to most. The daddy of design, his site provides numerous articles on topics such as software design, methodology and of course his baby; refactoring.

 

 » Software Architecture Resources

Architecture

A great site for anyone interested in software architecture and the role of the architect. There is lots of free content here. I particularly like:-

» Guiding Principles for Enterprise Architects

» Software Architecture Resources

 

Links on Usibility…

http://www.asktog.com/            

http://www.jnd.org/               

http://www.useit.com/             

http://www.nngroup.com/index.html 

 

Links on Usibility…

  • Bruce Tognazini
  • Don Norman
  • Jackob Nielsen
  • All 3 together

 

 » PatternsOfSoftware

 

An online book by Alexander, the architect (of buildings

made out of concrete!) that the GOF kept refering to as

the source for unearthing the "software pattern" idea ..

 

 



Java Stuff:

 

 » JMock

 

Unit Testing

A library for testing Java code using mock objects.

 

 » JGroups

Multicasting framework for Java

JGroups is a toolkit for reliable multicast communication which can be used to create groups of processes whose members can send messages to each other.

 » 'About Java' Free Source

 

Java Source Code Resources

 

 » JAXB

Java

Bind XML and your java code

 

 » JCOM

 

Connect to COM objects and applications easily with this Java-COM bridge e.g. Access and Excel

 » Ultra Light Clients

 

An alternative to AJAX. Swing on the server via J2EE.

 

 » JDIC

 

Java Desktop Integration Components – Integration to native facilities such as System Tray, Wallpaper, File Explorer and Browser. Dependent on 1.5.

 

 

 

 

 

 



Metholodologies

 

 » Crystal

 

 

My personal favorite. Crystal is for the pragmatist who is happy to improve on what they have rather than opting for a big bang all or nothing approaches (such as XP). Crystal principals are designed to fit into your current methodologies and processes. Improvement is then gradual and symbiotic. The book (Crystal Clear) is also excellent.

 

 » Summary of XP

 

 Methodologies

A brief outline of the important features of XP

 » Launching XP in a Process Intensive Company

 

 Methodologies

IEEE Software article from the November/December 2001 issue: Launching Extreme Programming at a Process-Intensive Company by James Grenning.

 

 » The Case Against XP

 

Methodologies

An interesting discussion of the case against XP. Although I have to say that I do not agree with many of the viewpoints put forward. It is however interesting to read.

 

 » RUP - Wikipedia

 

Methodologies

Flawed in many ways but one of the founding processes that led to many successors. See also

» RUP - IBM Site

 

 » Feature Driven Development

Methodologies

A good overview of this practical methodology. See also

FDD 2

www.featuredrivendevelopment.com

 

 » Hubert Smit Example

 » Ron Jeffries Example

 » Wayne Allan's Example

 » Brain Marick's Example

 Methodologies

Example Burn Charts (Burndown charts). These are a great project management tool introduced in Scrum and included in Crystal.

 

 

 » Balancing Agility and Discipline

Methodologies

Balancing Agility and Discipline – the original paper by Boehm. Very insightful comparison between agile and plan driven methods. This was the foundation of his book of the same name. A great resource for how to scale up XP or ‘agilify’ plan driven methods.

 

 » Debate: Beck and Boehm

 

 

A debate between Beck and Boehm on plan and agile methods. Even as an agile proponent, it’s hard to side with Barry on this one. A great read.

 

 » Scaling Up XP - Schalliol

 

 

Paper describing issues involved in scaling up XP.

 

 » Code Science - Successes            

 

 

Code Science is a hybrid methodology that combines a plan driven shell containing mainly XP practices. It is designed for large mission critical projects but leverages from the agile tenants. Agile on 400KLOC projects. Another similar approach is Agile+

 

 » Brooks Laws

                                

 

 

Lecture summarizing Brooks laws that effect software projects. These are of interest as they are the problems that agile will increasingly face as it upscales into mainstream enterprise-coupled applications.

 

 » Agile Maturity Model (Slides explaining the case for)    

  

 » AMM Proposed      

 

 » AMM and CMMI - Dr Dobbs      

 

                          

 

 

Introduction to the Agile Maturity Model and associated resources.

 

 



Book Summaries

 

 » A collection of book summaries

 

 

Free and includes a good IT one ‘Unleashing The Killer App’

 

 



Finding Information on the Web – Using Focused Search

 

 » My Focused Search White Paper

 

 

My white paper describing a method for performing focused search with limited resources.

 

 » Computer Science Search

 

 

Research Index is a search engine focusing on computer science research and articles. It's a wonderful browsing tool for finding articles and research relating to searching the web.

 

  » BitPipe

 

 

Bitpipe is the leading destination for busy professionals who need technology white papers, webcasts, case studies and IT product information -- all the IT information and resources you need to make smart enterprise IT purchasing decisions.

 

 » Google Scholar

 

Research papers and resources indexed by Google.

 

 » Improving Search User Interfaces

 

How to create effective and easy-to-use search-results pages by providing sophisticated yet intuitive filtering and sorting controls.

 

 » Inteliseek

 

Some guys that do some interesting stuff with the web such as amalgamating blog entries and measuring web presence.

 » A9

 

Search engine with API – hosted by Amazon.

 

 



Databases

 

 » Sybase Performance Tuning Tips

 

 

Tips on profiling Sybase are hard to find. Here are some.

 

 » Sybase Reference

 

 

 The official one.

 » Sybase Quick Reference (PDF)

 

 

 The official one.

 » Sybase Performance Manual

 

 

 The official one.

 » Sybase Documentation Home

 

 

 The official one.

 

 



Useful and Interesting

 

 » Techcrunch

 

 

Mashes up the latest tech blogs

 

 » Tailrank

 

 

Mashes up the latest tech blogs

 

 » JavaBlogs

 

 

Mashes up the latest Java blogs

 

 » The puzzle decoder

 

 

Charles Handy is the specialist in organisation behaviour.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other

 

 » Patrizia Diemling

 

 

A friend’s excellent website

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Melanie Boyle's Website

 

 

 

 















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