I set up Code Edifice primarily to share my experience and knowledge on some of the software development practices that have helped me achieve a certain degree of success on my projects. Most of my development experience is based on the Microsoft stack and therefore a lot of my examples on this site as well as my blog will be easily to absorb for developers working on Microsoft Windows and Web applications platform.
With my professional lifecycle starting out as a programmer and growing through as developer, a solution architect, project manager and team mentor, I have had the opportunity of evaluating the development process from a number of viewpoints. My interaction with a number of people during these phases of my professional career have helped me understand what it takes to drive a project successfully to meet and exceed client satisfaction levels.
In the past few years, I have been mentoring a number of young and enthusiastic individuals in the process of developing serious business applications and this activity has enabled me with an understanding of the needs and apprehensions of these individuals in a better way. I would like to utilize this website to allow young individuals to get a good grip on the software development process - not just learn the syntax but understand the process from an implementation perspective.
Agile
A highly result oriented development philosophy that values individuals and their interactions alongside customer collaborations to produce software that adapts to changing requirements.
Scrum
Timebox technique that promotes Agile using interactive incremental releases building deliverables at the end of each iteration by engaging self empowered teams.
Lean Software Development
Principles that revolve around building high quality software rapidly while eliminating redundant processes, creating knowledge and helping bridge opportunity with technology.
eXtreme Programming (XP)
Engineering practices that thrive on a team culture to design and develop flexible and adaptive software utilizing constant client feedback coupled with an active test driven approach.
In today's world, a number of software training institutes are churning out individuals armed with the syntax of multiple programming languages and different disciplines, lacking, however in real world implementations. During my mentoring sessions, I like to emphasize the use of real world applications considering popular software tools that are constantly used by the target audience. This allows individuals to list out their expectations from the programming language and gives them a good starting point to appreciate the nuances of the language. Although my hands-on experience has been restricted to Microsoft technologies, I fully appreciate the availability of alternate technologies and their contribution in a number of software development areas.
I intend to detail out a lot of "technology agnostic" sections on this website that deal with areas of Project management - client interaction and project planning and implementation etc. Some of my comments in these areas might differ from hard core project managers or technical architects. However, my career focus has constantly motivated me to ensure that clients and developers benefit from the process of building software. A number of choices that I will present are efforts at reducing turn-around-time from a client perspective and increased project ownership from the developers' perspective The process of software development needs to focus on developing reliable and functional software as compared to over-detailed yet easily obsolete plans and tons of unusable documentation.
Crystal
Practical Insight into employing a prototyped predictive approach to software development utilizing strong team cohesion and openness to deliver frequently assessable releases.
Feature Driven Development
A system that revolves around obtaining a high earned value early into the project by identifying and alleviating risks and evaluating impact of time and cost efforts.
Agile Modeling
A modeling method that thrives on the just in time philosophy by creating models that are relevant to the iteration and provide sufficient information to their target users.
This website is a Work-in-Progress and this implies that I will be building portions of this site as time goes by. So please make sure to bookmark this site. You can also signup for an email alert (when that link comes up). This will allow me to send you an email when I carry out a sizeable update to the site. Of course, I do not intend to use your email address for spamming or any form of product or service adverts. Alternatively, you can wait a while and I will add an RSS Feed on this site and this will allow you to be alerted each time I update the website.
- Alvin Menezes