Solving problems being technology agnostic

We are used to building systems and solving problems under high quality requirements as developers. When you are creating a whole system with its own behaviour and idiosyncrasy your solution is probably going to have some specific characteristics due to...

Pair Programming and Budō

Confession time: I find pair programming hugely useful, productive, informative - and draining. Like many developers of my acquaintance, I’m an introvert; which doesn’t mean I don’t like people, just that I am less than enthused about spending hours at...

Agile Analogies for Software Development

I’ve recently been working in a training role, with people who have never been exposed to the software engineering lifecycle before. I was drawn to considering analogies to try and explain to them what we were trying to do. It...

Automation as a way of thinking... and docker

Automation is a key and essential fact when solving problems and assembling pieces together. By automating you only need to do the same thing once, reducing the possibility of human errors so it helps to increase quality, efficiency and productivity...

Keeping Drupal Secure

The recent announcement of Drupal SA-CORE-2014-005 caused a global scramble amongst Drupal site owners, developers and hosting providers to patch their sites and protect themselves from the vulnerability. Unfortunate site owners who weren’t quick enough were left with a site...

Looking Forward to the Spring eXchange 2014 with Capgemini Software Engineering

It’s the 2014 Spring eXchange at skillsmatter Thursday, 6th - Friday, 7th November, and Capgemini are incredibly excited to be sponsoring the event! Need Some Great Reasons to go to the Spring eXchange 2014? The Spring eXchange is the best...

Reflections on Drupalcon Amsterdam

Along with Malcolm and other colleagues from the Capgemini Drupal team, I attended the recent Drupalcon in Amsterdam. And as well as admiring the Dutch attitude to cycling and its integration in the city (btw London, blue paint on the...

Agile and Lean

Or should that be Scrum and Kanban? I was in a short conversation a few days ago around whether we, in the business of software development, want to raise the profile of Lean. Perhaps even create some formal training materials....

Component Based Development for the Enterprise

Recently 10 members of the Drupal development team at Capgemini went to Drupalcon Amsterdam. Having been to two Drupalcons before, I more or less knew what to expect, but something I hadn’t previously given much thought to was how big...

Microservices - A Reality Check(point)

It’s reached the point where it’s even a cliche to state “there’s a lot written about Microservices these days.” But despite this, here’s another post on the topic. Why does the internet need another? Please bear with me… We’re doing...