http://standefer.com/blog Seeing it all, one line of code at a time Wed, 23 Dec 2009 21:45:53 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en When my development team got started on our new product, we established a hierarchy based on product ownership. One developer “owned” a particular piece of the product. Bill owned Documentation, Mark owned UI, Victor owned the Financial module, and so on. This had its own advantages, as it let an ... http://standefer.com/blog/2009/12/23/hierarchy-melarkey/ We are in the throes of development of our product, and while coding marches on, we’re asked on a near-daily basis: when will it be done? That’s a tricky question, one that has plagued developers and managers for years. There are countless books on how to estimate software development, ... http://standefer.com/blog/2009/11/20/scheduling-and-estimation/ Where has the time gone? My last entry was on July 29, 2009. To say that a lot has happened since then would be a grand understatement. The short version is that I left the world of SharePoint consulting and accepted a full-time position at a software company here in ... http://standefer.com/blog/2009/11/14/a-new-day/ Yesterday I had lunch with two colleagues. As we chowed down on pulled pork and spiced apples, we talked about what makes something "enterprisey" and the scenarios in which going with the "right option" isn't always the best option. It was a good lunch. It seems like in every conversation about ... http://standefer.com/blog/2009/07/29/sharepoint-consultants-why-we-are/ Not too long ago, I was working with Microsoft Excel and had to write some macros. I finished up my work in Excel but left it open, and several hours later, I came back to my computer and the Visual Basic code editor was still open, minimized along with Excel. Seeing ... http://standefer.com/blog/2009/07/27/origins/ There's a term that comes from online games known as grinding. This term is used to describe a repetitive activity intended to accomplish some goal. For example, you might find yourself repeatedly killing a certain type of creature in the hopes that it'll give you a particular piece of loot. ... http://standefer.com/blog/2009/07/07/this-library-has-no-card/ Until about two weeks ago, I had no idea why so many developers were going ga-ga over Ruby on Rails. It wasn't because I had a problem with Rails; in fact, I didn't have an opinion at all. That's the beauty of ignorance. But as I started to delve deeper into ... http://standefer.com/blog/2009/06/20/the-path-to-self-discovery-on-rails/ Yesterday I installed Service Pack 2 for WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 on the two servers in our Development farm. I purposely did not follow the guidelines for upgrading SharePoint as I wanted to see what happened when I ran the installer. Since it’s a dev environment, there was no ... http://standefer.com/blog/2009/06/03/fixing-issues-with-the-sharepoint-sp2-upgrade/ I've been giving a lot of thought to Microsoft Dynamics lately. Microsoft Dynamics encompasses Microsoft's enterprise software for customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP). Microsoft developed CRM in-house, and bought the ERP applications from various companies so it could compete in the enterprise applications spaces held by ... http://standefer.com/blog/2009/05/31/making-dynamics-dynamic-part-i/ I am not privy to the details of SharePoint 2010. But like an upcoming blockbuster movie or expansion to an MMORPG, it's fun to dream about what might come. Now I shall look into my broken crystal ball and share you with my prognostications of SharePoint 2010 and beyond. STSADM becomes a ... http://standefer.com/blog/2009/05/28/sharepoint-2010-and-beyond/