Recent Blog Posts

  • My Clutter is Different
    By Johanna Rothman - Friday Jul, 4
    On the long weekends, Mark and I make a concerted effort to clean up the house. That means I have to address all my little piles: go through them, recycle what I can, throw out what can’t be rec... more »
  • New Tools Section
    By Ryan Shriver - Thursday Jul, 3
    One of the things that helps reenforce new concepts, like the ones I���m teaching, are simple tools that guide you along the way. Like a carpenter���s square, hand plane or ruler, simple tools can be ... more »
  • It’s ok to wet yourself every once in awhile
    By Andrew Glover - Tuesday Jul, 1
    Dan North, the veritable progenitor of behavior driven development (or BDD), recently blogged about unnecessary DRYness (meaning don’t repeat yourself) with respect to clarity of intent when it ... more »
  • Expert Panel at Agile Experience
    By Neal Ford - Tuesday Jul, 1
    Last weekend, I spoke at the Agile Experience in Reston. It was a great conference, lots of interesting topics, and a different crowd than most technical conferences. Half the attendees were managers,... more »
  • easyb 0.9 hits the streets
    By Andrew Glover - Monday Jun, 30
    The easyb team is pleased to announce the release of easyb 0.9, baby! The 0.9 release has: Numerous IntelliJ plug-in improvements The easyb plugin for IntelliJ can now be downloaded directly from w... more »

In the Spotlight - John Carnell

Manager - Platform Engineering w/Thrivent Financial

John Carnell is the manager of Platform Engineering for Thrivent Financial, a Fortune 500 financial services company. In addition, John is a prolific speaker and writer. He has spoken at national conferences, such as Internet Expo, the Data Warehousing Institute, and numerous No Fluff Just Stuff Software Symposiums.

John has authored, coauthored, and been a technical reviewer for a number of technical books and industry publications. His latest book, Pro Apache Struts with Ajax, was published in late 2006.
























Presentations by John Carnell

It's About Leadership

The role of the technical lead has radically changed over the last several years. It used to be the technical lead was about being the senior developer on a team that made sure the code was getting written. You were the individual who knew the most about the technology stack you were the application with.

However, as projects have gotten larger and technical leads now having to deal with such things as offshore development teams and rapid delivery, the role of a technical lead has now shifted from less about technology and more about leading other people. The success or failure of project often hinges on the quality and depth of its leadership and most of us in our careers can point back to exactly this.

The Art of Producing Software: Applying Lean Concepts to Transform Your Software Development Organization

Waste is an insidious beast that drains the productivity of development teams and the organizations they work in. Many organizations are now realizing that by turning their gaze inward they can streamline their overall development processes, deliver higher quality products faster and save significant amounts of money.