Microsoft Regional Director | Scrum Master | Speakerhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2026/08/02/adamcogan-com-goes-tinacms/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2026/08/02/adamcogan-com-goes-tinacms/Hark migrated adamcogan.com from WordPress to TinaCMS in one weekend, using Claude Code and Playwright MCP. All 183 posts kept their original web addresses, going back to 2002. This post was written on the live site, in the new editor, to prove it works.Sun, 02 Aug 2026 14:04:17 GMTgeneraltinacmsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2026/07/29/ssws-homepage-receives-a-2026-facelift/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2026/07/29/ssws-homepage-receives-a-2026-facelift/SSW’s new homepage is live after a UX and UI redesign focused on clarity, trust and conversion. See how comparative research, stronger hierarchy and progressively introduced proof turned a crowded homepage into a deliberate customer journey.Wed, 29 Jul 2026 13:34:18 GMTgeneralssw-projectsuser-experienceAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2026/04/01/military-road-pedestrian-overpass-project/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2026/04/01/military-road-pedestrian-overpass-project/(Copy from North Sydney Council portal) MEDIA RELEASEFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASENorth Sydney Council Approves Critical Safety Link: Military Road Pedestrian Overpass ProjectNEUTRAL BAY, NSW – North Sydney Council has formally approved the development of the Military Road Strategic Pedestrian Link, a $38.2Wed, 01 Apr 2026 21:22:02 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2026/02/10/migrating-ssw-rules/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2026/02/10/migrating-ssw-rules/We rebuilt our Rules editing experience so updates are fast, safe, and painless, no more unreliable saves or 20-minute deploys. Now changes go live in ~30 seconds, with review-friendly workflows that keep quality high.Tue, 10 Feb 2026 21:53:50 GMTgeneralssw-projectsssw-rulesAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2026/01/19/adams-2025-year-in-review/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2026/01/19/adams-2025-year-in-review/For us Aussies, December ended in a way that changed the tone of the whole year. The Bondi Beach mass shooting targeted a Jewish celebration and killed 15 people. This one was close to home (literally), as I live a couple of beaches down from Bondi and work with some Jewish team members at SSW.Mon, 19 Jan 2026 22:08:06 GMTaigeneralssw-projectsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2025/12/05/handle-duplicate-github-issues/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2025/12/05/handle-duplicate-github-issues/I love feedback. When you run a popular app or open source project like TinaCMS, duplicate issues are a good problem to have – it means people care enough to tell you about bugs or when they have good ideas. Teams I see at other companies see duplicates as noise, something to be swept awayFri, 05 Dec 2025 21:55:00 GMTaigeneralgithubAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2025/11/17/my-top-3-ai-image-generators/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2025/11/17/my-top-3-ai-image-generators/Every month, a new AI image generation model drops, and the internet declares, “design is over.” It isn’t. At SSW, our designers continue to ship plenty of brand assets (not limited to just SSW, TinaCMS and YakShaver), faster than usual, because they’re treating AI like a junior assistant. An AssistMon, 17 Nov 2025 21:59:27 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2025/10/13/openai-updates-that-might-change-how-you-build-software/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2025/10/13/openai-updates-that-might-change-how-you-build-software/OpenAI just hosted their “DevDay 2025” and as usual, it’s a big update. They dropped heaps of things that are going to change the way we build software, but I’d like to focus on 2, which really blew my mind: AgentKit and Apps in ChatGPT. #1 AgentKit Agent SDK The new Agents SDK, currently inMon, 13 Oct 2025 16:26:22 GMTaichatgptgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2025/09/15/mcp-as-your-integration-layer/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2025/09/15/mcp-as-your-integration-layer/While working with teams, I’ve learnt that the best way to unlock innovation is to bring everyone together and work on a problem. We do this a few times a year by running Rules to Better Brainstorming Days. I love seeing developers step away from client work to share real pains and ideas, because thMon, 15 Sep 2025 22:52:01 GMTaigeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2025/08/12/net-aspire-cli-magic-and-developer-friendly-dashboards/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2025/08/12/net-aspire-cli-magic-and-developer-friendly-dashboards/2 years ago, back in December of 2023, I blogged about the first release of .NET Aspire and how it promised to simplify distributed application development. Since then, the Microsoft team has been busy, releasing new features every few months, and now it’s matured a lot. I’m certain devs are going tTue, 12 Aug 2025 20:49:40 GMTnetgeneralmicrosoft-aspireAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2025/07/08/how-to-choose-the-right-software-architecture/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2025/07/08/how-to-choose-the-right-software-architecture/As software devs, one of the most important things we do on a greenfield project is to choose the right software architecture. It is called architecture when it’s hard to change. ✅ Get it right, and your project becomes maintainable, scalable, and a pleasure to develop. ❌ Get it wrong, and you noticTue, 08 Jul 2025 18:29:36 GMTnetgeneralssw-onion-architectureAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2025/06/11/developers-guide-to-ai-agents/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2025/06/11/developers-guide-to-ai-agents/AI agents are shaking things up in our beloved software development industry. AI is taking us way beyond the usual automation we’re used to. Instead of just following predefined steps, these agents can actually sense their environment, plan out their actions, and cleverly use the tools at their dispWed, 11 Jun 2025 21:10:50 GMTaigeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2025/05/14/ai-your-next-bug-report/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2025/05/14/ai-your-next-bug-report/Back when Scott Hanselman was a Microsoft RD, we got into a long conversation about ‘Shaving the Yak’. Yak shaving is when you get sidetracked by a series of small tasks that you spot along the way while trying to accomplish your main goal. I think most developers find it easy to fall down rabbitWed, 14 May 2025 18:08:25 GMTaigeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2025/04/16/introducing-easyleave/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2025/04/16/introducing-easyleave/I’m thrilled to share that we’ve just launched EasyLeave — a brand new feature in SSW TimePro that makes managing leave a breeze. People don’t want many steps to take their leave. In a perfect world, with a few clicks it’s done and in the right people’s calendars and their timesheets are also done. Wed, 16 Apr 2025 08:36:22 GMTgeneralssw-timeproAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2025/04/14/from-google-to-ai/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2025/04/14/from-google-to-ai/Over the last 2 decades, SEO has revolved around one question: “How do I rank higher on Google?” Before Google was popular, I was briefly the No. #1 search for Google ranking because I’d written a page “Rules to Better Google Ranking”. After years of Google dominating information search, new AI toolMon, 14 Apr 2025 17:08:36 GMTaichatgptgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2025/03/17/why-rules-are-cool/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2025/03/17/why-rules-are-cool/It’s no secret within SSW that I’m proud of my biggest open-source project, the “SSW Rules.” I think there’s several pillars that have allowed SSW to build enterprise solutions for 25+ years, including luck, and one of those pillars is the SSW Rules. 🗝️ Back in the early days of SSW, I needed a wayMon, 17 Mar 2025 21:44:54 GMTgeneralssw-projectsssw-rulesAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2025/02/10/cursor-coding-wingman/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2025/02/10/cursor-coding-wingman/The dev world is changing rapidly, with Artificial Intelligence (AI) adding a lot of pressure to adapt. We’re moving beyond the days of manually typing every line of code. In my December blog, I spoke about devs adopting tools like GitHub Copilot. I chatted with the SSW developers and saw the other Mon, 10 Feb 2025 19:28:42 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2025/01/14/adams-2024-year-in-review/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2025/01/14/adams-2024-year-in-review/It’s time to discuss 2024’s highs and lows. Definitely, the high was the successful acquisition of TinaCMS – it is a product we’ve used and loved for a while and it was great fun to work with their team and get to travel to plenty of conferences to promote it. I have mixed feelings aboutTue, 14 Jan 2025 22:16:26 GMTfamilygeneralssw-projectstina-cmsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2024/12/12/adoption-github-copilot/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2024/12/12/adoption-github-copilot/It’s been almost 2 years since I first blogged about GitHub Copilot and how I wondered how much it would change the enterprise development space. Given the huge adoption and advancement of other AI tools in the workforce, I thought it would be interesting to review my initial thoughts on the tool anThu, 12 Dec 2024 09:23:36 GMTnetaigeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2024/11/19/wordpress-drama/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2024/11/19/wordpress-drama/Read