The 8th principle of the Agile Manifesto is

Agile processes promote sustainable development.
The sponsors, developers, and users should be able
to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

At a previous employer, I remember a coworker of mine. Let’s call him M.

M was a good guy, capable, and hard-working. He always put in what was required, and often more. On one particular project, there was a deadline coming up, and his team wasn’t going to make it. So, he buckled down and put in over 100 hours that week to make sure that they got everything delivered. Then the deadline got pushed back, giving them a bit more time, but he had to put in another 100+ hour week. Then the deadline was pushed again, with the same result — another 100+ hour week. He didn’t even go home, he’d just go to sleep under his desk at night, then climb back into his chair and keep working (except for 2 showers each week). This kept happening for a number of weeks until he gave up and left the company.

Build projects around motivated individuals.
Give them the environment and support they need,
and trust them to get the job done.

This Agile principle is such good business advice, I could approach it from many other non-Agile directions. It almost transcends business and applies to all human endeavors.

Starting with the motivation issue. Larry Bossidy, one of the world’s top CEOs, says that when hiring, a person with absolute determination to succeed will always do better than someone with a high IQ and elite education who is cruising.

Tim will be presenting “300 Seconds of OAuth” at Ignite Orlando on Wednesday, March 4.  Ignite Orlando is a free event that brings individuals with like interests together for a night of learning, drinking and networking.  The event starts at 7pm and is being held at Slingapours in the Wall Street Plaza downtown.   So if you are in the Orlando area Wednesday night,  check out Tim’s presentation and meet up with other members of the Cloudspace agile team at Ignite Orlando!

Meet Michael Orr.  Michael is the CEO and overseer of everything here at Cloudspace.  He is one of our top engineers and has recently joined efforts with our Agile Development team.  Outside of work, he is big into comic books (Comic Book Wednesdays!), animals, Nine Inch Nails and traveling. Michael brings his excitement of the internet to the team and is a great person to work with as you will read below…

Where were you born? Where did you grow up & what was it like there?
“I was born in Owensboro, Kentucky and I moved around a lot. After Kentucky I lived in Knoxville, TN; Jacksonville, FL;  Lawrenceville, GA; Lake City, FL; Waycross, GA; Atlanta, GA; Palm City, FL; Orlando, FL.  I’ve lived in Orlando now longer than any of the other places, I came to Orlando in August 2000.”

Corey and I have been using Cucumber to write our integration tests on our current project and I thought I’d share a tip with you that has made our lives so much easier. When making steps in Cucumber, try to make them reusable. The idea behind Cucmber’s integration tests is that you are creating a language to talk about (and test) your project. By creating a dictionary of reusable steps we cut down the amount of time it takes to write new features, and decrease the size of the testing language which makes it easier to wrap your head around it. Here is a sample step definition that could be used to check for various http response codes

Tim (Cloudspace’s agile director) and I spent most of last week in San Francisco kicking off a very cool new client project. It is a big, well thought out idea and there are a lot of different pieces and parts that have to work together in certain ways to enable the product’s special sauce. Under a rigid agile structure we couldn’t have possibly discussed all the nuances and subtlety to the idea before landing the job. It would have simply taken too much time and we would have been giving our work away for free.