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This post is a continuation of my series on adopting healthy practices that enable an organization to make the agile transformation. You can read the first two parts of this series here: Part I: Introduction Part II: Vision and Risk Depending on which statistic you believe, many researchers in the field of software development agree that the majority of projects that fail to make it to market are those with insufficiently detailed requirements. Though I agree completely with this, many companies also fail to avoid an even more troublesome, but often overlooked issue – that of building either too many or the wrong features. Traditional waterfall based development processes spend a large amount of time creating requirement specifications and detailed design documents before any code is...

The default speakerphone setting for a SNOM phone is ‘quiet room.’ This can cause the recipients on the other end of the phone to complain about call quality. After playing around with some of the settings we found that the most optimal setting is ‘normal room.’ This is found in the Setup > Advanced > Audio > Handsfree Mode. After making a change, be sure to click on the Save button. The setting takes effect immediately. Echoic room means, since the room is echoic, be aggressive on the echo cancellor. If the room is not so echoic, this setting could cause the chopping since the echo cancellor is aggressive but the room is not so echoic.This SNOM wiki page describes these settings....

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 allows for delegates to schedule Live Meetings or Conference calls on behalf of other users. There are three steps required to set this up. Step 1 - On the manager’s system, share the calendar with the delegate as follows: 1. In Outlook, click Calendar. 2. On the File menu, point to Folder, and then click Properties for Calendar. 3. In the Calendar Properties dialog box, click the Permission tab. 4. Select the delegate user, and then select ONLY Editor or Author in the Permission Level list. Note: If you configure the delegated Outlook 2007 calendar to work with any permissions other than Author or Editor, the delegate cannot schedule a conference for the Outlook 2007 calendar delegator. (Per KB 977282) Step 2- On the manager’s s...

It has been a while (OK, a long while) since I have published a series of posts on a topic. My last series, SharePoint Image Search, has been very well received. This series will walk through the Building Blocks that I have created to demonstrate and improve the SharePoint end user experience. I have been using many of these techniques in my developer focused demos for SharePoint 2010 (and in some cases SharePoint 2007). My plan is to use this post series to distribute my code and provide more detail on the why and the how of many of my code samples. My challenge in presenting a 75 minute session (or less) is to convey both the concept and the key code sections in such a tight time frame. This post series will allow me that freedom. Let’s go! CodePlex: How do I love thee? I confess that...

I’d like to continue the discussion about creating a healthy organizational environment for adopting agile practices in my prior post by starting at the top. Somewhere at the top of most organizations, including startups, are the executives or leaders responsible for steering the ship. At some older companies, this can be someone who worked hard for years and finally was promoted simply due to hard work, dedication, and frankly, seniority. To be blunt, however, for a company to truly create an agile culture takes leaders who are willing to do a lot more work than they’ve already done.The folks (or person) at the top that I see run companies perfectly aligned with the right elements for agile success are those who are truly visionary leaders with a penchant for semi-calculated risk. A grea...

In my blog series covering the transition from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010, I mentioned here that Blackberry Enterprise is fully supported, and that RIM announced a free version on February 16th called BES Express. BES Express was first made available for download on March 2nd. On March 3rd, RIM announced that each BES Express download qualifies for one free support incident. There is a comparison chart available here that compares the version differences between Express and the Full version. This blog will discuss the details of migrating from an older version of BES 4.x to 5.0.1. This also assumes that Exchange 2010 Maintenance Release 1 is installed. In our case we had a very small number of users so we elected not to migrate the database. Instead, the steps we followed were: 1)...

I’ve been doing non-waterfall development for the past 10 years of my career in one form or another, and though Agile/SCRUM/XP practices are almost assumed at this point, I still see many organizations that need help with making it work. The agile transformation usually starts with a well-intentioned individual in a middle management or lead developer position who tries to set it forth upon an organization with promises of faster time-to-market, less documentation, and golden parachutes for every collaborator within a small project as a pilot. In reality however, really making agile methods work requires adjustment and a willingness for self improvement of every role within an organization. There are many companies out there that offer agile coaching, but I see too many of them working pr...

This is a question that’s come up multiple times with folks I’ve worked with, and is something I consider best practice.  The last time someone asked me about this, I figured I’d just blog it up with screenshots and send him the URL.  So Daniel, this post is for you…. For years Project has had a function which remarkably few people know about, and even fewer people use – that is the intelligent WBS Code.  The intelligent WBS code basically entails swapping out the default numerical outline (1.2.3) with a descriptive outline of the task (ABC.DEF.GHI).  There are two main functions of intelligent WBS codes: 1) To clearly identify tasks that have the same or similar names.  Often schedules are populated using fragments of templates.  For instance if I am a professional gaspasser and buil...

There are times when you connect to a secondary data source in InfoPath and would like to automatically populate a repeating table based off the source. This can be done whether it is through a database or SharePoint data connection. First step would be to create a secondary data connection in InfoPath. Once you have done this, drag a repeating table onto your page. For my example, I placed the code in the loading event of the form. The first section of code you need to set an XPathNodeIterator to specify the secondary data source that needs to be pulled from.  In addition, the actual node where the repeating group resides needs to be specified. (See line 2) Once the node iterator is set, then the loop of code that will set all the fields of the actual repeating table. An XML docum...

I’ve thought for several years now about writing a book about real world experience versus classic management methodology and it looks like there are two new ones coming out that will be great to read before taking that step. The first one is Getting Results the Agile Way, a book being written by J.D. Meier, a Microsoft employee. To shamelessly steal from his blog, he lists several things the book helps with: How to find work / life balance How to shift from tasks and activities to meaningful results and outcomes How to use stories and scenario-driven results to carve out value in your life How to overwhelm your challenges with fierce results How to defeat perfectionism How to avoid analysis paralysis and take action a simple story at a time How to find your f...