Calder Group Inc

If you want to turn on syntax highlighting for Ruby in emacs, first download ruby-elisp, then add the following to your .emacs file.


(autoload 'ruby-mode "ruby-mode" "Load ruby-mode")
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.rb$" . ruby-mode))
;; uncomment the next line if you want syntax highlighting
(add-hook 'ruby-mode-hook 'turn-on-font-lock)


I like a darker color, with the possible to escape if the colors don’t work out


(autoload 'ruby-mode "ruby-mode" "Load ruby-mode")
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.rb$" . ruby-mode))
;; uncomment the next line if you want syntax highlighting
(add-hook 'ruby-mode-hook '(lambda ()
(set-background-color "slate grey")
(set-foreground-color "almond")
turn-on-font-lock))

(add-hook 'text-mode-hook '(lambda ()
(set-background-color "white")
(set-foreground-color "black")))


when ruby-mode is loaded the background is slate grey, to get a white back ground just start using text-mode

I get asked lots of questions about the benefits of a highly iterative process. I also get lots of questions about the tools used in iterative processes. These are good questions and I enjoy discussing them with people, but we hardly ever end up discussing the processes themselves.

I must admit I feel pangs of regret, because a key part of Iterative processes is the fact that the group owns the processes. Owning your processes is a lot of fun. After every iteration, the group should ask two questions

• What Do We Want To Keep?
• What Do We Want To Change?

If you keep asking those questions, and keep improving your processes, then everything falls into line. What tool to use isn’t even considered, instead new tools are picked to fit the processes that the group puts in place.

For example, lets suppose a group doing 2 week iterations is using Microsoft Project to manage their schedule.

• After the first iteration: This sucks, we meet everyday and everyone knows the dependencies and what blocking them, yet every detail is still logged in MS Project. Lets stop putting dependencies and blocking into MS Project
• After the second iteration:MS Project isn’t a huge time sink, but my boss can’t see how much work we’re doing. Lets make a bar graph the number of stories completed
• After the third iteration:Some people don’t have project and they can’t edit their own task estimates, lets just try Excel instead. We really only need owner, estimate, hours left, status ordered by priority
• After the fourth iteration:Excel isn’t too bad, now that the schedule is more self serve we can add the Blocked status back in.

Maybe this group will get to white board and sticky notes, maybe they won’t. They will keep working on their processes to make the improvements which work for them.