Thursday, February 28, 2013

What's the deal with Agile?

Agile training has become pretty popular here at Babsim over the last couple of years, so I wanted to take some time to discuss some of the current understanding of what Agile methodology is.

Agile software development is a group of software development methods based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams. It promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary development and delivery, a time-boxed iterative approach, and encourages rapid and flexible response to change. It is a conceptual framework that promotes foreseen interactions throughout the development cycle. The Agile Manifesto[1] introduced the term in 2001.

Here is a look at the Agile Extension to the BABOK Guide by the IIBA. PMI also goes into detail about Agile techniques here.

Now that we’ve got that down, let’s take a look at what Agile course offerings we have that can fit in with your organization.


This course introduces managers to management principles in an Agile environment. Students learn the paradigm shifts that occur when organizations move from traditional environments to Agile environments. Students learn the different management dimensions to examine the organization, and the appropriate techniques which should be used to assist and support Agile teams to successful implementations.


This two-day workshop provides an introduction to those agile methods. Rather than detailing one of those methods as a reputed “cure” for every organization and situation, it provides an overview of several methods with the goal of allowing participants to pick and choose among the methods to identify those that will work for them.


Learn about iteration planning, product roadmap and backlog, estimating practices, user story development, and iteration execution.


The purpose of this course is to prepare the students for the ACPSM certification exam. The class begins with an overview of Agile approaches. It includes Scrum, XP, Agile Earned Value, Kanban, and hybrid approaches to implementing Agile on projects. The class also reviews Agile tools techniques such as story prioritization, backlog management, Agile estimation, personas, TDD, Information Radiators, and other tools. The class ends with a practice quiz to simulate the experience of taking the ACPSM exam. Although the class is intended for those with some Agile experience who wish to prepare for the certification exam, those experienced project managers with are curious about Agile and want an introduction.


The Testing & Refactoring Workshop offers a comprehensive, hands-on introduction to evolutionary design and automated testing. Over the past decade, practices like Test-Driven Development (TDD) and Refactoring have helped many teams significantly improve development speed, code quality and responsiveness to changing requirements. This workshop explores the foundations of TDD, microtesting and automated refactoring with the help of various patterns, strategies, tools and techniques.

3/13/13-3/15/13 and 3/27/13-3/29/13

-Matt

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Advanced System Center 2012 courses

 

To start things off this week I wanted to let everybody know about our Babsim Alumni group on LinkedIn. This is a place to connect with your peers and have discussions about important trends or new technologies in the IT industry. We will also be posting some promotions in the group from time to time so be sure to look out for that as well!

Now let’s get down to business. We are going to offer some advanced System Center 2012 courses throughout the year and I wanted to give everyone a first look at those here. I should also mention that we have a few seats still available for the M-10747 Administering System Center 2012 Configuration Manager coming up on 2/25 so sign up quick before we fill up! Here’s a sneak peek at these NEW System Center 2012 courses:


Being able to plan, deploy and manage Configuration Manager 2012 SP in your environment. The class is always based on the latest available public Service Pack and Cumulative Update.


During four days you will learn the concepts of how to meet your company needs to reflect its RTO, RPO and RLO. Robert will take you through deployment and configuration of System Center 2012 Data Protection Manager (SP 1) and start protect your private and public cloud with its advanced features.


This four-day course is a mix of in-depth instructor led training and hands-on labs where you will learn about the features, server roles and components included in System Center Service Manager 2012.

This class begins with an introduction to Service Manager 2012 followed by a detailed architectural discussion that explains how to design your Service Manager 2012 environment. Next, students will walk through an advanced installation of Service Manager 2012 and learn how to install the database, Management Server, Data Warehouse, and the Self Service Portal. Once the setup is complete, the students will perform other critical post installation configurations.


After completing this course, students will be able to:

•Describe and understand the logical architecture of an SCOM infrastructure

•Configuring a distributed SCOM installation and defining resource pools

•Modeling Applications in a way so it will be possible to monitor each layer

•Deciding the best Authoring solution and using the correct type of monitoringobject

•Defining and using different tools to Create Management Packs

•Using any object to author a Management Pack

•Articulate the functions of the components and services in the System Center suite and Working with SCOM in conjunction with other System Center products

•Digging into the Data warehouse database and using the aggregated tables for reporting.

•Troubleshooting issues with SCOM components and Agent Monitoring

•Design and creating end-to-end monitoring of Services – Multi layered application design

•Creating and Using Web Services to communicate with other Monitoring Targets

•Creating and using your own XML connector to communicate with Helpdesk systems

-Matt

Thursday, February 7, 2013

SharePoint 2013 is on it's way!

Let’s look at SharePoint 2013


This week I want to take a look at a product that’s coming out later this year. Let’s take a look at SharePoint 2013.

What’s new in SharePoint 2013?

SharePoint 2013 is the new way to work together. A simplified user experience helps you organize sync and share all your content. New social capabilities make it easy to share ideas, keep track of what your colleagues are working on, and discover experts you never knew existed.

Put social to work

Share ideas, discover answers and keep track of what your colleagues are working with new social features throughout SharePoint.

Share your stuff

Publish content to SharePoint from any Office application and share with people inside and outside your organization in a few simple clicks.

Take SharePoint on the go

Share documents, update your activity feed and keep in touch with your colleagues from your mobile phone or tablet.

Keep projects on track


Organize all your projects and tasks to get visibility into upcoming deliverables across SharePoint, Outlook and Microsoft Project.

Keep your team connected


Set up a new team site in minutes track meeting notes and bring together all your team’s email and documents in one place.

Store and sync your docs


Sync your content in SharePoint to your desktop with SkyDrive Pro, so docs are just a mouse click away, even if you’re offline.

Find experts you never knew existed


Connect with people across your organization and easily discover interests, past projects and documents they’ve worked on.

Discover insights and answers


Turn raw data into gorgeous interactive reports with Excel 2013 and publish to SharePoint to share insights with the people you work with.

Find what you’re looking for


Customize and narrow your search to deliver more relevant results, and get recommendations on people and documents to follow.

Build apps in the cloud


Build apps on common web technologies like JavaScript, HTML and oAuth with the new Cloud App Model for SharePoint.

Publish apps to the SharePoint store


Make your apps available to everyone to try and buy through the public Store or only available to your employees through the corporate catalog.

Build eye-catching sites


Use familiar design tools and flexible controls to create dynamic intranet and internet sites to share your organization’s vision with everyone.

Manage costs


Reduce your infrastructure costs and extend the boundaries of sharing by running SharePoint in the cloud with Office 365.

Manage risk


New archiving, eDiscovery and case management capabilities extend across SharePoint, Exchange and Lync.

Manage your time


Spend more time delivering innovation and less time managing infrastructure with advances in SharePoint scale, performance and management capabilities.

You can try SharePoint 2013 for free here!

If you’re not ready for SharePoint 2013 just yet, and you want to brush up on SharePoint 2010 make sure to check out our selection of courses:








-Matt