All too often, I hear organizations say that they are agile simply because they adopted continuous integration or test driven development. This is simply not the case. It can be easy for organizations to blur the lines between agile development technologies and extreme programming (XP) techniques for delivering high quality software.

The lines can get fuzzy, but the way I like to think about it is to think of agile development as the project management component, while XP is related to the craft of software development. Agile methodologies can help you determine what you’re going to do while XP will be a set of tools and techniques agreed upon by the team to help achieve quality code.

An organization is truly agile when it is capable of responding to change in such a way that it can quickly adjust its priorities to the needs of its customers. No more, no less. An organization becomes agile by collaborating with its customers to determine how to best satisfy the customers needs and then works to ensure those needs are met. Without active engagement of the customer an organization will NEVER be agile, regardless of the other development techniques used.

I’m in a bit of an interesting predicament and am wondering what my legal obligations are. A little background:

Several months ago, an e-commerce site that I purchased from had its database compromised and my wife’s company card was used for a fraudulent purchase which was fulfilled through digitalriver.com. The site was very quick with communication and all charges were reversed. We’ve suffered no financial burden whatsoever. What we did get was a CD in the mail fulfilling the “purchase” from digitalriver.com.

As of yet, I have not opened the media. However, it’s nagging at me somewhat. It turns out that this is a piece of software I would like to use. I am just not sure whether I am legally allowed to use the media that was sent to me. The reason for this uncertainty is due to the vendor of this software having already received proceeds for the fraudulent “sale”. Do they need to be paid again?

Does anyone in the blogsphere have thoughts or advice on this? I’m just not sure what I can do with this.

For the past several years, I’ve been a religious listener of Carl Franklin’s .NET Rocks podcast. Usually, I’ve found the information presented very relevant and useful. However, as of today, I’ve unsubscribed from the podcast.

I am not quite sure what exactly is to blame for my unsubscribing. For that matter, I’m not really sure that Carl cares. :) I know that I’ve gotten fed up with the transition of the show into more of a marketing machine for Microsoft instead of a true resource for new developer technologies related to the .NET world. For example, hearing them blast the “nHibernate mafia” and suggesting that entity framework is the only real way to do ORM struck me as incredibly short-sighted.

I just don’t see how a Microsoft Regional Director can create an unbiased view into technology. The feeling that I get from listening to the podcast lately is that if it doesn’t come from Redmond, it’s garbage. This does not line up with my beliefs and values related to software development and technology in general.

Perhaps part of this is my own growth as a developer. I’d have to go back and re-listen to some older episodes to see if the content has been the same all along. It likely may have been, but over the years I know that my perceptions have changed dramatically and so part of this shift may be responsible for my declined interest in .NET Rocks.

Regardless, I thank Carl for the effort that he has put into delivering this. For the most part, I’ve enjoyed it. However, the time has come for me to move on. Enough is enough.