Author Archives: Mik Quinlan

About Mik Quinlan

Java Technical Architect and Agile Mentor with more than 18 years experience. I specialise in helping organisations adopt Agile methods effectively, developing strategies for effective cultural change and implementing hands on with the team, and turning cultural change into returns with visible ROIs. You may contact me via LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikquinlan/ or on Twitter @MikQuinlan.

Continuous Delivery – the missing piece of the puzzle

Posted on January 27, 2014

Over the last couple of years we have been reading a lot about Continuous Delivery (CD).  A fantastic concept that can really propel organisations forwards by enabling fast, incremental value add to products.  There are a number of different concepts … Continue reading →

Posted in Agile, Architecture, Continuous Delivery, Software Execution | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Interview in Baseline Mag about Shopzilla’s use of VoltDB

Posted on October 25, 2013

I was interviewed recently and the article just got published: http://www.baselinemag.com/analytics-big-data/shopzilla-is-sold-on-big-data.html

Posted in Press | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The Pragmatic Manifesto

Posted on October 21, 2013

I really like the Agile Manifesto. Although old, it has some basic tenets that organisations still fail to follow. Interesting to see the Reactive Manifesto too. I’d like to propose The Pragmatic Manifesto. Normally software development is about making the … Continue reading →

Posted in Agile | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

No more burndown, no more definition of done

Posted on July 28, 2013

Over the last year and a half of effectively working with 1 week iterations, two aspects of the traditional method of running an Agile project have not been required for us.  The first is the burndown chart, and the second … Continue reading →

Posted in Agile, Software Execution | Tagged | 4 Comments

Presentation on Behaviour Driven Development available

Posted on May 13, 2013

Here is the presentation I gave to the Los Angeles Java User Group about BDD and its application using Cucumber in the following contexts: testing REST APIs, testing web sites (integration with Selenium) and testing Hadoop / Hive. The slides … Continue reading →

Posted in Agile, Software Execution | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Blackbox testing, Whitebox testing and Behaviour Driven Development

Posted on March 7, 2013

As I have mentioned before, I have been involved in the re-platform of the Inventory system here at Shopzilla for the last 14 months.  During this time we got to experiment with a couple of approaches with great success.  One … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Software Execution, Technology | 1 Comment

Re-platforming a system and the value of 1 week iterations

Posted on March 7, 2013

For the last 14 months I have been working at Shopzilla to re-platform the Inventory system.  I haven’t had the time to blog about what we experimented with, what worked, what didn’t.  This is the first of a number of … Continue reading →

Posted in Agile | 3 Comments