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After the monthly Geeks meeting, I headed over to New Holland Brewery with Brandon, Aaron, and Zach to do some Ruby hacking. Instead of hacking, we discussed Agile development in practice and in theory, as well as how to conduct business in an Agile manner.

I didn’t stay for the whole discussion, but for the hour or so that I did stay for it insightful and thought-provoking. I recall learning about Agile Development in my software engineering class, but that was purely high level and to tell the truth, and at that time I could have only told you that it had something to do with pair-programming and small iterations. Fortunately for me, I actually got my first real taste of Agile development this past summer. It probably wasn’t the strictest in sense of the agile methodologies, but we stuck fairly close to the regimen.

And now for the last semester, interning with Collective Idea has let me further experience the Agile world. I’m beginning to see the value that the process adds and how it makes development more enjoyable. So here’s what I’d like to see. As a member of the leadership of Abstraction, Calvin’s Computer Science student organization, a panel discussion on Agile Development. I envision developers from the region talking about their past experiences and any interesting stories, as well as Professors sharing their thoughts. When I put it that way, it comes across as Industry vs. Academia, which wouldn’t necessarily be the goal.

I would like to have an open discussion about agile development. Is it appropriate for the classroom? How could Professors incorporate Agile practices into classes and projects? What are the benefits and what are the drawbacks of developing in an Agile manner?

Update: Shortly after posting this morning, Josh Holtrop sent me a note shedding some more light on Calvin’s lack of iCal support. Josh says that the ‘my weekly schedule’ as well as many others have nothing to do with Blackboard at all. In writing the “my weekly schedule” feature, he added the bare HTML option for people who wanted to share a version on their own site. He adds that there was talk of supporting iCal at some time, but it wasn’t given much priority. Thanks for setting things straight Josh!

Calvin College uses Blackboard. Here’s what the Help docs had to say about Blackboard,

The Blackboard Learning System offers Instructors a robust set of tools, functions, and features for teaching and the Blackboard Portal System offers the same set of tools, functions, and features for managing a campus Organization.

When I go to take a gander at my weekly schedule for next semester, I’m given three options for how I want to view it.

1. “Normal Web Schedule”


2. “Bare HTML Schedule”


3. “Open in Word”


4. “Open in Excel”

Those options suffice if all I want to do is grab a screen shot and print it out for my own personal records, but what if I want more. I want iCal support. There’s enough people out there using Outlook, iCal, or Google Cal that having the ability to export this calendar to an iCal format would provide much more use than opening it in Word or Excel.

My love for Blackboard rages on…

Update: Calvin News article about the talk

Well today, a “software engineer” (air quotes) from IBM came and gave a speech centered around the idea that there are more jobs in the IT-industry than just programming for Computer Science majors. My perspective on the talk was biased a little bit from the past number of months, but it was an insightful talk.

The presenter touched on a few points relating to her career and her experiences. The one that stood out most, and I think mostly because this is her personal experience, is that Project Management is an increasing job-market. In fact, before today I had never heard of PMP or PMI. Project management might be making inroads in large corporations, but how does it apply to the development world, and more specifically, the web development world? Who or what context says that a team or company should have a Project Manager and why?

During the talk, I felt like everything was being generalized to the large-scale cooperations. Know I don’t claim to know the hearts of all CS majors at Calvin, but I question how many honestly want to work in a large-scale environment such as IBM, Microsoft, Google, or other. To be clear, a number are interested in an internship at one of the above, but I wonder how many would be interested in a full-time position. But, I don’t want to get into the speculation of what others may do with there lives, so I’ll leave that and move on to what my own feelings are.

I’m currently working for a small, agile company where we do consulting and web development work. We don’t have a specific project manager, nor do I really see the need for a designated person to oversee our work. To me, it creates one more layer of abstraction and dissonance among the organization. Granted, if the company were to grow and have multiple developers working on multiple projects at the same time, I can see some use in managing and maintaining those projects. But even at this level, couldn’t the management be delegated to those who are on each project? At some point, some one will want to know when which project is deploying and polishing up, or which ones are just getting started.

From a business aspect, Project Management makes sense. But does a developer need to worry about it? I’d say that my bosses worry about management, because for them, each project they take on is an opportunity cost. If they work 25 hours on project x for customer x, then that’s only 15 hours to work on project y for customer y. How developers manage their time as well as their customer relationship seems to be important, but does managing time and relationships equate to project management on a small scale in the case of a two-man team? I don’t know the answer but I think its an interesting proposition.

How do small-scale companies handle project management if they are dealing with multiple projects? Is Project management different to Product management at this scale, or are they too similar to call different?

All in all, I think Project Management has its place in the world, but in relation to my own experiences, it seems as though it grinds a bit on a small scale. On a side note, I’ll be graduating with a CS major and a Business minor. I’ll be exposed to the world of business, although in a limited sense, I will still have knowledge of accounting, management styles, and other topics. Will this help me get a job after a graduate? Will a business minor prepare me for engaging customers and communicating with clients?

Possibly, but in a general sense, I feel that it will make me aware of the other aspects of my job, specifically the costs associated with development, the various goals and my responsibilities to others. Knowing thedifferences between Absorption and Variable costing may not be important in the long run, but it highlights the importance of all aspects of a business.

Now I’ll turn it over to you. If you’re a developer, where do you see yourself in the realm of Project Management? What’s important to you and how do you handle various projects?

I switched my Tumblr log from the somewhat lame sounding “flow” to the super-awesome-computer-technology-geeky sounding Serial Bits. Yeah, if you’re technology inclined, you should be surprised that serialbits.com was available. Alas, it is no longer an orphaned domain.

So, if you’re wondering why the flow.ryckbost.com link doesn’t work for you, try heading to serialbits.com instead to get my latest serialized account of crazy happenings on the Internets.