Blog Insights

Background For the last 20 years, I’ve had some sort of automated home system. Around a year ago I added Google Home and voice controlled automation. To do this, I used HA Bridge to emulate a Phillips Hue Hub to connect my X10 lights to the Google Home. Problem In February, Google released...

I recently presented on the topic of Definition of Done at our Monday Meetup. The purpose of the game was to help our teammates understand what “done” means. As a product owner, I hear a lot of keywords thrown around in the Agile Development process; Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Minimum...

I recently wanted to unit test a method that assigned a delegate to an event handler. I derived a way to use Reflection for asserting that the delegate was attached. This article explains my solution. Note: If you are looking for information on C# events and delegates, I recommend you take...

In nearly a decade of experience in recruitment, I’ve been fortunate to work with several adept hiring managers and skilled technical people. Working with these people has provided me the opportunity to gain various insights into the interview process from both parties as interviewer and interviewee. The focus of this...

As an Agile coach, I am always reflecting on my experiences and looking for ways to help others improve. Recently I hired a contractor to complete a home improvement project. It didn't go very well. Let me share what went wrong and how I think using Agile techniques would have...

As I head back to school at Northwestern this fall, I am sure I will hear, “What did you do this summer?” 100 times. My response will be "Well, let me tell you about my experience as an apprentice at Source Allies." From day one, myself and four other apprentices were...

In our previous blog post, Pair Programming 101, we outlined the roles and responsibilities of pair programming. We also discussed the rotating roles, how to pair in different environments and the pitfalls. Since collaboration is in our DNA, we decided to take this topic one step further by creating an infographic....

This time of the year I get truly inspired by the Des Moines technology community. Blown away actually. Did you know that over the last 3 years more than 255 technology professionals donated over $494,000 of in-kind services to area nonprofits? Yep! Right here in our community. This is a community that comes...

Build an API backend for your application using the newest version of .NET that can be developed anywhere and run everywhere. This tutorial walks through the process to build a production-ready service to perform CRUD operations on a "Pokemon." Download and Install the .NET Core SDK from https://www.microsoft.com/net/core. If you are...

Now that Agile has become mainstream, teams are looking to go beyond their Agile process to find ways to improve. There has even been recent use of the term "Antifr-Agile", where process is secondary to product validation and customer learning (AgileDayChicago, 2016). Here are 7 ways that your team can...