Akka 2.3.0 Major Release

Great to see the next version of Akka released that includes the following key features:

• Akka Persistence
• Java 8 support
• Cluster improvements
• Activator Templates

Cool take aways:

Akka Persistence also supports event sourcing

We have something brewing which will be more than just a replacement for Pipelines: inspired by RxJava we are working on implementing Reactive Streams for Akka which will allow declarative transformation of streaming data of all kinds, with proper handling of back-pressure and of course fully typed.

Sharding of actors in a cluster. The typical use case for this feature is when you have many stateful actors that together consume more resources (e.g. memory) than fit on one machine. You need to distribute them across several nodes in the cluster and you want to be able to interact with them using their logical identifier, but without having to care about their physical location in the cluster, which might also change over time. It could for example be actors representing Aggregate Roots in Domain-Driven Design terminology.

As blogged about before, the activator templates are brilliant for quick starts to projects.  Akka persistence is welcomed.

Akka Influence 2

Pigeon Framework now has a new name; Akka.NET.  Most excellent

Akka Influence

Thanks to a colleague for pointing me at the following:

• Socko – An embedded Scala web server powered by Netty networking and Akka processing
• akka.js – akka actors for JavaScript

Correlating Estimation to Quality

Slide 24 of The #NoEstimates Debate is worth a read.

IBOR Flavors

Not sure how the IBOR Working Group is getting on with regards to settling on the definition of IBOR and specification, but if your interested in finding out a little more detail on OMS’s as per their input into IBOR, have a read of Global Electronic Trading’s “The buy-side OMS, an appreciation part one…”

Mobile-first Responsive Design

Responsive design in many ways has headed down a bad road due to some of the cons highlighted in this article.

Mobile-first responsive design creating an interface that addresses the constraints of mobile (small screen, low bandwidth, etc), then progressively enhances the experience to take advantage of available screen space, features, and more.

There is no free lunch!

Story Estimation – Moving on from Planning Poker

Planning Poker in some cases can feel like a death spiral – especially when the backlog is long.  Although old, its worth recalling the InfoQ article, “Are There Better Estimation Techniques for Experienced Teams?”.  Further, again old, but worth a read, Magic Estimation, and more recent, Blink Estimation.

Neil offers food for thought, “Contract Negotiation and the Old Banger”, specifically around software contracts, and agile contracts.

Do not fix time based on an estimate of cost because that inherently means you are agreeing to up-front scope detail that will likely bite you on the arse later and restrict the customer’s ability to request changes (and yours to welcome them) for their competitive advantage