How Relative Story Sizing Won Me Over

RJ Dela-Cruz Agile, Articles, Consulting, Project Management Leave a Comment

Anyone who practices agile methodologies such as scrum is going to be very familiar with the practice of story pointing user stories (also known as poker planning). The good oleโ€™ fashion 4, 8, 13, etc. Fibonacci sequences we assign to user stories of a sprint.

If youโ€™re not familiar, itโ€™s where the team gathers together to discuss the user stories to bring into a coming sprint and assigning each a number called story points. These story points are estimates that represent the level of difficulty and time it is expected to take to complete the story.

The team often will have discussions on whether a story is a particular story point number and argue their point of view until the team comes to an agreement to what story point it should be. Iโ€™ve done this type of work estimation for a long time that itโ€™s natural for me… until we did something a bit different on a scrum team that I was a part of.

In this blog, we discuss a different way to assign poker points to user stories that could be beneficial to your scrum team – relative story sizing.

See Keyhole At The University of Arkansas Blockchain Hackathon

Keyhole Software Articles, Blockchain, Community, Company News, Educational Event, Hyperledger, Keyhole Leave a Comment

Keyhole Software is excited to announce our very own David Pitt will providing a technical workshop at the University of Arkansas Blockchain Hackathon on November 6th, 2019 from 6 – 8 PM at the Doug McMillon Innovation Studio.

The University of Arkansas will be hosting its third annual Blockchain Hackathon taking place on November 8th – 9th in downtown Fayetteville. This year will be the first time ever the Blockchain Center of Excellence (BCoE) will be opening up this event to the community, instead of only to students. The diversity of ideas, backgrounds, and skills will make for the most interesting and exciting Blockchain Hackathon to date!

Before the main event, the University of Arkansas will be conducting technical workshops leading up to the Hackathon. These workshops will offer intimate and boutique experiences every night (November 3rd – 7th) to give attendees the opportunity to hear deeper informational sessions on specific blockchains, set-up programming environments, familiarize themselves with available resources, or even do a group exercise.

Documentation: Enough Already! Not.

Mike McCoy Articles, Consulting, Programming, Soft Skills Leave a Comment

Documentation. I know we all hate having to create it. I don’t like writing it and feel like I always leave something out. However, our assumptions of what other developers should think we are trying to accomplish by our masterpieces of software are usually filled with potholes (sometimes big ones). The truth of the matter is that no matter how stellar your code or software is – if you’re the only one who understands how it works, it doesnโ€™t do any good.

These are not paintings or sculptures that would live the rest of their days in a museum, untouched by human hands and just collecting dust as they run. In reality, documentation will be added to and changed as the information they describe evolves.

In this blog, we discuss two suggested strategies for the creation of useful and concise software documentation.

Knowledge Transfer in Consulting Projects

Strategy: Knowledge Transfer In Consulting Projects

Josh Green Agile, Articles, Consulting, Project Management, Soft Skills Leave a Comment

Imparting Knowledge And Preparing For The End Of A Contract

In this blog, I share an example of a consulting engagement that required significant knowledge transfer to new hires. We detail an approach for teaching Spring Batch to developers with no previous experience in Java or the Spring Framework.

The goal is to provide a real-world example of closing a contract, imparting knowledge with the client and their employees, and the potential issues faced in the process.

See Keyhole at Dev Up 2019

Keyhole Software Articles, Community, Company News, Keyhole Leave a Comment

We are pleased to announce that Keyhole Software is a Gold Sponsor of the 2019 St. Louis Developer Conference! This will be the fifth year of Keyhole Sponsoring.ย 

Formerly known as the St. Louis Days of .NET and rebranded as Dev Up during the 2015 conference, the 12th annual edition will bring together regional and national IT experts to share their knowledge for technology.ย 

The Dev Up conference is October 14-16, 2019 at the Ameristar Casino in St. Charles, Missouri. Monday, October 14th features all-day hands-on sessions called โ€œPre-Compilersโ€ which are optional. The main conference takes place on October 15th & 16th and features over 140 technical training sessions geared toward all levels of experience.