Thinking Inside a Bigger Box

In my last article, I showed how to implement authentication with Ruby on Rails. But security is about more than simple login. For many applications, we want to grant permission to manipulate a resource to a set of users. In this article, I will guide you though adding functionality so that users can modify the permissions for who gets to edit an article.

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Three challenges for agile projects

When I join projects now, I want to challenge all the stakeholders to make three commitments:

• Simulate production at least monthly: The software should be run in an environment that is comparable with the target production environment with loads and data variations similar to that of production. Thus, the technical stability of the project is proved.
• Demo with the business side at least monthly: The results of the project should be showed to the product owner, or perhaps even the end users. Thus, our understanding of the requirements is established.
• Real return before 10 % of business case spent: The project should have an estimated business case. Before 10 % of the potential earnings have been spend, the project should start to generate some income. Thus, the economic expectations of the project can be assessed.

Currently, much project is doing very well on simulated environment and pretty well when it comes to demos. We’re still struggling with delivery within 10 % of the business case.

How are your projects doing on this scale?

As my previous Norwegian language article turned out to be one of the all time top hit articles in my blog, I will continue to write a few articles in Norwegian. This one is on an idea on how to do reseach on the success of agile projects. Next week, I will return to another popular topic: Testing.

Under paneldebatten på Geilo-seminaret til Dataforeningen, satt Magne Jørgensen meg, Lars Arne Skår og Niklas Bjørnerstedt litt til veggs med et ganske enkelt spørsmål: Hvordan kan vi vite om smidige metoder virker? Perspektivet til Magne som forsker på utviklingsprosjekter fikk meg til å tenke på spørsmålet, men før jeg fikk kommet med et forslag til svar. Derfor skriver jeg det her i stedet.

Å forske på et spørsmål som “fungerer smidige metoder” er veldig vanskelig. Mitt håp er at noen i stedet vil ta et skritt tilbake og se om man kan få svart på det mer interessant spørsmålet: Er det en sammenheng mellom hyppig feedback og lønnsomme prosjekter?

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What is the secret to happiness? Surprisingly, this question can be answered more and more definitively. I want my work to be conductive to the happiness of myself and others, and I believe agile methods can help me do that.

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