QPomodoro is tool which will help you in using The Pomodoro Technique™ in  your daily work . It is based on work done by Sakari Hyoty written for Nokia N900.  Current version was mainly developed on Windows and maybe it will not work properly on Nokia N900 or Linux (it will be done soon).

New features:

• QPomodoro has tray icon – application can be hidden in the tray.
• Time is displayed as window title so it is visible on task bar
• Tasks can be edited – name or estimate can be changed
• Order of tasks can be changed – task are movable using Drag & Drop
• Window icon is changed to “Pomodoro”
• On Windows added application icon.

New version can be downloaded from here: QPomodoro-0.4.1.zip

Source code can be cloned from here

Pomodoro · Qt · Time Managment

I found very interesting video on Scrum Alliance web page. Lyssa Adkins (Certified Scrum Trainer, Project Management Professional  and Six Sigma Green Belt) presents scientific data about how positive psychology can improve your team. This is not wishful thinking but real science! Lyssa presents it clearly in her presentation (which is very good by the way) so take a look:

YouTube – Positive Psychology and Team Performance.

If you are interested in who is Lyssa and what is she doing you can go to her web page: http://www.coachingagileteams.com .

Agile · video

I was presenting Scrum as Agile method for project development on University of Technology in Wroclaw. During coffee break one of the students came to me and ask me a question about the Scrum Team, Product Owner and Scrum Master. During short discussion I compare Scrum Team to black box and I found it very interesting.

I don’t know why I use this comparison. Maybe just because during my studies on this university I spend lot of time working with black boxes (while I was studying robotics). Black box is something which has an input and output. You can’t tell what is going on inside that box but you can change input and check output. So, now imagine that (from Product Owner perspective) Scrum Team is like black box. Product Owner just gives Product Backlog Items and waits for the output. He or she doesn’t know (or at least should not care) what is going on inside the team. What is she or he interested in is just the output (which are Product Backlog Items done in the way Definition Of Done describes it).

What is more interesting on this black box there is a big red button which is called “Sprint reset” which can be used to reset team iteration. You can do it as you can do with your PC with the same result – everything which is in progress will be lost.

I found this picture very interesting and descriptive, what do you think about it? From my studies I know that we can connect controller (and also observer) with feedback loop to it which will allow you to control it with more precision. I am curious if this can be used to describe Scrum process… I have to think about it .

Agile · Scrum

Today I found something interesting… it is called Sikuli and it is used for picture-driven programming. I know that it sounds silly but it is not! First thing is that guys from MIT are authors of this tool (language or programming style). The second thing is that it allows you (with little knowledge of python programming) to automate anything of your actions in Graphic User Interface – including operation with your operating system. The idea is: “If something is visible to user it can be programmed using sikuli!”.

I know that my description is rather poor and it doesn’t give you proper image of this tool… just take a look:

You can find more on http://sikuli.org

Have a fun (as I have) playing with this tool.

BDD · Programming · Sikuli · TDD · video

Changes in a system can be made in two primary ways. I like to call them “Edit and Pray” and “Cover and Modify”. Unfortunately, “Edit and Pray” is pretty much the industry standard.

Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael C. Feathers

cite · Programming · refactoring · TDD

BDD · Go · Programming

After reading “Clean Code” written by Martin C. Fowler I found one thing very interesting. I found that programmers all over the world made the same mistakes and have the same problems. One of the symptoms of this situation is that wrong habits are so common that they can be listed in books and presentations. In example Single Responsible Principle is one of this principles which is well known and which is never used. What in result make programmers trouble of naming those classes. And here comes the funny thing that programmers all over the world decided to choose one of the listed name for their classes:

• Registry
• Locator
• Context
• Manager
• Handler
• Environment
• Principle
• Processor
• Data
• Info

The idea is that class name should say exactly what it does or what it is used for. Data, Info etc. are just to general and I can’t say what do they do. The funny thing is that programmers all over the world found those names very familiar to the names in their code… weird.

Clean Code · Programming · SRP

Clean Code · Programming · TDD · video

Clean Code · Programming · TDD · video

Clean Code · Programming · TDD · video