Designs by Devin

Excellent article on Gantthead.com about how to use tools for Sprint planning when your teams are distributed. I'm evaluating two tools now for Sprint planning so I'm wondering if this advice applies. Sprints are pretty easy to plan just using 3x5 or 4x6 index cards.

If your going to be a PM using the Scrum methodology, you might as well use a tool to keep everything going in the right direction. Agilo for Scrum is a simple, web-based and straightforward tool to support the Scrum process. Agilo is based on Trac a very successful and widespread Ticket Tracking System, and developed using the Python programming language. Agilo is distributed as Open Source Software according to the Apache Software License 2.0.

This is my Scrum Methodology. There are many agile methodologies like it but this one is mine. My methodology is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. Without my methodology, I am useless. I must rely on my methodology as it is true. I must manage leaner than my competition who is trying to kill me. I must out-perform him before he out-performs me. I will. (With apologies to Stanley Kubrick & Michael Herr)

I love Spring... and the software framework is pretty good, too. Having said that, I find it funny that the Spring Source site uses the CMS Drupal.

My quest for running OS X virtually on any VM Ware host may have finally arrived. I don't have time to play with it (or play with anything for that matter), but I mark this so I can share and come back to it.

It is rare that I find someone that succinctly writes exactly how I feel about the current state of personal finances, politics, the elections, and the global meltdown in the financial markets. This blog seems to encapsulate all the high points: gluttony, laziness, worldliness, and greed. He also points out this is epidemic at the personal, corporate, governmental and global levels.

I'm trying out freeware XMenu from Needful Things for Mac OSX. It adds back my Quick Menu that I miss from Windows XP.

This may be useful or not. q8mug.com has a lot of little tweaks for for "Ways to Speed Up OS X". A lot of them don't actually speed up OS X, but they do make the User Experience feel faster.

I can't tell you how important it is to know how to shrink your Windows disk image in VMWare. I learned early just how quickly snapshots of Windows images use up your laptop harddrive. Learn to shrink it... fast.

This falls under "things I'm groovin' to these days." Afro-Pop Shop is where to go for rarely found music in the U.S. They have a nice selection of local music from places like Peru, Chile, Argentina, Columbia, etc.