Agile Database Techniques

One in every 10 technical books I read is different from the rest.  And recently I’ve read some good ones, in general they all lived up to my expectations.  These books include;

• User Stories Applied by Mike Cohn
• Extreme Programming Explained by Kent Beck
• The Non-Designers Design Book by Robin Williams

The book that stood out was titled Agile Database Techniques by Scott Ambler.  Why did it stand out? It exceeded my expectations. I was expecting a database book that spoke to normalization, solid lifecycle and building a database schema that could accommodate agile developers.  What I got was a book describing agile methodologies applied to database design, development and maintenance. Databases, database administrators (DBAs) and the enterprise culture around database development doesn’t traditionally lend itself to agile methodologies.  This book addresses this gap and has chapters dedicated to it. The book is a mature look at how agile techniques can be applied to using relational database technologies within agile development teams. All agile team members should read this book.

Software Architecture needs Process

Today we were discussing staff build up for a company I am involved with.  Hiring staff is an interesting and very complex process when you think about it.  Finding the right person to fill a job is very hard.  Particulalry when you are building upon a staff of a 24 person start-up.  Getting the right people, in the right job, at the right time, can have a huge impact on success.  All this said, one of the other leads asked me what I wanted to do.  It was an easy question to answer; “Process and architecture, I want to ensure we have a good process in place so I can start influencing architecture. Without process how can I ensure that the architecture I drop in at the begining of the development process, pops out at the end. You need process to implement architecture.” Quite a brash thing to say, and true.  It would seem that theCarnagie Mellon Software Engineering Institute would agree with me.