what happened with WordPress and why you should consider moving to a headless CMS where your data is stored in GitHub and remains yours!Tue, 19 Nov 2024 20:44:57 GMTgeneralgithubtina-cmsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2024/10/09/essential-role-of-architectural-decision-records/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2024/10/09/essential-role-of-architectural-decision-records/Architectural Decision Records (ADRs) are crucial for documenting key decisions in software projects, preventing miscommunication, and ensuring transparency. By using ADRs, teams can avoid repeating mistakes, foster collaboration, and provide valuable historical context for future developers.Wed, 09 Oct 2024 19:53:53 GMTnetdocumentationgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2024/08/27/7-important-updates-to-tinacms-2-0/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2024/08/27/7-important-updates-to-tinacms-2-0/See the latest updates from TinaCMS 2.0, including some great new features like more flexibility on your choice of package manager, new integrations and moreTue, 27 Aug 2024 17:29:13 GMTgeneraltina-cmsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2024/08/13/modernize-enterprise-app/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2024/08/13/modernize-enterprise-app/The current software development challenge for Microsoft developers, is getting large .NET projects into .NET 8 (soon to be .NET 9). Modernizing the codebase is crucial as developers need efficient code, maintainable code and a scalable app. At SSW we have been on this migration journey for a bunch Tue, 13 Aug 2024 20:46:22 GMTnetnet8-migrationgeneralssw-projectsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2024/07/10/showcasing-tinacms/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2024/07/10/showcasing-tinacms/The TinaCMS team landed in Olso Norway to introduce the best headless CMS to NDC Oslo attendees, read on to take a look a the fun and find out moreWed, 10 Jul 2024 15:11:45 GMTaichatgptgeneraltina-cmsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2024/06/11/up-and-running-with-tinacms/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2024/06/11/up-and-running-with-tinacms/Last month I announced that SSW had purchased 🦙TinaCMS, the world’s leading CMS on GitHub (check out my video below). We’ve been using Tina for years. We’ve built hundreds of CMS solutions on everything from enterprise ones like Contentful, Sanity, and Sitecore… to simple ones like WordPress and WiTue, 11 Jun 2024 16:55:51 GMTtina-cmsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2024/05/15/ssw-purchases-tinacms/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2024/05/15/ssw-purchases-tinacms/I’m excited to share that we have acquired TinaCMS – every website should use GitHub with Markdown. Tina also comes with a rocking Markdown editor and of course, the best version control system on the market, bar none. Find out more!Wed, 15 May 2024 08:04:15 GMTgeneralgithubtina-cmsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2024/05/09/ssw-clean-architecture-template/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2024/05/09/ssw-clean-architecture-template/Get your next project up and running really quickly using the SSW Clean Architecture Template!Thu, 09 May 2024 04:57:55 GMTnetnet-corearchitectureAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2024/04/13/ai-saved-my-life/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2024/04/13/ai-saved-my-life/📽️ Video: Learn how AI is lending a helping hand to Dermatologists in the fight against skin cancers and melanomaSat, 13 Apr 2024 00:50:27 GMTaifamilygeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2024/03/19/dotnet-8-migrations-made-easy/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2024/03/19/dotnet-8-migrations-made-easy/Over the last 12 months, I’ve been involved in several large .NET 8 Migrations. Diving into .NET 8 has been quite the journey and an amazing experience. Migrating to .NET 8 brings better cross-platform compatibility (welcome Macbooks for development and Linux for deployment) and improved performanceTue, 19 Mar 2024 11:07:08 GMTnetnet-coressw-projectsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2024/02/23/ndc-sydney-2024/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2024/02/23/ndc-sydney-2024/NDC Sydney 2024, had a lot of huge speakers. There were some Microsoft heavy hitters in attendance including Scott Hanselman, Damien Edwards, and David Fowler, as well as international rockstars like Keynote speaker David Whitney and .NET Rocks presenter Richard Campbell and more. There were a lot oFri, 23 Feb 2024 12:27:22 GMTnetgeneralndc-sydneyssw-tvAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2024/01/04/adams-2023-year-in-review/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2024/01/04/adams-2023-year-in-review/As 2023 comes to a close, Adam Cogan looks back on the year that was and goes through his highlightsThu, 04 Jan 2024 01:52:25 GMTfamilygeneralssw-projectsssw-tvAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2023/12/15/dot-net-aspire/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2023/12/15/dot-net-aspire/.NET 8 brings a transformative evolution, emphasizing speed, security, and features. The highlight is .NET Aspire, revolutionizing microservices with streamlined orchestration, observability, resilience, and easy integration of cloud-native components. Find out how to use itFri, 15 Dec 2023 05:13:12 GMTnetgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2023/11/06/effective-feedback/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2023/11/06/effective-feedback/Timing and approach matter when giving unsolicited feedback. Learn the most effective and foolproof ways to deliver effective feedbackMon, 06 Nov 2023 08:32:59 GMTgeneralssw-rulesAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2023/10/16/gpt-powered-website-chatbots/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2023/10/16/gpt-powered-website-chatbots/Learn how to elevate your website with ChatGPT: A game-changer in chatbot tech for impressive user experiences. 🤖Mon, 16 Oct 2023 22:28:36 GMTaichatgptgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2023/09/10/ai-models-with-microsofts-semantic-kernel/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2023/09/10/ai-models-with-microsofts-semantic-kernel/Discover Microsoft’s game-changing AI SDK, Semantic Kernel. Revolutionize your software with ease of deployment, LLM integration, rich documentation, and AI orchestration.Sun, 10 Sep 2023 01:17:07 GMTaigeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2023/08/14/solving-business-puzzles-with-tech/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2023/08/14/solving-business-puzzles-with-tech/Find out how to utilize the smart people in your company to reduce their pain and create new ideasMon, 14 Aug 2023 00:57:17 GMTaiazurechatgptgeneralgithubssw-projectsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2023/07/17/microsoft-fabric-unifying-your-data-analytics/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2023/07/17/microsoft-fabric-unifying-your-data-analytics/Learn more about how you can use Microsoft Fabric to have an all-in-one data analytics solutionMon, 17 Jul 2023 10:49:02 GMTaidata-engineeringAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2023/06/19/ndc-oslo-chatgpt-open-ai-api/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2023/06/19/ndc-oslo-chatgpt-open-ai-api/Introducing ChatGPT, and Open AI to Norway at NDC, and showing off the newly released Microsoft FabricMon, 19 Jun 2023 13:48:55 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2023/05/12/chatgpt-ssw-cheat-sheet/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2023/05/12/chatgpt-ssw-cheat-sheet/ChatGPT is a powerful tool that can help businesses and professionals in the tech industry automate tasks, improve communication, and generate valuable insights from data. See the SSW ChatGPT cheat sheet to help maximize AI interactions and spark new ideas. It highlights ways to use ChatGPT effectivFri, 12 May 2023 08:55:07 GMTaichatgptgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2023/04/14/introducing-ssw-cultural-exchange/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2023/04/14/introducing-ssw-cultural-exchange/Sometimes the best ideas can come from the most unexpected of places. At SSW, we’re passionate about creating a culture of continuous learning and personal growth. That’s why I’m excited to announce our new Cultural Exchange Program, which will allow our employees to work and live in one of our inteFri, 14 Apr 2023 12:22:09 GMTfamilygeneralssw-chinaAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2023/03/09/managing-your-azure-costs/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2023/03/09/managing-your-azure-costs/Do you want to control your Azure Costs? Find out how to both monitor your spend, as well as avoiding unexpected spend blow outsThu, 09 Mar 2023 11:14:42 GMTazuregeneralssw-rulesAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2023/02/28/5-key-video-production-editing-terms/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2023/02/28/5-key-video-production-editing-terms/Ready to level-up your video production? Get familiar with key editing terms like exposure, transitions & more with this guide.Tue, 28 Feb 2023 11:58:36 GMTgeneralssw-rulesssw-tvAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2023/01/17/adams-2022-a-year-in-review/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2023/01/17/adams-2022-a-year-in-review/2022 has been a breath of fresh air. Finally moving out of the shadow of COVID, life was better as we were able to meet in person again. Finally, we saw the return of our in-person events and awesome developer conferences. For me, 2022 was about reconnecting with people, building great software, andTue, 17 Jan 2023 11:43:57 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2022/12/21/github-copilot-a-developers-friend-or-foe/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2022/12/21/github-copilot-a-developers-friend-or-foe/Tooling