Joy of Setup » Agility http://www.joyofsetup.com Bob Arnson's blog about setup and servicing Tue, 29 Jun 2010 02:41:43 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Why serviceability is important http://www.joyofsetup.com/2008/06/21/why-serviceability-is-important/ http://www.joyofsetup.com/2008/06/21/why-serviceability-is-important/#comments Sun, 22 Jun 2008 00:46:57 +0000 Bob Arnson http://www.joyofsetup.com/2008/06/21/why-serviceability-is-important/ The Phoenix lander found water ice on Mars. That’s cool, but even cooler (from a terribly geeky setup perspective) is the Phoenix team‘s need to service the software running on the lander:

The confirming discovery came despite some technical glitches, including an incident with Phoenix‘s onboard filing and data storage system that caused the lander to produce thousands of duplicate copies of file-maintenance data files and clog things up. The software issue was promptly diagnosed and should be "patched" no later than Tuesday, according to Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager, of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

More details here. Imagine installing a patch from 171,410,657 miles away (plus or minus). I hope there are no prompts for source…

]]> http://www.joyofsetup.com/2008/06/21/why-serviceability-is-important/feed/ 0 Agile smarts http://www.joyofsetup.com/2008/05/26/agile-smarts/ http://www.joyofsetup.com/2008/05/26/agile-smarts/#comments Mon, 26 May 2008 19:34:32 +0000 Bob Arnson http://www.joyofsetup.com/2008/05/26/agile-smarts/ As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a big fan of agile development. Turns out it might be responsible not only for great software but enhanced developer brains:

Brain research on rats suggests that voluntary pressure in the form of audacious goals taken on by high performance teams makes them produce more neuron stem cells, rewire the brain, and become smarter. Involuntary pressure, often seen on waterfall teams, reduces stem cell production and makes employees stupider.

[from Jeff Sutherland on an article in The Economist]

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