Luxoft Training
[230] Most popular courses in 2018
Last year we looked at the most popular courses in 2017. This year we want to continue the tradition and let you know which were the most sought after courses in 2018 for our locations in Romania and Poland.
[231] JUnit 5 – Assertions and Assumptions. Part 1
Abstract: JUnit is a unit testing framework for the Java programming language. The JUnit 5 version has been redesigned to solve some particular problems of the previous versions. It comes with a new architecture, and with a lot of new featu
[209] Trust in the Team. How trust develops.
Let’s have a look at Tuckman's stages of group development and find out how trust should form within a team. What should a manager in order to go through this process faster and more efficiently?
[210] Trust in the Team. Maintaining trust
To conclude our talk about trust, I would like to dwell on the main rules to be followed by the manager for building and maintaining a trust-based working environment within the project.
[211] Make your meetings great (again)
When we think about changing organizational culture, what comes to mind first is a big project, involving an enormous amount of efforts on all organizational levels. But that is not always true.
[212] Why Scrum does not work (and what can we do about it)
Scrum is the most popular agile framework. Period. If we look at VersionOne 11th State of Agile report, Scrum is practiced by 58% of respondents (68% if we sum up Scrum and Scrum/XP hybrid). Among scaling frameworks Scrum dominates: while S
[213] What an Agile Coach Can Learn from a Psychologist
I’ve been recently thinking about popular Agile frameworks and approaches to Agile transformation. It seems to me that they are too mechanistic, and this seems to me one of the reasons why many organizational transformation processes fail.
[215] Luxoft Training joins the Digital Revolution
Every October Bucharest plays host to one of the most important IT&C events in south eastern Europe, Internet and Mobile World. A two day event that focuses on technology and brings together some of the most important companies, profess
[219] V for Vendetta (and A for Agile)
This post in some ways extends on my article about Why Scrum does not work (and what can we do about it).
[220] When a Manager is not Agile (but thinks he is)
Imagine you are an external Agile consultant invited to improve Scrum in a team. A product owner is a head of this department. Let’s call him Alex. Alex talks a lot about self-organization and business agility and then during Sprint plannin
[198] Preparing for the future at Bucharest Technology Week
Predicting the future is a challenging prospect but what we do know for sure is that technology will play a big part in it. The future was also the main theme behind this year’s edition of Bucharest Technology Week, the largest urban techno
[199] Remote Management. What? Why? How?
Aspiring managers often get scared when they are offered the opportunity to take over 2 or 3 new members (or a whole team) working in another location.
[200] Remote Management. Trust
In our last article we talked about some of the common challenges that might appear when managing a distributed team. If you have a closer look at such situations and try to find something common about them, you will notice that they are al
[201] Luxoft Training adds Atlassian courses to training portfolio
Whether you are a programmer, software tester, project manager, business analyst or in any way involved in a large scale project, chances are you’ve worked or at least have heard about software solutions such as Jira or Confluence.
[203] Remote Management. Rules
Let’s now discuss some approaches that can be used by the manager in order to properly interact with distributed team members, make them understand what is expected from them and how to achieve it.
[204] Remote Management. Work Schedule
Set up a work schedule for all locations. This advice may seem silly – everyone has an employment contract where working hours are stated. Why set up a work schedule?
[205] Excluding the “Historical Reasons” Factor in Android Mobile Projects. Continued
Time for part two of our article on Android Mobile Projects. Check it out.
[206] Trust in the Team: Why We Need It and How It Can Be Built
When training managers of any level (from small team leads to project/program managers), most trainers focus on various managerial competencies, such as goal setting, planning, effective communication, etc., and on general concepts such as
[207] Trust in the Team: Myths
In the second part ouf our series on trust in teams we take a look at some of the myths associated with this concept.
[186] Strategies to Close Cross-Cultural Gaps
The Internet seems to be the perfect channel for finding business opportunities and connecting people and ideas across the world, but accessing it won’t guarantee you the massive results you dreamed of. According to the International Labor
[187] Get your IIBA certification with Luxoft Training
Luxoft Training has received the status of Endorsed Education Provider (EEP) by the International Institute of Business Analysis.
[189] Demystifying the Java language
Programming has always been a challenging field where those who want to stay at the top of their game have to be up to date with the latest innovations and trends in the industry. Because the best work is always done by those who continuous
[191] Weapons of Math Destruction
We live in a time where technology is progressing at an outstanding pace. High tech and Big Data increasingly influence our daily life. But is this influence always positive? Are new technologies making our world better, more comfortable to
[192] One Tip to Make a Meeting Effective
This post describes an exercise that can be used by participants in meetings in order to make them more effective.
[193] Building Coaching Cultures
As Coaching is a development tool that lies at the opposite end of the spectrum to command and control, Coaching culture is an organizational development model that provides the structure that defines how the organization's members can best
[194] Building Coaching Cultures. Part 2
In our first article we looked at some key ideas regarding coaching. Now when building a Coaching Culture, there will be certain selling points to consider. Let’s take a look at them.