for development has come a long way in the past 20 years. First, we had IntelliSense, then we had Resharper… now we have GitHub Copilot. The next frontier has arrived in the form of an AI pair programmer. At the flick of a switch, you have a computer (well, a cloud full of computers)Wed, 21 Dec 2022 13:18:58 GMTgithubAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2022/11/11/thats-a-wrap-ndc-sydney-ssw-retreat-brainstorming-day-2022/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2022/11/11/thats-a-wrap-ndc-sydney-ssw-retreat-brainstorming-day-2022/We’ve had some huge events this year, but the biggest one was last weekend. I decided to combine NDC Sydney, an awesome developer conference, with the SSW Sydney and Newcastle Retreat & Brainstorming. It was a lot all at once! NDC Sydney 2022 We had a great time earlier this year, at NDC Melbourne …Fri, 11 Nov 2022 11:23:39 GMTgeneralssw-getawayAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2022/10/25/how-ai-can-help-you-kickstart-your-blog/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2022/10/25/how-ai-can-help-you-kickstart-your-blog/AI writers are a great way to get started writing your blog. Read about my experience about some of the tools I’ve usedTue, 25 Oct 2022 01:14:24 GMTaigeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2022/09/20/user-journey-mapping/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2022/09/20/user-journey-mapping/User journey mapping is a powerful way to uncover insights about your users’ behavior and preferences. It helps you create more engaging content and design better experiences for your users.Tue, 20 Sep 2022 23:37:41 GMTcustomer-experiencegeneraluser-experienceAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2022/08/16/how-to-avoid-being-electrocuted/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2022/08/16/how-to-avoid-being-electrocuted/This is Simba, my daughter Ruby’s reward for smashing her HSC results – over 95%, and that was during lockdown with no teachers and plenty of isolation. I’ve instructed my wife to stop making bets with Ruby. It’s awesome seeing her so happy, they are best buddies. 💓 You may recognize his name from Tue, 16 Aug 2022 01:30:58 GMTfamilygeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2022/07/11/ndc-conference-melbourne-were-back-in-person/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2022/07/11/ndc-conference-melbourne-were-back-in-person/NDC Melbourne was awesome! NDC is one of my favorite conferences in the world, and while I blogged that I enjoyed catching up online over the last two years, in retrospect, I wouldn’t want to do it again. Nothing beats seeing everyone in-person and watching live talks. Here are my top 4 things: #1 –Mon, 11 Jul 2022 12:38:02 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2022/06/09/clean-low-code/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2022/06/09/clean-low-code/Find out the best way to use Power Automate, and how to keep your low code clean and maintainable.Thu, 09 Jun 2022 12:49:19 GMTgeneralpower-automateAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2022/05/10/tech-world-on-tiktok-is-it-for-you/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2022/05/10/tech-world-on-tiktok-is-it-for-you/Microsoft Regional Director & MVP Adam Cogan walks your through why you should use TikTok as a techie to promote yourself and your business, and the best way to do it.Tue, 10 May 2022 13:08:45 GMTaccessibilitygeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2022/04/10/better-security-10-tips-for-ceos-and-sysadmins/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2022/04/10/better-security-10-tips-for-ceos-and-sysadmins/Get 10 tips from Adam Cogan on how to make your business less inviting to Cyber threats like Ransomware attacks. He breaks it down for CEO’s and SysAdmins.Sun, 10 Apr 2022 12:07:52 GMTgeneralsecurityAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2022/03/28/tech-debt-do-you-know-the-best-way-to-handle-it/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2022/03/28/tech-debt-do-you-know-the-best-way-to-handle-it/I did a video for SSW TV with Solution Architect, Matt Goldman, to demonstrate the best practices for handling tech debt. Watch it below for some cool tips! For more, check out the rules here: https://rules.ssw.com.au/technical-debt https://www.ssw.com.au/rules/refactor-your-code-and-keep-methods-shMon, 28 Mar 2022 02:40:49 GMTgeneralssw-projectsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2022/03/07/helping-each-other-in-the-workplace/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2022/03/07/helping-each-other-in-the-workplace/Last month I spoke to you all about Speaking up about Workplace Unfairness… It’s a super important topic for employee wellbeing, and I thought a good follow-up would be to share some tips. We’ve all experienced unfairness, whether it be in the workplace, or in our personal lives. Let’s first look atMon, 07 Mar 2022 09:00:00 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2022/02/08/speaking-up-about-unfairness/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2022/02/08/speaking-up-about-unfairness/Would you speak up at work if something happened to you at work that you thought was unfair? Adam Cogan explores how to deal with fairness in the workplace, communication and misunderstandingsTue, 08 Feb 2022 11:15:31 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2022/01/12/adams-2021-year-in-review/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2022/01/12/adams-2021-year-in-review/Read Adam Cogan’s highlights of running SSW in 2021, a tech company based in Australia.Wed, 12 Jan 2022 02:10:47 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2021/12/06/5-tips-for-github-issues-projects/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2021/12/06/5-tips-for-github-issues-projects/Learn how you can run your development projects more effectively using Github. Adam will show you how to use GitHub Issues and Projects to get the most out of Scrum.Mon, 06 Dec 2021 08:06:09 GMTgeneralgithubscrumAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2021/11/05/bdd-and-automated-testing/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2021/11/05/bdd-and-automated-testing/With BDD (Behavioural-Driven Development) and Gherkin syntax you can write unit test scenarios in plain text using a few key words (Given, When, Then). Plain text makes the test scenarios easy to understand, even for non-techies.Fri, 05 Nov 2021 01:50:24 GMTautomated-testinggeneralssw-rulesAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2021/10/14/7-tips-for-handling-errors/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2021/10/14/7-tips-for-handling-errors/Error handling doesn’t need to be a nightmare. Follow these 7 tips to manage your errors, identify bugs & keep your projects healthy.Thu, 14 Oct 2021 05:49:52 GMTnet-corecustomer-experiencegeneralssw-rulesAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2021/09/10/going-handsfree-in-office-365-you-should-using-dictate/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2021/09/10/going-handsfree-in-office-365-you-should-using-dictate/Microsoft has its own Siri in Office 365 More and more of us are using Siri and Google Assistant, but a very small percentage are taking advantage of the office feature that allows you to draft an email by talking. First some background Over the years I’ve been lucky enough to be in meetings withFri, 10 Sep 2021 10:17:28 GMTaccessibilitygeneraloffice-365Adam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2021/08/12/the-power-of-multi-select-multiple-options-on-forms/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2021/08/12/the-power-of-multi-select-multiple-options-on-forms/Ever used a form you wish had multiselect? It’s frustrating when you have to choose, knowing there was a better option in combination. Find out how using Multiselect in Dynamics 365 will produce better dataThu, 12 Aug 2021 05:21:59 GMTarchitecturecrmgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2021/07/13/video-killed-the-bibliophile-video-vs-books/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2021/07/13/video-killed-the-bibliophile-video-vs-books/Book lovers, aka bibliophiles, are 6 feet under…. If you want to learn something new, most people just Google it, others watch a video. I have a fond history with books, and they helped me build SSW. The beginning of SSW Rules When I first started SSW I read a business book that helped meTue, 13 Jul 2021 09:16:36 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2021/06/09/keeping-secrets-how-to-make-your-code-more-secure/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2021/06/09/keeping-secrets-how-to-make-your-code-more-secure/Security vulnerabilities involving connection strings can arise based on the type of authentication used, how connection strings are persisted in memory, and the techniques used to construct them at run time. Find out how to minimise the risk of exposing your secrets via code.Wed, 09 Jun 2021 10:47:36 GMTazuregeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2021/05/18/8-important-changes-to-the-scrum-guide-for-2021/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2021/05/18/8-important-changes-to-the-scrum-guide-for-2021/There has been a lot of important changes to the Scrum Guide. Find out what they are from Australia’s first Scrum Master.Tue, 18 May 2021 11:49:49 GMTgeneralscrumAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2021/04/19/powering-a-business-with-low-code/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2021/04/19/powering-a-business-with-low-code/Adam Cogan walks you through his experience with Power Apps. He’ll cover the increase in demand, the usefulness, when to use a Power App and real-world applications.Mon, 19 Apr 2021 08:47:28 GMTgeneralpower-appsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2021/03/18/ssw-newcastle-now-open-we-are-coding-by-the-sea/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2021/03/18/ssw-newcastle-now-open-we-are-coding-by-the-sea/This