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| bio | website | linkd.in/mnuskin |
|---|---|---|
| location | Rochester, NY | |
| age | 33 | |
| visits | member for | 2 years, 2 months |
| seen | 8 hours ago | |
| stats | profile views | 236 |
I am a software technical lead for a team working on surveillance video recording platform and a member of a platform architecture council (not sure what that means yet), whose responsibility is to drive forward common framework/architecture for various products within UTC Climate, Controls and Security Systems division.
My primary area of expertise is high-performance (CPU, throughput, disk/network I/O...) back end software written in C++/C# (90/10). Other areas where I've dabbled: C# w/ WPF (lots of dabbling), WCF, ASP.NET, HTML/CSS/Javascript/jQuery, F#.
I truly enjoy building software and seeing my products in the hands of end-users and lately I've been discovering that I also enjoy building teams that build software.
Since I don't get to code as much as I'd like to at work, I spend nights coding at home primarily for recreation (plus there's that side effect of learning things). Some of that work can be found on GitHub. Code Project is next.
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Dec 14 |
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How should semi-agile team operate during management-imposed waterfall-like “testing phase” @maple & S.Lott - this is starting to cross some philosophical boundary, but I want to respond because this issue has been bugging me in other's questions too. Is there a strict definition what it means to be Agile? If there is, to me that seems very anti-agile and I don't believe there is. I constantly read literature on this topic and so far this has been my take-away: agile is a set of tools and a mindset that is summarized in the manifesto. No two teams will ever work exactly the same way because no two teams are in exactly the same situation. That's what the practice teaches us:... |
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Dec 14 |
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How should semi-agile team operate during management-imposed waterfall-like “testing phase” never realized how much distance that analogy could go, that alone deserves a +1 :) But when I come to work in the morning (or close to noon), it's nice to know that at least I'm not limited to an 8x8 square and 2 dimensions. |
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Dec 14 |
answered | Why are SQL databases still used with ORM? |
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Dec 14 |
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how to ask in the interview if the project is new development or maintenance? @littleadv - in my company they decided to create permanent positions for support engineers and in summary job description says pretty much what you quoted. Personally, I never expected to get anyone half decent interested in such job, but we actually found few guys who are very good at what they do and perfectly happy doing support 100% of the time. For them, they get to get out of engineering department, maybe even do some travel and they all comment how they don't have the constant pressures of release cycles to worry about. Not for me but there are people like that. |
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Dec 13 |
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How should semi-agile team operate during management-imposed waterfall-like “testing phase” Wow, walk about strong language and all I was asking if we should continue with stories and iterations into the testing phase. So here's the truth: In those gate meetings LIES ARE TOLD ALL THE TIME. I'm not in those meetings, they are exec level things that I don't care for much. On the bright side, this will help you sleep better, we are not screwing anyone over because we own the product. We carry it from coding to testing to coding the next release to testing next release and so forth. So at developer level, trust me when I say we are not trying to screw anyone over. |
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Dec 13 |
answered | how to ask in the interview if the project is new development or maintenance? |
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Dec 13 |
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How should semi-agile team operate during management-imposed waterfall-like “testing phase” ... and we do our best to deliver each story bug-free but some times we have to let some things slip because of the environment constraints. When we do it, we know perfectly well that this goes against the very practices we are trying to embrace. And yes, my team is not agile, but we are certainly trying to work towards that the best we can. |
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Dec 13 |
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How should semi-agile team operate during management-imposed waterfall-like “testing phase” @S.Lott-From your several comments, I feel like I need to defend myself. We have continuous integration, nightly builds, stories with complexity values determined by the team, every line of code written gets reviewed by at least one person, we have daily stand-ups and every developer/tester knows what the team is working on, design/architecture is done as a team, we have velocity estimates that help with projections, we use evolutionary design and actively refactor. If you can't give me 50% agile, how about 40% or maybe at least 25%? |
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Dec 13 |
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How should semi-agile team operate during management-imposed waterfall-like “testing phase” "as I tried to explain originally" usually means I'm repeating part of the question. I did that because this answer suggested I change the way my company operates and sadly that's not one of my options at the moment. Someday, maybe, not now though. I rephrased and repeated myself because the person who tried to help me clearly did not understand this part when he read my original question. So I attempted to clarify it for him. In my experience saying the same thing in different words helps people better understand what you are trying to say but putting this in original question would be silly. |
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Dec 13 |
asked | In agile environment, how is bug tracking and iteration tracking consolidated. |
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Dec 13 |
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How should semi-agile team operate during management-imposed waterfall-like “testing phase” Although I still don't have any practical takeaways, yours is the first answer that actually understood the situation my team is in. And that's the thing, I'm not trying to change the world or our company or to point fingers (which certainly have places to point at). I'm just trying to figure out what we as a team of pawns can do at our level given the environment we are in. |
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Dec 13 |
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How should semi-agile team operate during management-imposed waterfall-like “testing phase” As I mentioned elsewhere our corporation is really, really big and even our VP doesn't have control of when the gates are set. You've given some good advice, but this advice is for people who won't ever read these posts. I'm kinda curious what could be done at our level given the corporate constraints that are beyond our control |
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Dec 13 |
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How should semi-agile team operate during management-imposed waterfall-like “testing phase” ... lobbying other technology leaders so they could help influence management. But this will take time. In the meantime, what I'm looking for is advice specifically on mode of operation for our team given our environment. Obviously ditching the team and finding a different job is an option for me personally, but that still doesn't answer the question. |
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Dec 13 |
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How should semi-agile team operate during management-imposed waterfall-like “testing phase” As I tried to explain originally, this waterfall gate thing is pushed down from way high up. Even our VP of engineering is not in control of this. So who can I possibly explain it to? To me agile is a toolbox and a methodology that says do what makes sense and work with people. So given our corporate environment myself and my team are doing the best we can. And if I have a short-term deadline of passing gate 2 while I have another half a year to fix bugs, unfortunately for our team that is a very valid excuse. I am attacking this issue on several different fronts, one of them being... |
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Dec 13 |
awarded | Nice Answer |
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Dec 13 |
awarded | Enlightened |
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Dec 13 |
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How should semi-agile team operate during management-imposed waterfall-like “testing phase” 2 months was just an example. Actually we've been coding for about 8 months now. Somehow, I don't think I can sell it to my boss that "new development" phase will be for throw away code, something needs to be delivered, but to a degree that's what we end up doing. We close stories even though there are known bugs because of the knowledge that we'll have more time to fix them later, whereas we don't have time to deliver new code. |
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Dec 13 |
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How should semi-agile team operate during management-imposed waterfall-like “testing phase” added 725 characters in body |
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Dec 13 |
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How should semi-agile team operate during management-imposed waterfall-like “testing phase” Gate 2 is scheduled 6-9 months after Gate 1. We are code complete when the date comes and doesn't get pushed. Management 4-8 levels up the chain discusses a bunch of semi-fiction in a 4 hour meeting. Then we get congratulations and a team lunch. Any code that wasn't completed becomes a bug. Notice my use of quotes around the "code complete". We also have something called "code freeze" which is really a chill that can last for months. It's a silly system, but for now we are stuck playing in their sandbox |
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Dec 13 |
answered | Do I need to get permission to access a site's data or functionality programmatically? |
