Los Techies Blog - Latest Comments

Re: Tracking down a strange issue with WatiN and IIS Express

Steve Donie — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 12:00:49 -0000

Sorry about that - it is a bit better formatted now.

Re: Tracking down a strange issue with WatiN and IIS Express

Zejuncs42 — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 10:26:44 -0000

Post is unreadable due to right side cut-off.

Re: CCTray with Hudson

Tom McKenzie — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 15:26:12 -0000

Has anyone figured out how to get CCTray and Hudson working with authentication?

Here's a couple links I found that.

http://community.thoughtworks....
http://blog.virtual-olympus.co...

Maybe I could build a Transport Extension?

Re: CCTray with Hudson

Peter — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:01:37 -0000

thanks, worked like a charm! I linked to this page from hudson
http://wiki.hudson-ci.org/disp...

Re: Why a culture of quality matters

Mark Anderson — Tue, 19 May 2009 12:11:24 -0000

The text of the dialog is:

You have acknowledge the terms of the <font size="4">Plan Documents, Certificates of Coverage, Summary Plan Descriptions</FONT></font> polcy. Click OK to continue?

Re: Why a culture of quality matters

Scott C Reynolds — Mon, 11 May 2009 16:36:40 -0000

as an aside...I can't use the ADP portal at all. programmer fail. quality fail. service fail. You're absolutely right. This is why it matters.

Re: Why a culture of quality matters

Paul Alexander — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 03:50:36 -0000

We've been using ADP for a couple years now and I can tell every time my wife goes on to submit payroll due to the bellowing "OMG Why does it do this every time!" from the other room. Just about anything other than basic workflow opertions just don't work.

Re: Why a culture of quality matters

Sergio Pereira — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 22:05:01 -0000

I'm actually amazed that they have never screwed up my paychecks (knock on wood.) Maybe they're still running of off the trusty old excel spreadsheet.

Re: Why a culture of quality matters

Larry — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 17:05:10 -0000

I'd like to add that PayChex is no better. It's atrocious. In addition to their tiny fonts, and general Firefox incompatibility, their site insists on spawning a new browser window for every click. It seems like they cobbled together their service by acquiring multiple products, so every one behaves differently and requires some kind of single-sign-on passthrough.

Their login sequence is great. First, pick from a dropdown list indicating which service you need (FSA, retirement, etc). You're redirected to their "redesigned login page" whereby a div which you've seen dozens of times before welcomes you to logging in and hides the login controls until you dismiss it. The username and password fields lose focus when you alt-tab to your password database program, so all auto-type capabilities are off the table. So you type your username, password, and pick that all-important login graphic. Next is the "Secret Question" validation. Then they insist on wasting yet another page to tell you that THIS is your login graphic, and you MUST remember it to log in next time! Well duh, I wouldn't very well be reading this if I didn't already recognize it. Finally, remember that dropdown from which you chose which service you wanted? Well Paychex doesn't. So go ahead and pick from the menu and spawn yourself another browser.

Re: Why a culture of quality matters

Rod Paddock — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 17:02:12 -0000

ADP software is notoriously bad. From a Usability standpoint as well as all APIs for importing data into the application

Which leads to the why of it all? Well the why is that ADP is a virtual monopoly on that stuff. ADP and PayChex are two of the biggest payroll companies in existance.

When you have no competition you could really give a crap about experience correct ?

Re: Why a culture of quality matters

Andrew — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:24:26 -0000

I remember years ago the company I worked with moved from a macro'd up Spreadsheet to an intranet version of our timesheet. Our timesheet wasn't all that complicated, but for some reason the company that created the intranet application used some sort of wizard to create it instead of actually coding it. The result was a single webpage of over 250,000 lines of code. In 2009 that would be a joke, back in 1999 when offshore sites were connected via a 64k line, it all but ground our business to a halt.

The moral to the story? For some reason, every HR program I have ever seen has been horrible from a technical standpoint, especially useability. Frankly, I'm surprised nobody has come in and undercut the market with a good product consider most HR programs also complete bloatware that have ridiculous hardware requirements.

Most financial and accounting software is similar in this regards, but from what I understand they are improving. The problem is, most companies feel they are paying for the importance is in the back end processes, not the entire software package.

Re: Updated Release Burndown Spreadsheet Template

Steve Donie — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:19:13 -0000

I just uploaded a slightly tweaked version of this - I found a bug in the formula that calculates the 'points remaining in this release' on the 'stories' tab. The bug (if you want to fix an existing spreadsheet) is to also subtract the points 'cut', which is cell C2. The formula for that cell should be "=$C$6-$C$1-$C$2-$C$3"

Re: Updated Release Burndown Spreadsheet Template

Steve Donie — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:15:52 -0000

I haven't noticed that problem (blank pages between cards), but I suspect it may be something specific to the printer you are using and the printable area it supports. You might try shrinking the row height on a few rows in the 'Card Template' page and re-generating the cards to see if that helps.