is a short summary of our opening event for SSW NewcastleThu, 18 Mar 2021 04:59:11 GMTgeneralssw-partyAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2021/02/15/technical-debt-can-you-pay-it-back/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2021/02/15/technical-debt-can-you-pay-it-back/In a perfect world, development projects would be: Deployed often Developed using Agile practices, for example following Scrum Using mainstream technologies and libraries Managed & developed using best practices – the reason I started rules.ssw.com.au Run at a sustainable cadence with a team of at lMon, 15 Feb 2021 11:23:26 GMTgeneralnon-ssw-projectsssw-projectsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2021/01/19/reflecting-on-2020-embracing-change/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2021/01/19/reflecting-on-2020-embracing-change/With so much of our time already dominated by Coronavirus, I didn’t want my 2020 year in review to be just about the changes it has wrought on the world. I know in Australia we have all experienced the upheaval at work, the pain of the severe lockdowns, social isolation, and more importantly, the feTue, 19 Jan 2021 11:14:41 GMTgeneralndc-sydneyssw-projectsssw-tvtrainingAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2020/12/04/gitbook-document-everything/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2020/12/04/gitbook-document-everything/I think it’s no secret that developers hate paperwork. We like solving complex problems and exploring new frameworks and libraries. We like writing documentation about as much as we like instant coffee… At SSW we’ve enjoyed automating everything from the 100 steps that happen for a new hire, to the Fri, 04 Dec 2020 03:53:52 GMTdocumentationebookgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2020/11/05/ndc-2020-smashing-the-virtual-barrier/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2020/11/05/ndc-2020-smashing-the-virtual-barrier/The world has changed With social distancing our new norm, and working from home, people have had to learn new ways to connect. Sadly for now large events are a thing of the past. For 25 years I have travelled to America for conferences without missing a year, until Coronavirus hit. I also travelledThu, 05 Nov 2020 04:57:38 GMTdigital-platformsgeneralinterviewndc-sydneyssw-tvAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2020/10/07/8-tips-to-better-architecture-diagrams/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2020/10/07/8-tips-to-better-architecture-diagrams/A good architecture diagram (aka a cloud architecture diagram or system architecture diagram) gives a great overview of your project. It lets you see at a glance what the overall structure of the solution is. This is useful for gaining an understanding of how the system fits together, how it flows, Wed, 07 Oct 2020 01:44:29 GMTarchitecturenon-ssw-projectsssw-projectsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2020/09/04/google-search-australia-no-longer-feeling-lucky/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2020/09/04/google-search-australia-no-longer-feeling-lucky/Aussies using Google have noticed they are caught in the middle of a recent conflict between Google, and the Australian Government over the newly proposed News Media Bargaining Code. Aussies have a dependency on Google 93% of our online experiences begin with search engines. According to The AustralFri, 04 Sep 2020 08:12:24 GMTdigital-platformsgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2020/08/12/pull-request-approved-using-github-as-a-cms/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2020/08/12/pull-request-approved-using-github-as-a-cms/Content Management Systems like WordPress, are often a popular choice when it comes to managing content, but have you ever considered using GitHub for the back-end? At SSW we are fans of GitHub, not just for source code but for web content too. I’ve discussed how we recently migrated our staff profiWed, 12 Aug 2020 23:51:12 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2020/07/20/i-am-on-cloud-9-ssw-has-migrated-to-dynamics-365-sales-cloud-version-9/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2020/07/20/i-am-on-cloud-9-ssw-has-migrated-to-dynamics-365-sales-cloud-version-9/After months of planning, data trimming and delays (not helped by COVID-19!), I am happy to say that SSW has finally migrated our Dynamics from on-premises to the cloud. It has been well-received by all and the UX is much nicer. In addition, this is not the end of the journey – it is theMon, 20 Jul 2020 07:19:45 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2020/06/16/connecting-through-video-how-to-engage-customers/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2020/06/16/connecting-through-video-how-to-engage-customers/Last month I talked about how easy it is to work from home, but to work from home effectively is hard. Likewise, making a video can be easy, but *really connecting* with your audience via video is hard. This is especially true for business videos. There is so much content that it is easy for people Tue, 16 Jun 2020 08:42:36 GMTgeneralssw-tvAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2020/05/13/working-from-home-romance-or-drama/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2020/05/13/working-from-home-romance-or-drama/Wow. Hasn’t this been the world’s largest ‘working from home’ experiment? Developers working remotely or from home were quite common in our software industry even before the Covid-19 lockdown. At SSW, I’ve always been reluctant to do more than minimal work from home, for a few reasons; I believe co-Wed, 13 May 2020 09:03:52 GMTfamilygeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2020/03/22/coronavirus-what-we-are-doing-at-ssw/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2020/03/22/coronavirus-what-we-are-doing-at-ssw/This weekend I saw Coogee Beach packed to the rafters with parties. I also saw that The Oaks Hotel in Neutral Bay and The Coogee Bay Hotel were full of people who are either oblivious or stupid. Note: Sadly, the Australian numbers are now much worse than below explained by this .gif: 2 weeks agoSun, 22 Mar 2020 12:52:32 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2020/03/09/technology-in-a-pandemic-helping-control-coronavirus/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2020/03/09/technology-in-a-pandemic-helping-control-coronavirus/SSW China have been working closely with the District Government in China to develop an application that will help reduce the spread of Coronavirus. Split into two smaller apps, it has revolutionised reporting during this deadly outbreak. The Government called us during the Lunar New Year, and commiMon, 09 Mar 2020 12:39:50 GMTchinafygeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2020/02/10/introducing-ssw-people/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2020/02/10/introducing-ssw-people/About a year ago, during SSW’s annual retreat in Brisbane, we started to imagine what the world would look like if the SSW Rules site was easier to use. Therefore, we had to find an alternative to SharePoint’s content management features. The first tech we evaluated was an Angular application. Even Mon, 10 Feb 2020 12:16:38 GMTgeneralssw-projectsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2020/01/14/adams-2019-in-review/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2020/01/14/adams-2019-in-review/2019 ended in uncertainty for a lot of people across Australia. Our bush fire season started a lot earlier than usual, and this year the fires are insanely bigger, and burning more land than ever before. It’s been devastating, and there is no end in sight for some areas that have been affected. WhatTue, 14 Jan 2020 02:32:56 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2019/12/13/8-tips-to-strengthen-your-devops-project-knownoise/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2019/12/13/8-tips-to-strengthen-your-devops-project-knownoise/At SSW each year we are lucky to deliver a lot of cool projects. I want to call out one project that solved a complex business challenge, and was fun to deliver. It had the usual, modern web technologies and cloud, and the project really benefited from great DevOps practices. The lead developer was Fri, 13 Dec 2019 18:51:20 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2019/11/06/ssw-had-fun-at-ndc-gotta-catch-em-all/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2019/11/06/ssw-had-fun-at-ndc-gotta-catch-em-all/The NDC conference gets better and better every year. I look forward to it, and the SSW devs say it’s awesome. It’s located at the Hilton in Sydney’s CBD, and runs over 5 days. I attend a lot of conferences around the world and NDC is my favourite developer conference. The first 2 days areWed, 06 Nov 2019 00:15:07 GMTndc-sydneyAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2019/09/26/i-like-big-bots-and-i-cannot-lie/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2019/09/26/i-like-big-bots-and-i-cannot-lie/Bots used to be very expensive to build. Now with Microsoft and Google offering nice bot development platforms, businesses are building bots in days. At SSW we have built bots on both platforms and discovered their differences, worked out the pros and cons, and some best practices for developing on Thu, 26 Sep 2019 21:02:28 GMTaindc-sydneyAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2019/07/29/breast-improving-radiologists-ability-to-detect-breast-cancer/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2019/07/29/breast-improving-radiologists-ability-to-detect-breast-cancer/Cancer is very prevalent in my family. My mum has had breast cancer; she has 5 siblings – 4 out of the 5 got cancer too. It really runs down one side of my family. So, this topic is pretty important to me, especially having two beautiful girls myself. We do a lot of software projects atMon, 29 Jul 2019 22:49:19 