Tales about Aviation, Coaching, Farming, Software Development

Highlights of 2011

As part of my new engagement at Nationwide Insurance in Columbus, Ohio, in January I contributed a major portion of code to RAutomation and wrote about Acceptance Test Driven Development for Windows.

Working with my new client provided a lot of opportunities to develop my new role as Software Development Coach and I wrote in Feburary about how Acceptance Test Driven Development brings teams together and how you can tell real stories with it.

March started with more activity about Acceptance Test Driven Development writing about the benefits, what smells can exist in Cucumber features and what other mistakes one can make. I also discovered that using ATDD will change how you organize your project. And at home in Panama I was renting a piece of land for the Peruvian Paso horses and improved the water supply there.

Living in the rainforest allows you to discover a few remarkable insects like the one I found in April.

May had a lot of professional activity. Someone linked on Twitter to a scientific paper that presents some doubt with regards to the value of TDD and I objected. In another commentary piece I was wrote about how pseudo scientific management kills innovation and creativity. Coaching teams at a large client prompted me to ask “Why does it always have to be a step by step process?” in software development. Then I showed the use of a walking skeleton in Acceptance Test Driven Development and wrote about the importance of craftsmanship.

Some organizations follow the model of the construction industry for their software development efforts and have architects design their software. In June I wrote a piece about embracing complexity instead of architecting it to show a different point of view. In another article I showed how to work with ATDD and micro-tests in different testing environments and eventually concluded that estimation creates silos and prevents teams from developing solutions. Back in Panama we had just signed the lease on a new house with a nice view from the front porch onto horses, cows, and the Pacific Ocean.

In July we relocated and the next morning found a poisenous snake hiding in a moving box. In Columbus at my client I concluded that focus on making the committment leads to low quality code.

By the end of August we had finally achieved, at a small scale, what we aimed for when the farm project started. We had a paddock right in of the house.

By early December I decided to take on a new opportunity and we relocated to Ohio in the United States of America. So we left Panama and sold the Jeep and most of our stuff including all the horses. In Ohio I first got a little Haflinger who was still too young to be ridden but seemed to be a good project horse to learn how to train a horse properly. As I felt the urge to ride and remember how smooth it was to be on a Peruvian Paso, we set out on a road trip to look at a black Peruvian Paso gelding in Virginia.

Photo Galleries

Horses in Panama is about the horses I had while living in Panama.

Discoveries in Panama is a mix of pictures that show something that caught my curiosity.

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