Re: Updated Release Burndown Spreadsheet Template

Scott White — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 17:12:11 -0000

This is great. Has anyone noticed that it prints blank pages between Cards?

Re: Updated Release Burndown Spreadsheet Template

jdn — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 22:31:33 -0000

Awesome. Thanks for this.

Re: Updated Release Burndown Spreadsheet Template

Chris Missal — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 19:00:06 -0000

Thanks for updating and re-posting this Steve. It comes with perfect time for me and my team! :)

Re: Break out the popcorn, it’s movie time!

... — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:38:42 -0000

Interessante Informationen.

Re: CCTray with Hudson

Steve Donie — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 23:18:19 -0000

@Ryan - the tables are pretty basic work tables, and I like them OK, but would prefer that they were height-adjustable. We have 5 tables - 2 of them are 6 feet long by 3 feet deep, 3 are 6' x 2' 6". We have the 2 wdier ones back-to-back, and then the 2 narrower ones (leaving a gap in the middle for a nest of cables) and then the 3rd narrower one at the end. Room for 5 developers, and each of us has dual monitors. We also have dual keyboards and mice at each computer for pairing. Right now, 3 of us have Windows XP, and 2 have Linux. We all use eclipse as our IDE, so that makes things somewhat consistent, and we're all more or less able to navigate the various OS's.

Re: CCTray with Hudson

Ryan Kelley — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 20:42:04 -0000

Odd question, but what kind of tables are those that your devs all work on? I am configuring new office space.

Re: Starting a new project – refactoring an existing system

Michael A. Smith — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 07:15:12 -0000

Please keep us updated, Steve, with what you decide to do and your success with your process. Good luck!

Re: Starting a new project – refactoring an existing system

Steve Donie — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 14:36:35 -0000

@Garry - thanks - I think we're going to need multiples of those!

@Amy - Yes, the Feathers book is definitely a favorite around here. We actually had all the developers in the company go through it using a book club format about a year ago. Trying to get some characterization tests around things is where we are starting.

@Michael - thanks for the good thoughts. We are a team of 5 developers (including myself - I also server as team lead/scrum master), 1 Project Owner, 1 Project manager, who helps out with analysis also, and 0 testers.

Re: Starting a new project – refactoring an existing system

Michael A. Smith — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 06:22:33 -0000

That's a nightmare and a half. May your team be strong, optimistic, and persistent, your clients friendly, and any managers above you patient. Judging from what you've said you're already on the right track.

I personally haven't been through a refactor/rewrite of that magnitude, so I can't cover all of the angles. I'm afraid that the only thing I can suggest, is something that you probably already know--

Since you want business value as quickly as possible, and that value is something that is determined only by your clients, I think it would be advantageous to be aware of which changes to the system they will quickly and easily recognise and adore. For end-to-end systems, I'd say this is likely to be anything visual followed by anything improving perceived performance. I think expectations management is going to be key as the whole project seems very volatile.

Provided you choose to follow such a strategy, I'd be hesitant putting everyone on the chosen front of greatest initial impact, as you may lose reconnaissance on other ends of the system which could eventually chuck a monkey-wrench in your solution. Might depend on the size of your team? Perhaps I'd prioritise subsystem work order based on their value-add factor.

In general, I can imagine that it might be advantageous for the team to focus most of their energy on one part of the system at a time and move across the system linearly if possible, so you eliminate the problems that can come with meeting in the middle.

Hopefully some of this is helpful. Good luck!

Re: Starting a new project – refactoring an existing system

Amy Thorne — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 04:32:57 -0000

That sounds tough. Michael Feathers' book Working Effectively With Legacy Code might help--it helped me add functionality to a legacy system. In that situation, I mostly added unit tests around code related to functionality we wanted to change, then refactored and made the changes. But I'll admit that sometimes just getting things unit-testable involved having to make "careful" changes, like pulling methods out of the jsp/aspx in order to get tests around them at all. And having to work like that always feels slow, too.

Re: Starting a new project – refactoring an existing system

Garry Shutler — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 03:16:55 -0000

Though I haven't done it in practice I've recently had to think about a similar situation and I've been looking at utilising an anti-corruption layer to provide an interface between the old code and the new. There's a decent explanation of it in the Evan's DDD book.

Re: Break out the popcorn, it’s movie time!

Garry Shutler — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 03:00:25 -0000

The video is great. Very interesting.

I can see how this has clearly demonstrated what the "crazy graph" was for to the non-development people.