Building upon the shoulders of giants

In recent days, I received an email from Francois Beauregard thanking me for my book and, especially, for the dedication I wrote in his copy of the book. Basically, I wrote to Francois that my book would never have happened if he had not encouraged me to explore the field of executable specifications.

The little I have done in writing the book is built on the shoulders of giants such as Francois. Francois is a pioneer who has done much to popularize the field of executable specifications. In 2006, when you search for “executable specifications” on Google, the first results were heading to GreenPepper, a software development tool  that was a direct competitor to Fitnesse.

GreenPepper was built by Pyxis, the company that Francois is the founder. Already in those years, Francois was describing GreenPepper as a tool for writing executable specifications:

“GreenPepper allows Agile teams to collaboratively write executable specifications by enabling Story Driven Development across the team.”

I can only thank Francois for introducing me to the GreenPepper tool and later for allowing me to work with the team behind the product.

Unfortunately, today GreenPepper no longer exists. Only memories remain. But it is not so important as the field of “executable specifications” is still alive, more than ever.

Electronic version of my book is now available

After several years of work, I come now to the finish of my book. The ebook version of, Executable Specifications with Scrum: A Practical Guide to Agile Requirements Discovery, is now available online at:

http://www.informit.com/store/executable-specifications-with-scrum-a-practical-guide-9780132776523?WT.mc_id=Author_Cardinal_ExSpecwithScrumBook

“Rough Cuts” version of my book on Safari

My book Executable Specifications with Scrum will be officially release by the end of July. These days with my publisher Addison Wesley, we are finalizing the last copyediting tasks.

For those who can not wait for the final version, in the meantime, if you are a subscriber of Safari Books Online Service, a “rough cuts” version of my book is available here. Happy reading.

Changing things around

It has been over ten years that I have a personal website at “mariocardinal.com”. For several years, I have managed the content of this website using  the obsolete product CityDesk created by Joel Spolsky. Until recently the site was still promoting my consulting services. It was a simple website with few pages and no more.

Times are changing and there is something new. I finished a cycle with the forthcoming publication of my book “Executable Specifications with Scrum“. I gradually leaves consulting and moves on to other challenges. After several years with success as an agile coach specializing in architecture, I return to my first love, the entrepreneurship.  I am the co-founder of Slingboards Lab, a young start-up that helps build collaboration boards for tablets and mobile phones.

Today, I turn my website into a blog to tell this adventure. On this blog, with humility and transparency, I will describe my journey as an entrepreneur. I will tell the story of Slingboards Lab, the company that I recently founded with Erik Renaud

Obviously, besides Slingboards Lab, you will find posts that will address more specifically my book “Executable Specifications with Scrum“. I remain fascinated by software development with agile practices. Especially since I discovered many similarities between starting a business using “lean startup” and “iterative requirements’ discovery”. I will be back soon on this topic.

Thank you to accompany me. The journey looks bright.

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” ― Ernest Hemingway

“There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way” ― Bouddha