Oh yeah, I´ll tell you something
I think you'll understand
When I say that something
I wanna hold your hand
I wanna hold your hand
I wanna hold your hand

So what made me think about this?  That frustrating construction of the new M5/N1 interchange in Cape Town!!  When you’re sitting in traffic, you can’t do anything but look and think.  And I’ve seen this scaffolding get taller and taller and wider and wider and longer and longer and more and more people appear on it each day.

Sourced from http://www.capetown.gov.za

I know that one day, they will remove the scaffolding and the concrete will just hang there in mid air on those massive pillars and walls that they’re busy building, and I won’t be sitting in traffic any longer, and it will all just work.

What a shame that software is not like that !!  So many people get turned on by scaffolding.  And The Beatles sang on …

And when I touch you i feel happy, inside
It's such a feeling
That my love
I can't hide
I can't hide
I can't hide

And just like the M5 construction, so much scaffolding gets built, and so many people climb on.  But then, they don’t climb down.  And they don’t tear down the scaffolding.  And it just stays there mashed in with the concrete bits.  And then they ask people to use it.  And it takes strain and then it’s a performance problem, or a load problem, or it just crashes down.

I do use scaffolding, but most of the time it’s in a spike and more often it’s in a test, just to get me over my point of fear.  Deploying software with scaffolding is just dangerous and negligent.  I really don’t want to drive my car over the M5 interchange while those thin steel pipes are holding up the concrete slabs.

But above all of that, the most important scaffolding is social scaffolding.  It’s better to provide human scaffolding to support each other on a team that is focused on delivering quality software.  It’s worse to plug in weak struts in the code base that will just collapse when the next developer builds on top of it.  Very un-ubuntu!

So, the Beatles song still holds true, but only for social scaffolding.

Yeah you, got that something
I think you'll understand
When I say that something
I wanna hold your hand
I wanna hold your hand
I wanna hold your hand
I wanna hold your ha-a-a-a-a-a-and

That’s why I’m giving the TEST FIRST TDD course next week.  If you want to go beyond just learning about an xUnit API and step on the path of a personal journey to changing the way you create software, then come along.  I don’t have miracles but I can do better than just shining a light.  I will step into the darkness with you and help you move towards the light.

• Solving Domain Problems with Aspects has a couple of slides with repeated transitions (courtesy of the export ).  This one has the flying code, as Claudio Perrone calls it!  And it is the presentation that lead to the chat with Ayende Rahien.  He has done something similar in C# here. - 29.1MB @ http://aslamkhan.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/SolvingDomainProblemsWithAspects.mov

• Managing Diversity in Agile Teams was inspired by Claudio’s presentation style.  Highly visual with minimal text.  It’s about story telling, movie script style and not about bullet point presentations.  Thanks, Claudio! - 16.6MB @ http://aslamkhan.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/ManagingDiversityInAgileTeams.mov

• Bootstrapping your SOA Project has the slides for the workshop that I ran.  It’s a mixture of traditional and visual.  The traditional is used purely for reference / take-home material. - 13.5MB @ http://aslamkhan.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/BootstrappingYourSOAProject.mov

September was spent winding down at PBT Group.  I was at PBT Group since 2005 and enjoyed most of my time there.  Starting an application development competency at a business intelligence company is not that trivial.  The mindset and thinking in the two camps are quite divergent, yet in the last few months, I got the impression that BI could do with some application development attitudes such as agility, TDD, etc.  It most probably is true in the opposite direction (e.g. application developers could do more with data quality).  But, I am being totally biased

October has wizzed past with me starting at factor10.  So, I now head up the newly launched South African branch of factor10.  It’s been quite a ride since October 1st, but it has been most enjoyable.  It’s refreshing to work with like minded individuals, who think agile and work agile, in getting things done.

Actually, I am quite humbled to be working some amazing people like Jimmy Nilsson, Niclas Nilsson, Andreas Brink, Anders Janmyr and others.

Same life, new relationships, new adventures!