GMTssw-projectsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2019/06/10/video-the-ssw-motorcycle-risky-attempt-to-move-a-big-motorbike-up-some-stairsit-seemed-like-a/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2019/06/10/video-the-ssw-motorcycle-risky-attempt-to-move-a-big-motorbike-up-some-stairsit-seemed-like-a/About 2 years ago, I had a very serious accident on my motor bike that put me in hospital and wrote off my bike. As I reported I recovered fine. It was a shiny black cruiser, a Honda VTX 1800C fat-boy motorcycle, – a loud gorgeous bike. Even though I hadn’t had a stack sinceMon, 10 Jun 2019 20:22:10 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2019/04/05/china-coming-to-a-town-near-you/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2019/04/05/china-coming-to-a-town-near-you/I’ve been interested in China for over 2 decades. I’ve always been impressed with the way the Chinese have developed their own digital eco-system following the introduction of the Great Firewall of China in 2009. Since that fateful year, 2009, China, in its own technosphere, has evolved into one of Fri, 05 Apr 2019 07:36:00 GMTchinafyAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2019/03/06/azure-devops-project-languages-technologies/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2019/03/06/azure-devops-project-languages-technologies/Say your project is basically a Vue.js, .NET Core 2.1, Azure Logic Apps and Azure AKS. I think it would be wonderful to see that straight away in the tags. Some NuGet packages are important. e.g. Entity Framework or Azure Table Storage. These tell you a bit about the project before you even have a lWed, 06 Mar 2019 00:00:30 GMTazureAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2019/02/06/5-lessons-in-leadership-from-a-reluctant-leader-david-neal/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2019/02/06/5-lessons-in-leadership-from-a-reluctant-leader-david-neal/After presenting “Leadership for the Reluctant Leader” at NDC Sydney, David Neal sat down with Adam Cogan to talk about leadership. This is what Adam learned.Wed, 06 Feb 2019 02:49:21 GMTinterviewAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2019/01/04/adams-2018-in-review/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2019/01/04/adams-2018-in-review/2018 was a whirlwind year and one that I’m very proud of. It’s fun to look back on and share with you all. This year SSW launched 2 new user groups, hit our highest utilisation rates for client bookings, and ran dozens of sold-out training courses around Australia. On a more personal level, I was luFri, 04 Jan 2019 06:19:23 GMTgeneraljavascript-frameworksssw-projectsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2018/12/05/luckin-coffee-vs-starbucks-a-luckin-success-in-china/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2018/12/05/luckin-coffee-vs-starbucks-a-luckin-success-in-china/There’s a new coffee shop chain in China, called Luckin Coffee, and it’s been fascinating to watch their rise in the local market. I know from my own observations that the Chinese in the big cities love their coffee. I’m aware the current stats on coffee consumption per nation says that the average Wed, 05 Dec 2018 22:33:31 GMTchinafyAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2018/11/07/weve-updated-our-rules-to-better-angular/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2018/11/07/weve-updated-our-rules-to-better-angular/Angular is everywhere. Angular devs are cool! Angular and React have been the 2 dominant front-end technologies for the last few years. We have been running our Angular Superpowers course that entire time, and I’m still amazed that every time we run the course, we sell out. It’s amazing because JavaWed, 07 Nov 2018 23:41:28 GMTangularssw-rulesAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2018/10/04/ndc-sydney-2018-was-awesome/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2018/10/04/ndc-sydney-2018-was-awesome/September has come and gone and NDC Sydney is over. SSW was a large part of this great conference, which is personally my favourite event of the year. Of course, I love going to NDC Oslo, but there’s nothing like having the Norwegians come to your home town. This was the 3rd annual Sydney event and Thu, 04 Oct 2018 05:40:57 GMTgeneralndc-sydneyAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2018/09/05/how-to-be-a-great-software-consultant/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2018/09/05/how-to-be-a-great-software-consultant/I’m often asked advice on what makes a good software consultant. Hang on a tick before I get to that. Software exists to solve problems and make our lives easier – but any software consultant can tell you that creating software can come with problems of its own. The 2 big ones are: Software isWed, 05 Sep 2018 05:07:08 GMTssw-rulesAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2018/08/01/skin-cancer-ouch/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2018/08/01/skin-cancer-ouch/Australia has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world – it’s our #1 most common type of cancer. According to the Australian Cancer Council, 2 in 3 Aussies will have been diagnosed with skin cancer by the time they’re 70. As a kid, a lot of my older relatives had skin cancers cutWed, 01 Aug 2018 02:07:43 GMTskin-cancerAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2018/07/06/new-employees-saying-hello-saying-goodbye/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2018/07/06/new-employees-saying-hello-saying-goodbye/I’ve come up with a list of “hello” and “goodbye” tips to help employees with the start and end of their journey with an employer. I believe that these tasks are simple for employees to follow and can minimise stress.Fri, 06 Jul 2018 07:46:54 GMTemploymentAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2018/06/07/9-knights-azure-services-get-started/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2018/06/07/9-knights-azure-services-get-started/Right now Microsoft lists more than 600 Azure services, and the volume of choice can feel overwhelming. To help you out, I’ve narrowed down a list of my top 9 Azure services you should be using:Thu, 07 Jun 2018 04:18:12 GMTazureAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2018/05/03/we-moved-our-sharepoint-intranet-to-the-cloud/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2018/05/03/we-moved-our-sharepoint-intranet-to-the-cloud/SharePoint Online is a mature product capable, and now that it leverages the O365 stack, there is no better platform to build an engaging intranet. We can migrate you from any version to SharePoint OnlineThu, 03 May 2018 03:25:43 GMTsharepointAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2018/04/06/farewell-brian-harry-father-microsoft-source-control/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2018/04/06/farewell-brian-harry-father-microsoft-source-control/Brian Harry has been integral to Microsoft for a very long time. He created VSS (Visual Source Safe) and was one of the core members who invented .NET. He then invented TFS and then moved to become one of Microsoft’s first cloud services for developers.Fri, 06 Apr 2018 04:58:37 GMTgeneralnon-ssw-projectsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2018/03/09/learn-the-4-steps-to-get-users-in-china/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2018/03/09/learn-the-4-steps-to-get-users-in-china/China represents a huge opportunity for Western businesses, with the world’s largest internet population (751 million users), rising incomes, rapidly changing demographics and spending habits, and the world’s largest online retail events. The opportunity to gain market share in China is exciting, buFri, 09 Mar 2018 03:53:08 GMTchinafyssw-chinaAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2018/03/01/aint-no-party-like-ssw-party-new-melbourne-brisbane-offices-open/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2018/03/01/aint-no-party-like-ssw-party-new-melbourne-brisbane-offices-open/The Melbourne and Brisbane offices are open! We had a great time in Melbourne and Brisbane, and I thank everyone who came.Thu, 01 Mar 2018 07:28:03 GMTssw-partyAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2018/02/07/hey-melbourne-brisbane-youre-invited-party/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2018/02/07/hey-melbourne-brisbane-youre-invited-party/What’s worse than moving offices and doing a reno? Doing 2 at the same time – which is what happened with SSW Melbourne and SSW Brisbane! The new spaces are so great but the effort was huge. I deserve a party! 