Agile Software Delivery

Why continuous delivery needs devops, and why devops needs infrastructure-as-code, ThoughtWorks Studios webinar, Oct 2012

Continuous delivery and devops have gone mainstream, at least in terms of mindshare. As a result, a lot of vendors have jumped onto the bandwagon. Most products that have anything to do with deployment now try to associate themselves with devops and continuous delivery. In this webinar, I try to clear the air in a product independent manner. I also cover common devops anti-patterns and explain the idea of infrastructure as code. (deck with speaker notes)
As it turns out, this is as much a talk on the design of an effective Agile IT Organization design as it is a talk on the stated topic. Things are inter-related.

A few good development metrics, Agile India 2012, Bangalore

The problem with metrics is that there are so many to choose from. Lines of code, rule violations, dependency matrices, cyclomatic/npath complexity, code coverage, duplication - the list goes on. Tracking all of these results in too much data and too little insight. In this talk, we will see how to narrow down to a small set of useful metrics. We'll also see how aggregate metrics like toxicity help reduce the tracking footprint. Finally, we'll look at the difference between a measurement and a target and see why measurements should not be simply converted into targets. speaker notes

Some 'Agile' anti-patterns, Agile NCR, July 2010

Brings out some anti patterns across the specturm of Agile software delivery. The issues covered include misuse of velocity, points based estimation, iterative versus incremental development and pair programming. Here is a podcast on similar lines.

What they didn't tell you about architecture in agile development, ThoughtWorks Studios Agile Webinar Series, June 2010

Introduces new ways of looking at the overall philosophy of Agile. How this influences architecture. Some anti-patterns of enterprise architecture.pdf

Agile Goes Mainstream, NASSCOM Quality Forum, Hyderabad, Nov 2006

Agile methods are no longer confined to a select band of Extreme Programmers. Agile adoption is increasing being driven by clients seeking lightweight processes and working software over comphrehensive documentation.

Demystifying Agile, NASSCOM Quality Summit, Bangalore, Sep 2006

What better place to demystify Agile than the hallowed haunt of CMM enthusiasts? This talk focussed on metrics and documentation.

Some ideas behind Agile, Agile India, Mar 2005

Code is Design, No ivory towers, Documentation is an intermediate product, A knowledge organization has to be people dependent in the collective sense.

Communication

How we annoy colleagues with lazy communication, Jan 2012, xConf Pune

We tend to use stock phrases when discussing work with colleagues. For instance, haven't you heard these phrases used inappropriately, "It's not rocket science", "Let's not overengineer it", "I know the situation is less than ideal" etc. These phrases may annoy the receiver, she may take it as an insult to her intelligence. Using such stock phrases without delving into the matter at hand is an example of lazy communication. This talk will try to sensitise us to lazy communications and its detrimental effect on work relationships.

Innovation

Understanding Innovation, K-Community meetup, Bangalore, June 2009

This talk is based on my tenure as Director of Innovation for ThoughtWorks India. It covers different aspects of nurturing innovation: Understanding organization specific motivators for innovation, Techniques of fostering innovation within a knowledge organization, Exploring if there are predictable outcomes, People factors, How much does it cost?

Knowledge Management

A series on post on some common anti-patterns of knowledge management

Organisation Development

A number of posts relevant to org development

Tech

End-to-end automated build and deployment pipeline with Maven, Chef and Go, Studios webinar, March 2013

Maven based build pipelines are fairly common. Chef based deployment pipelines are also gaining traction. In this demo, I demonstrate how to design and connect the two using Go. Along the way I explain why not to use maven-snaphosts, how to make Chef talk to Nexus and provide several tips on Go usage. The resulting end-to-end automated build and deployment pipeline provides overarching visibility, traceability, orchestration and access control for the entire continuous delivery value stream.

Choreography over orchestration, July 2011, xConf Chennai

The ThoughtWorks tech radar once talked about choosing Choreography over Orchestration. I explain this using real world examples and touch upon some other points of service orientation along the way.

A demo of the browser security model for XHR, devCamp Chennai, July 2010

A basic demo of the same origin policy, jsonp and the new CORS (cross origin resource sharing) spec.

The new rules of technology, ThoughtWorks BizTech Series, Gurgaon, June 2010

All industries go through periods where a critical mass of players start playing according to new rules. The software industry is undergoing one such period. Those who understand and equip themselves to play by the new rules will thrive. This does not just apply to software companies. It applies to software professionals as well. The talk calls out new rules in diverse areas such as software innovation, structure of software teams and software architecture.

SOA in India, August 2009

businesstechnology.in is run by S&S Media (people behind JAX conference). They interviewed me on the state of SOA in general and in India in particular.

The Magic of Microformats, Web Innovation, Mumbai, May 2008

The ability to understand content in various contexts is key to realizing basic Web2.0 memes of openness, collaboration and sharing. Microformats are a community driven effort towards a Semantic Web. In this session, we will see a demo of the power of microformats and see how they can be extended to achieve semantic interactions between different websites. This got some coverage.

ThoughtWorks IT Matters Podcasts, Feb 2008

REST part 1, part 2
In this two-part series, Martin Fowler, Chris Stevenson, Jim Webber, and I discuss REST (Representational State Transfer). We touch on the history of REST, a detailed explanation, and examples. Additionally, we discuss programming with the Web today, modeling your resources, types, RESTful enterprise development, and reuse.

SOA is from Mars, Web 2.0 is from Venus, Step Auto, Bangalore, Feb 2008

A talk attempting to dispel the confusion that Web 2.0 is somehow SOA++

RESTful Web Services, ThoughtWorks India Away Day, Ooty, Oct 2007

An introduction to REST by means of a example flight reservation service. Does not cover HATEOS.

The promise of web 2.0, foss.in, Nov 2005

An overview of Web 2.0 memes. You can access the presentation along with speaker notes here