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The Joy of Unlearning There's more to a car than just a horseless carriage; you can't approach new technology with old habits. In this column, Andy Hunt explains more about the unlearning process and how rewiring your brain isn't as hard as you might think it is.
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The Empty Cup Feigning competence is human nature, but unveiling your ignorance about a subject may lead to myriad learning opportunities and an accelerated path toward craftsmanship. In this week's column, Dave Hoover shares a story of two consultants who found themselves on the same learning path, but learned different lessons as each dealt with his own limitations differently.
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Anti-Patterns of a Private Workspace There are key advantages of having a private workspace for development. With this in mind, it is critical that the private workspace is used in the context of the project and the forces influencing the project and programmer are understood. Understanding the concepts of anti-patterns and how they can disrupt the adoption of good practice will lead to establishing practices that fit within a group.
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Don't Believe Everything You Read! There are volumes of written material covering just about every aspect of software engineering. Books, articles, magazines, conference proceedings, Web sites, and other rich sources of information are readily available to those learning about our profession. However, based on personal experience and observation, Ed Weller is compelled to ask how much of this information is actually misinformation. Anytime you collect data you must proceed with caution! In this article, we'll find out why Ed questions validity and accuracy and what you can do next time you're faced with questionable material.
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What to Do when Anger Strikes When someone pushes your buttons, anger is a natural reaction. Ideally, you can calmly express that anger, without lashing out. Sometimes, however, anger provokes a response that is excessive for the situation, inappropriate for the context, or counterproductive to what you're trying to accomplish. In this article, Naomi Karten offers suggestions for controlling anger rather than letting it control you.
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The Goldilocks Parable: How Much Process Is Just Right Getting process improvement "just right" is difficult. Go too far in the definition of processes, and it really does get too hot, with the heat coming from the people trying to use the processes. On the other hand process definitions that are too short to contain anything of value will leave users in the cold, and then there will be no improvement in the organization. Ed Weller states that a useful process improvement activity develops a set of process artifacts that meets the needs of the user. This helps the organization capture "tribal lore" and cast it into a set of process definitions that eliminates waste and improves time-to-market.
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A Study of Myers-Briggs Types Relative to CM Professionals (2003) What makes configuration management (CM) professionals so unique? Is it the way we can view a complex task and break it down into meaningful activities? Is it the way we can bring some level of order to chaos? Is it that we not only want to understand the details on how things work, but we also like to understand the big picture? Is it our need to improve our environment? Or is it the way we persevere at difficult tasks in trying to bring together the pieces that comprise our deliverables?
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Will the Real Professional Testers Please Step Forward? In this week's column, James Whittaker's message to testers is loud and clear: Respect your discipline and you will gain the respect that your discipline deserves. Read on for some ways that testers can earn respect, and for some common elements present in organizations that recognize the importance of testing.
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