🍺🎈🍺🎈 I’m delighted to announce that SSW is holding parties at SSW Melbourne andWed, 07 Feb 2018 01:21:23 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2018/01/11/adams-2017-review/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2018/01/11/adams-2017-review/2017 was a whopper. It was Trump’s first year as president, the year of the #metoo hashtag, and the year Australia (finally) legalised same-sex marriage. I think my wife will probably always remember it as the year I almost died on a motorbike. Overall, my highlights were: New office for the SSW MelThu, 11 Jan 2018 04:31:52 GMTnet-coregeneralmicrosoft-ignitendc-sydneyssw-chinauser-groupsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/12/14/introducing-ssw-chapel-melbourne-new-user-group/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/12/14/introducing-ssw-chapel-melbourne-new-user-group/It’s been almost 2 years since SSW first opened the Melbourne office. In that time, the team has almost doubled in size, we’ve run some great events with our friends at Microsoft, and we’re working on some exciting projects for our Melbourne clients. The new office is 4 times the size of our previouThu, 14 Dec 2017 00:52:00 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/11/08/from-ux-to-cx-improving-the-customer-experience/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/11/08/from-ux-to-cx-improving-the-customer-experience/For many years I’ve been talking about user experience, to the point that some people don’t want to show me their new gadget because they don’t want my comments on the user experience. Similar to the concept of “User eXperience” in software design, the “Customer eXperience” is a marketing term with Wed, 08 Nov 2017 22:34:57 GMTcustomer-experiencegeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/10/12/history-net-richard-campbell/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/10/12/history-net-richard-campbell/While in Sydney for the NDC conference, Richard Campbell stopped by the Sydney .NET User Group to present “The History of .NET”. Informative and entertaining, this presentation is a much-watch for anyone with an interest in .NET programming.Thu, 12 Oct 2017 04:11:15 GMTnet-coreinterviewAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/08/25/ndc-sydney-2017/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/08/25/ndc-sydney-2017/Last week NDC Sydney was back for a second year, and, just as last year, SSW had its sticky fingers in many pies. The highlight was running an entire track of the conference, as well as live streaming and recording it. SSW was also part of the code club, conducted interviews, ran a booth, and contriFri, 25 Aug 2017 08:32:36 GMTndc-sydneyAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/08/04/excited-net-core/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/08/04/excited-net-core/.NET has been around since 2002 for the initial release. When it came around it was really revolutionary and we’ve been loving .NET ever since. SSW has built thousands of apps over the last 15 years on .NET and the language and tooling have improved with each release. This new version, called .NET CFri, 04 Aug 2017 03:54:47 GMTnet-coretrainingAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/07/13/putting-the-team-into-microsoft-teams/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/07/13/putting-the-team-into-microsoft-teams/Update April 6, 2018: The app has received a couple of updates that have resolved problems 1 (calling notifications), 2 (Teams is too quiet), and 4 (speed and stability is an issue). Update April 24, 2018: Another update has come through that has resolved Problem 6 (Cannot share screens on mobile deThu, 13 Jul 2017 09:37:22 GMTgeneralmicrosoft-teamsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/06/16/hololens-at-ssw-a-whole-new-world/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/06/16/hololens-at-ssw-a-whole-new-world/SSW is thrilled to invite business leaders to come test the HoloLens and discuss its capabilities – let’s build a whole new world together.Fri, 16 Jun 2017 04:31:56 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/05/10/farewell-dynamics-crm-2016-hello-dynamics-365/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/05/10/farewell-dynamics-crm-2016-hello-dynamics-365/‘Dynamics CRM’ is no more – say hello to ‘Dynamics 365’. The flagship Dynamic products have always been AX (Operations), CRM (Sales and Marketing), and NAV (Finance), which could provide organisations with an end-to-end process. However, connectivity was lacking. Dynamics 365 is the combination of tWed, 10 May 2017 04:41:41 GMTcrmAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/04/13/moved-tfs-cloud/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/04/13/moved-tfs-cloud/Previously at SSW, we had TFS on-premise and TFS in the cloud and we let the devs choose. Eventually they always chose the cloud so we migrated everything.Thu, 13 Apr 2017 02:04:19 GMTtfsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/03/24/real-pain-two-weeks-crash/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/03/24/real-pain-two-weeks-crash/It’s been 2 weeks since my motorbike accident and I don’t feel much better yet. Here’s my advice for other motorbike riders.Fri, 24 Mar 2017 06:13:12 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/03/12/motorbike-accident/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/03/12/motorbike-accident/I had a nasty accident on my motorbike last night. It’s written off 🔥💥 I know bikes are dangerous… Up until yesterday I’d not had a stack since I was 10 on the farm. The bike was a shiny black cruiser, a Honda VTX 1800C fatboy-looking motorcycle. I don’t have good recollection of the accident,Sun, 12 Mar 2017 05:00:22 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/03/09/26-videos-4-days-outstanding-achievement-ssw-team/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/03/09/26-videos-4-days-outstanding-achievement-ssw-team/Ignite is always an awesome opportunity to snag some interviews with some of the best technical minds in the country – so we brought along the SSW TV video team to do just that.Thu, 09 Mar 2017 01:59:44 GMTinterviewmicrosoft-igniteAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/03/07/6-interviews-microsoft-ignite-australia-2017/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/03/07/6-interviews-microsoft-ignite-australia-2017/Microsoft Ignite Australia 2017 was a blast last week on the Gold Coast. SSW was well represented with our guys there and we had a good looking stand. I did 2 presentations that went well and will be posted soon. In addition, I did 6 interviews which are posted below. The SSW TV team worked likeTue, 07 Mar 2017 07:23:01 GMTinterviewmicrosoft-igniteAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/02/08/its-going-to-be-a-good-2017-with-visual-studio-2017/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/02/08/its-going-to-be-a-good-2017-with-visual-studio-2017/2016 was a big year for Microsoft developers. We saw good work from Microsoft – the 3 biggest items for SSW are: Extending .NET to non-Microsoft platforms like OSX and Linux with the release of .NET Core, Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio for Mac Some of the guys in the SSW office are nowWed, 08 Feb 2017 04:06:02 GMTvisual-studioAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/01/10/adams-2016-review/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2017/01/10/adams-2016-review/I love these end of year review posts. When you’re in the thick of a project, it can be hard to see the forest for the trees, but when you stop, reflect, and look back… it’s a beautiful landscape. That’s what this year has been like. Celebrity deaths, the US election, the SSW reno… phew.Tue, 10 Jan 2017 23:47:59 GMTfamilygeneralpower-birenovationsharepointssw-projectsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/12/28/my-george-michael-tribute-7-signs-for-his-7-number-one-singles/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/12/28/my-george-michael-tribute-7-signs-for-his-7-number-one-singles/I’ve had a long love of George Michael’s music… Bought every album… Loved his concerts. The early concerts had a lot of young girls… The last concerts had a large percentage of Greek women in their 40s 🙂 and gay guys in their 20s. What I liked most of all was George’s sincerity in hisWed, 28 Dec 2016 11:27:49 GMTgeorge-michaelAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/12/08/how-to-learn-angular-2-fast/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/12/08/how-to-learn-angular-2-fast/This month we have been running our Angular Super Powers tour in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. We always knew Angular 2 would be a hot topic, but we were overwhelmed with the demand for the 1-day training event. We sold out tickets in every city. We even had to turn some people away due to the fiThu, 08 Dec 2016 03:25:57 GMTangularAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/11/08/the-ssw-getaway/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/11/08/the-ssw-getaway/Trump is President. It was certainly an experience being in the USA for the vote results last night. It’s been a big surprise for everyone I’ve spoken to on the Microsoft Campus. My prediction in 6 months: Trump says: I’m cancelling the wall. Hillary suggested it in the 1st place and I always said iTue, 08 Nov 2016 07:34:37 GMTssw-getawayAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/10/13/power-bi-no-more-guessing/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/10/13/power-bi-no-more-guessing/UPDATE 9/02/2017: I’ve added Uly’s Power BI presentation to the bottom of this post. Power BI has significantly changed how I view my company’s data, and the insight I now have into how my business is running is unprecedented. The biggest change has been that the account managers are now in charge oThu, 13 Oct 2016 23:36:52 GMTpower-biAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/09/14/ssw-chapel/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/09/14/ssw-chapel/I am happy to let you know that the SSW Chapel is up and running. We completed the renovation in 6 days and is now the smartest conference area in Sydney because it allows both recording and live streaming.Wed, 14 Sep 2016 07:12:32 GMTrenovationAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/08/11/hanselman-unplugged-2/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/08/11/hanselman-unplugged-2/Last week was awesome! NDC Sydney was such a fantastic event. It was super well-run by the Vikings from Norway + SSW was well represented with 2 cool stands at the conference and 4 speakers. We had Adam Stephensen (aka Stevo) and Duncan Hunter from our Brisbane office + Danijel Malik and myself fromThu, 11 Aug 2016 02:03:55 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/07/29/handsome-man-hanselman-coming-sydney/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/07/29/handsome-man-hanselman-coming-sydney/Scott Hanselman is in Australia as a special guest presenter at NDC Sydney and will be stopping in Sydney to talk at an extra-special Sydney user group, where he will be presenting two 1-hour sessions: What you need to know Come and find out from Scott Hanselman what you need to know to be aFri, 29 Jul 2016 06:01:25 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/06/26/australian-government-software-project-blow-10-million-dollars/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/06/26/australian-government-software-project-blow-10-million-dollars/UPDATE: