My good friend and colleague (well almost), Erik Gunvaldson, has created a very nice Illustrated Storyboard in easy language to get a good grasp of what Software Factories are.
Software Factories Illustrated Storyboard
Associated blogpost
At Avanade everyone has access to books24x7. In their announcement of new books Pro WCF, the book I co-authored, appeared!
(picture ripped from Amit his blog)
I am proud to see this public case study published on the Microsoft site. I have been involved in pre-sales of this project and guiding of the team on the background as the Architect/Lifecycle Solution Manager. Although this project is still ongoing, Interpolis made a big step in the right direction in doing .NET projects by implementing Visual Studio Team System and ACA Lifecycle.
"Developers at Dutch Insurance Firm Boost Productivity with New Monitoring System
With 22,000 employees and a turnover of €12 billion in 2005, Achmea is the largest insurance company in the Netherlands. It wanted to increase the responsiveness of its IT department by improving the transparency of development projects. Partnering with Avanade and Microsoft, Achmea successfully implemented Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 Team System, which provides administrators with access to detailed, accurate information across multiple systems. Projects can now be tracked from beginning to end, making it easier to maximise efficiencies in the development process. And with Visual Studio 2005 Team System, the company’s 200 developers have increased productivity."
http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000000562
Just a short blogpost. I have decided to leave Avanade at the end of september and work for Microsoft as a Development Consultant as of the 1st of october. It has been a tough decision, but I am confident this will lead to even more interesting work for myself...
This might create room for new interesting blogposts.