Nick Snyderwhiskey

At the Duke Football games this season, there are an interesting collection of three good ole boys and a girl that are sitting several rows behind where we normally sit in Section 20 of Wallace Wade Stadium. Let’s refer to them as Loud & Proud.

Loud & Proud exhibits the characteristics that I would stereotypically associate with SEC football fans. They really get into the game, are boisterous, often obnoxious and occasionally funny, and never boring. I am guessing they are native North Carolinians, quite outgoing and engaging. They definitely stand out from the crowd.

Graph Theory to the Rescue

(This is the second post in a series about software demos - some of these even went well.)

There are all styles of demos ranging from very informal walkthroughs with other peer engineers on your team to more scripted scenarios that are recorded for later replay using software like Camtasia and made available on the interwebs. With Agile, we now demo the stories that we developed at the end of every 3 or 4 week sprint in front of all the project stakeholders (all internals but representing various disciplines on the team such as Development, Test, Product Management, Services, etc).

All Dressed Up and No Place to Go

In March, I accepted a real choice assignment to be a Scrum Master for a Critical New Component (CNC) in Project Pittsburgh. My manager threw terms around like high visibility and differentiator and critical success factors in pitching this CNC to me. These are all good things because they help you next January at Appraisal Time. So I figure what the heck and go for it – I’ll lead CNC – put me in coach.

This massive Project Pittsburgh was the impetus for an equally massive reorganization in our area at work. Because of my decision to work on this new component, I got reorg’ed out of my current first and second line managers to an entirely new management chain in a department associated with Build, Install, Upgrade, and Migration for Project Pittsburgh.