journalist James Robertson mentions this post in his article, “Federal election 2016: Liberal Party company charging taxpayers for ‘antiquated’ software, say experts” in the Sydney Morning Herald. – I hate waste, but while running a software company, I’ve seen plenty of it over the past 20 ySun, 26 Jun 2016 15:12:24 GMTgeneralnon-ssw-projectsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/06/06/train-devs-quickly/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/06/06/train-devs-quickly/My goal over the years has been to shrink the time for a developer to learn new technology so they are job-ready. A couple of weekends ago, I was invited onto the Locknote panel at this year’s DDD Sydney conference. The topic of discussion was learning. The two most common questions asked were: WhatMon, 06 Jun 2016 05:52:47 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/06/03/microsoft-band-2-vs-fitbit/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/06/03/microsoft-band-2-vs-fitbit/Let’s do an analysis of the UI differences between the FitBit and the Microsoft Band. Watch out, Microsoft… the FitBit user interface just got better. I last blogged about the Microsoft Band 2 and my wishlist of 25 features. I’m pleased that the team has already fixed 3 features, leaving 22 remaininFri, 03 Jun 2016 04:29:05 GMTgadgetsgeneralmicrosoft-band-2user-experienceAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/05/11/sharepoint-2016-futures-bright-gotta-wear-shades/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/05/11/sharepoint-2016-futures-bright-gotta-wear-shades/SSW is live with SharePoint 2016 and to me, this is the most exciting release ever! Jeff Teper, the boss of SharePoint, is back and you can definitely feel it in the latest feature announcements. I see cohesion in the announced features, a vision of connecting people with their data both organizatioWed, 11 May 2016 05:47:23 GMTsharepointAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/04/13/angular-2-0-next-new-project/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/04/13/angular-2-0-next-new-project/Google have made some great changes with the next version of Angular a.k.a. Angular 2.0. Here are the 6 things you should know about Angular 2.0.Wed, 13 Apr 2016 05:14:41 GMTangularjavascript-frameworksssw-projectsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/03/09/finishing-feature-world-class-flow/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/03/09/finishing-feature-world-class-flow/Over the years, I’ve talked about how I’ve wanted features shipped into production quicker. Now I’m going to talk about how you can ensure that the features that your devs ship are at a high quality. When the devs get to the exciting point when the code is done, they commit the code (in Git) orWed, 09 Mar 2016 00:59:20 GMTwork-flowAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/02/10/high-fashion-and-javascript-frameworks/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/02/10/high-fashion-and-javascript-frameworks/JavaScript frameworks are a lot like high fashion. One moment you’re in and the next, you’re out. To demonstrate just how turbulent the current landscape is, we made a short “Mad Money” style parody video explaining which JavaScript frameworks you should be using this year. It’s only 2 minutes long,Wed, 10 Feb 2016 01:06:59 GMTangularjavascript-frameworksAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/01/13/adams-2015-in-review/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2016/01/13/adams-2015-in-review/I’ve come to really enjoy writing these end-of-year review posts. I find it’s not until I’m looking back that I realise just how huge a year it’s been, and how much we’ve achieved – and 2015 was no exception! This year SSW doubled our YouTube presence, we’ve kept working and upgrading to the best anWed, 13 Jan 2016 04:53:46 GMTangularawardschinafycrmebookfamilyfirebootcampgeneralmicrosoft-band-2user-groupsvisual-studioAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2015/12/09/the-microsoft-band-2-user-experience-who-would-have-thought-sleep-could-be-so-interesting/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2015/12/09/the-microsoft-band-2-user-experience-who-would-have-thought-sleep-could-be-so-interesting/UPDATED: 14 December 2015 – An update added music controls and an inactivity monitor UPDATED #2: 16 December 2015 – Updated to reflect some feedback I received from Ali Alvi, product owner for the Microsoft Band 2 UPDATED #3: 20 January 2016 – After spending more time with the band, I’ve added a fewWed, 09 Dec 2015 06:37:43 GMTmicrosoft-band-2Adam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2015/11/11/teaching-kids-to-code-in-sydney/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2015/11/11/teaching-kids-to-code-in-sydney/This month I went to a private girls school on the North Shore of Sydney called Loreto Kirribilli. We spoke to the entire year 7 class and the goal was to teach the girls to code. The girls were all about 12 or 13 years old, and although they used computers at school, most hadWed, 11 Nov 2015 00:09:49 GMTtrainingAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2015/10/14/the-vs-2015-ebook-behind-the-scenes/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2015/10/14/the-vs-2015-ebook-behind-the-scenes/In August SSW released its first ever ebook, entitled “The Visual Studio 2015 (Anti-inflammatory) Check List”. We set out to create something that was unique, visually pleasing, and straight to the point, so you get the top 5 pieces of information quickly. From conception to delivery, it was a collaWed, 14 Oct 2015 04:29:26 GMTebookvisual-studioAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2015/09/25/mooncake-festival-and-how-you-can-chinafy-your-app-and-enter-the-chinese-market/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2015/09/25/mooncake-festival-and-how-you-can-chinafy-your-app-and-enter-the-chinese-market/SSW’s Beijing office is gearing up for the mid-autumn festival. The mid-autumn festival is most famous for its dense savoury mooncakes, and is sometimes called the mooncake festival. The full moon is traditionally a symbol for reunion, tuanyuan, as yuan means round. Chinese people celebrate by cominFri, 25 Sep 2015 08:48:42 GMTchinafyssw-chinaAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2015/09/08/wow-firebootcamp-is-1-we-won-the-microsoft-australia-partner-award-for-learning/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2015/09/08/wow-firebootcamp-is-1-we-won-the-microsoft-australia-partner-award-for-learning/UPDATE: This has been re-posted on the FireBootCamp blog UPDATE 2: If you’re not familiar with the course, I put up 5 videos to watch on http://firebootcamp.com/ Today, I am proud to announce SSW has won the MAPA 2015 Microsoft Australia Partner Award for Excellence in Learning for FireBootCamp, ourTue, 08 Sep 2015 05:59:47 GMTawardsfirebootcampAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2015/08/12/tips-for-tesla/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2015/08/12/tips-for-tesla/Updated February 18 – a software update means I can now cross auto parking off my wish list 🙂 Updated February 22 – added pothole protection to my wish list As a tech guy, Tesla’s electric car with an in-built computer is the sort of grown-up toy I’ve been dreaming of, so when I heard that TeslaWed, 12 Aug 2015 09:30:36 GMTteslaAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2015/07/08/dynamics-crm-2015/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2015/07/08/dynamics-crm-2015/I’ve been meaning to talk about the new Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 for quite some time now. After implementing it on-premises for several clients and upgrading our own installation, I was thrilled to find that many of the long standing problems I had been raising for years have now been solved. I wWed, 08 Jul 2015 01:27:40 GMTcrmgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2015/06/11/ssw-is-proud-of-another-project-brisbane-catholic-education-case-study/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2015/06/11/ssw-is-proud-of-another-project-brisbane-catholic-education-case-study/Brisbane Catholic Education (BCE) has a great track record building solutions on the Microsoft stack and are in fact one of the largest users of SharePoint in the Southern Hemisphere. BCE engaged SSW to build a strategic planning tool that would be super powerful, flexible, and easy to use for all oThu, 11 Jun 2015 02:51:10 GMTssw-projectsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2015/05/10/aussie-azure-winning-on-visual-studio-online-in-australia/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2015/05/10/aussie-azure-winning-on-visual-studio-online-in-australia/7 months ago in October 2014, Scott Guthrie announced the long-awaited availability of Microsoft Azure cloud services in Australia. Currently there are two data centers, Sydney and Melbourne. Today, 11th May 2015, sees Visual Studio Online (also known by my clients as VS Online or VSO or TFS Azure) Sun, 10 May 2015 23:24:13 GMTgeneraltfsvisual-studioAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2015/04/08/ssw-data-onion/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2015/04/08/ssw-data-onion/At SSW we build software for a large range of clients, from start ups to massive enterprises and even our own internal projects. We care that the software we build is secure, maintainable and testable. Successful devs use great tools, great frameworks, and follow best practices. Choosing great toolsWed, 08 Apr 2015 06:28:26 GMTssw-data-onionssw-projectsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2015/03/11/whats-new-vs-2015-alm-2015/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2015/03/11/whats-new-vs-2015-alm-2015/I’m off to Europe for the Norwegian Developers Conference in Oslo and the Xamarin Hack Day in Slovenia. Of course I’ll be talking about Visual Studio 2015 and all things mobile. At SSW we’ve been using Visual