User: laalto

Re:Helsinki? Finland? Why in english then?

On: Peer to Peer and Spam in the Internet

If you look at the names of the authors, many of them look e.g. Russian. Not all students in Finnish universities speak Finnish.

Re:Pictures of the prototype

On: Matchbox Sized Color Projectors?

Here are some points translated from Kaleva's story:

• They have been developing the device since last spring.
  
• They believe they can push the efficiency to about 60 % (from 2 % in current projector designs).
  
• The shape of light they produce is already rectangular. Traditionally a light source is cut into rectangular shape.
  
• They estimate a initial price of 700 EUR and expect it to drop to 250 EUR.
  
• The device does not have batteries of its own but it runs off a laptop battery for example.
  
• The device is expected to hit the shops in 2005.
  
• They had to come out the closet with this product because it was presented in Finnish Venture Forum in Helsinki last week.
  

Re:Inspections?

On: Agile Software Development with Scrum

Who inspects the inspections then?

I once witnessed a project where there was a customer requirement for source code inspections. The project manager spent a whopping evening "inspecting" 120 KLOC of code and marking them as "inspected".

Self-organizing teams

On: Agile Software Development with Scrum

I'm no Scrum expert, but I've been interested in software development methodologies for a long time.

Scrum has its roots in studies on self-organizing teams. That's why it does not prescribe working practices like collective code ownership, refactoring, unit testing, pair programming etc. It's left to the team to self-organize them if needed.

Historically Scrum is about 5 years older than XP. Therefore Scrum does not need to reflect on XP.

I think to really succeed with any agile methodology, be it XP or something else, you need a highly disciplined and skilled team. With a highly disciplined and skilled team, you can succeed with almost any methodology. Then it comes down to the fun/sustainability factor: you should only use a methodology if the developers are willing to use it on the next project as well.