[195] The most popular IT&C trainings in 2017
Interested in finding out which IT&C skills were most sought after last year? Well one of the best ways to find out is to look at the most popular courses requested by our clients.
[171] The New IIBA Certification System
A new business analyst certification system of the International Institute of Business Analysis became effective on September 30, 2016 (IIBA, International Institute of Business Analysis). In this article I would like to give an overview of
[172] Agile Life Planning: Defining Tasks to Achieve Goals
We’ve already discussed in a previous article how you can make up a list of your goals and why it is necessary. Now let us see how you can further handle that list. The first thing we have to consider is that we can’t just start working in
[173] Agile Life Planning: Defining Tasks to Achieve Goals Part 2
In the first part of our article we talked about goals and how to divide them based on whether we want an eventual outcome or a permanent result or effect. Now we will look at goal decomposition.
[174] Time to upgrade at Internet & Mobile World
Every year Bucharest plays host to one of the most important IT&C events in Eastern Europe. Internet & Mobile World aims to build an important framework in Romanian industry for learning, networking and new business generation that
[176] The Art of Crafting Architectural Diagrams. Guidelines
In our first article we looked at how we can identify some of the challenges that arise when creating architectural diagrams – from color to mixing runtime and static elements to diagrams that might be too cluttered. Now let’s look at the g
[178] Agile Life Planning: Updating your Backlog of Personal Goals and Objectives
In our previous articles about Agile Life Planning we talked about how to determine a set of life goals, and make a list of objectives and steps to achieve them. This article deals with the next stage of Agile Life Planning. Its purpose is
[179] Agile Life Planning: Updating your Backlog of Personal Goals and Objectives – part 2
In the first part of our article we looked at what a backlog is and how we can apply grooming to it in order to make sure that our goals always stay relevant. Let’s continue our discussion on this subject.
[180] The Seven Deadly Sins of Making Presentations
I often deal with various presentations, both as a consultant helping to prepare them as well as a member of the audience. And I have come to the conclusion that the ability to prepare and deliver presentations does not depend on your posit
[181] The Seven Deadly Sins of Making Presentations. Part 2.
In the first part of our article we looked at the first three deadly sins of a presentation: not defining a goal, looking at your presentation as a PPT document and lack of structure in your presentation. Let’s now look at the last four.
[182] Spring JDBC Development – A Practical Approach
The general architecture of an application includes a few layers, as presented into the picture below:
[183] Architecture, refactoring or what’s really important
In the life cycle of every project there is a moment when the question of refactoring arises. Engineers want something new, fashionable, and interesting to appear in the project. The business needs to get a new functionality faster and fast
[157] Dynamic Systems Development Method
After a long pause I would like to share an approach that we use for fast MVP design or at the start of a new project for customers willing to speed up their business with accurate, seamless and continuous innovations using programmable aut
[161] Reflections on the Technology Career Matrix and Its Pitfalls
This article is a reflection on our technical career path and the way we gradually evolve, describing some mistakes we make when we move up in our career from a developer position to a technical or team leader role, and then further to a pr
[162] Basel accords
The subject of financial market regulation has never been the type of subject which investors like, whether they are institutional or private.
[166] Participants and "customers" in the testing process
In this article, let’s consider who could be the potential stakeholders and consumers of testing services. To do that, we need to answer the following questions:
[168] The Agile Testing Manifesto. Part 2
In this article we will continue our analysis of the Testing Manifesto written by Samantha Laing and Karen Greaves with the next principle:
[169] Agile Life Planning: Managing Personal Goals with Agile
Agile is not only a catchword and or just a set of software development principles. I believe that agile development methods, among other things, provide a wide range of tools and excellent capabilities for managing your personal goals, per
[170] Agile Life Planning: Defining Goals
This article goes into details of the first stage of Agile Life Planning – making a list of high-level life goals. We shall, step by step, consider how to define and put your aspirations, dreams and ideas on paper and then transform them i
[141] 7 Principles of Testing - Part 1
The 7 principles of testing have often been discussed, although rather briefly in most cases. The remarkable book by Dorothy Graham et al. explains these fundamental principles in great detail.
[142] 7 Principles of Testing - Part 2
In our first article we talked about the first and second principle of software testing - Testing shows presence of defects and exhaustive testing is impossible. We will now talk about principle three and four.
[143] Instruments and financial markets - part 4
In our last article we looked at all the important details related to futures contracts. In this article we will focus on options contracts, the second major type of derivatives.
[144] 7 Principles of Testing. Part 3
In this article we will tackle the last three principles of testing.
[145] The YAGNI Principle
Do OCP and DIP (of SOLID) violate the YAGNI principle? Let’s analyze this particular question in more detail.