Studio 2015 on a few projects and it’s a bigger change than I expected. Thanks to a new/refWed, 11 Mar 2015 00:41:55 GMTvisual-studioAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2015/02/11/agile-olympics-itll-scrumtacular/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2015/02/11/agile-olympics-itll-scrumtacular/It’s no secret that I love Scrum. I’m a Scrum.org certified trainer and delight in teaching courses across the country. We follow Scrum at SSW – not just the developers, but the graphic design, marketing, and multi-media teams as well. I even use it at home with my family and for my kids’ soccer teaWed, 11 Feb 2015 04:44:59 GMTscrumuser-groupsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2015/01/14/getting-96-code-reuse-with-xamarin-forms/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2015/01/14/getting-96-code-reuse-with-xamarin-forms/UPDATE:Wed, 14 Jan 2015 06:22:05 GMTxamarinAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2014/12/09/2014-review/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2014/12/09/2014-review/What a corker this year has been. We’ve had a lot of excitement within SSW. We’ve made a lot of changes, and run a lot of new events, and these things couldn’t have happened without the wonderful people who work with me. I’d like to give you a summary of a few of the coolTue, 09 Dec 2014 06:38:52 GMTangularfirebootcampgenerallogossw-projectsxamarinAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2014/11/13/why-ssw-is-moving-to-angularjs/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2014/11/13/why-ssw-is-moving-to-angularjs/Over the last 6 months, AngularJS has become the frontend framework of choice for SSW developers. They are all excited to be leveraging the combination of AngularJS and MVC in order to provide amazing user experiences. Senior developers at SSW are excited to use AngularJS to make more responsive cliThu, 13 Nov 2014 01:39:49 GMTangularAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2014/10/08/creating-an-ouroboros/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2014/10/08/creating-an-ouroboros/I’m having a ball this month – I’ve been to Melbourne to give 3 presentations at TechEd and I get to do the same again at TechEd Sydney in a couple of weeks. I’m also enjoying the hubbub and excitement of getting ready to release SugarLearning, which was made by the students of the firstWed, 08 Oct 2014 07:56:42 GMTfirebootcampssw-projectsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2014/09/10/come-see-what-firebootcamp-graduates-built/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2014/09/10/come-see-what-firebootcamp-graduates-built/It’s been 2 months since the newest session of FireBootCamp kicked off in Sydney, and our students have been working hard. I’d like you to come along and see how far the students have come in the last 9 weeks. Often working from 9 til 9, they have learned the latest technologies and best practices, Wed, 10 Sep 2014 08:19:59 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2014/08/13/building-croquembouche-just-4-weeks-beautiful-style-cracking-performance/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2014/08/13/building-croquembouche-just-4-weeks-beautiful-style-cracking-performance/OK it was not a croquembouche, but it was a beautiful website designed and delivered in just 4 weeks. It was designed with enough pizzazz to support a national advertising campaign. At SSW, we love a challenge. Clients give us a chance to flex our creative and problem-solving muscles, and think outsWed, 13 Aug 2014 07:30:27 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2014/07/11/sign-free-xamarin-hackday-local-area/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2014/07/11/sign-free-xamarin-hackday-local-area/Last month, SSW held the first of many Xamarin HackDays. This one was at the Sydney office, and it was a great day. Xamarin is very important to all Microsoft developers as it allows us to write a C# app in Visual Studio and publish it to iOS, Android and Win phone8 in one fell swoopFri, 11 Jul 2014 05:43:11 GMTtrainingxamarinAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2014/06/11/introducing-new-ssw-logo/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2014/06/11/introducing-new-ssw-logo/Logos are more important than we realise – a logo is often your first impression of a company and as such having a good one will go a long way to being memorable and instilling a sense of trust and familiarity. Our designers should be commended. We followed the same logo design process we doWed, 11 Jun 2014 06:48:23 GMTssw-logoAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2014/05/14/firebootcamp-sydney-winner/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2014/05/14/firebootcamp-sydney-winner/As you may remember from my last blog post, the 3 teams were having their solutions critiqued by a panel of judges with extensive experience in building software. Today, I am excited to announce which team our judges picked as being the most successful (giving the most business value). The voting waWed, 14 May 2014 08:09:59 GMTfirebootcampAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2014/03/21/firebootcamp-sydney-ended-successfully/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2014/03/21/firebootcamp-sydney-ended-successfully/It has been an amazing, intense 9 weeks, and while I’m sad that it is over, I couldn’t be more proud of the guys and what they’ve achieved. They’ve all improved in different ways: Some of them arrived with a lot of experience… now they are awesome. Some were juniors straight out of uni… they’reFri, 21 Mar 2014 01:05:29 GMTfirebootcampssw-projectstrainingAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2014/03/12/last-chance-get-ticket-firebootcamp-gala-day/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2014/03/12/last-chance-get-ticket-firebootcamp-gala-day/UPDATE: Gala Day is done – see how it ended No news this month – we’ve been too busy preparing for the upcoming FireBootCamp gala morning, which is your chance to come and meet the FireBootCampers and see the great projects they created while training with us. The gala will be held at our NeutralWed, 12 Mar 2014 07:01:45 GMTfirebootcamptrainingAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2014/03/07/588/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2014/03/07/588/SSW invites you to come and meet our newest FireBootCamp graduates. These developers are so passionate about coding they took 9 weeks out of their life to do nothing but code, and they are keen to show off what they have learned and created. This event gives employers the chance to see the web appliFri, 07 Mar 2014 04:39:37 GMTfirebootcampAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2014/02/10/video-firebootcamp-week-2-sydney-scrum-sprint-review/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2014/02/10/video-firebootcamp-week-2-sydney-scrum-sprint-review/Week 2 of FireBootCamp was a whirlwind for the students as they held their first sprint review meetings. During the sprint review they had to present the completed product backlog items to the product owner ‘Bob’ (Adam Cogan, FireBootCamp mentor in disguise) 🙂 They were challenged to deliver compleMon, 10 Feb 2014 22:39:23 GMTfirebootcampAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2014/01/29/firebootcamp-week-1-sydney/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2014/01/29/firebootcamp-week-1-sydney/(Reposted from the FireBootCamp blog.) I’m delighted to bring you an update from week 1 of our first ever FireBootCamp, SSW’s 9-week intensive course focused on software development methodologies based on building modern web applications with ASP.NET MVC. The first week has just ended and, as the abWed, 29 Jan 2014 01:50:50 GMTfirebootcamptrainingAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2014/01/10/sparrow-project-brisbane-catholic-education-scrum-fosters-collaboration/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2014/01/10/sparrow-project-brisbane-catholic-education-scrum-fosters-collaboration/Figure: BCE SPARROW uses a ‘metro’ design with all the latest Nuget packages for elegant, consistent and usable design The benefits of continually improving our processes and practices around the Scrum methodology were never more apparent than with the project we have recently completed for BrisbaneFri, 10 Jan 2014 00:23:27 GMTscrumssw-projectsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2013/12/13/thank-ssw-handsome-hanselman-team/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2013/12/13/thank-ssw-handsome-hanselman-team/This Wednesday was an amazing success and I was very proud of the SSW team who put it together. Thank you guys, it was outstanding and a lot of people worked very hard over a 5 day period to make it happen. Firstly ‘thank you’ to everyone who turned up, I appreciate you all being thereFri, 13 Dec 2013 20:36:06 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2013/12/05/my-2013-as-microsoft-regional-director/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2013/12/05/my-2013-as-microsoft-regional-director/This year has been a great year for the cloud, for Microsoft, and for SSW customers. We’ve delivered many solutions built on top of Azure, CRM Online, SharePoint Online, and TFS Online – all running on Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure. These solutions work across devices. They are easy to manage – yThu, 05 Dec 2013 07:44:19 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2013/11/15/fire-boot-camp/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2013/11/15/fire-boot-camp/I am proud to announce the launch of the best training course we have ever done. It takes a beginner .NET developer to a *Job Ready* world class junior developer in 9 weeks. Long story short, they get thrown into the fire, continuously mentored, while building a real world app. They will successfullFri, 15 Nov 2013 03:28:00 GMTfirebootcamptrainingAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2013/10/02/ssw-tv-has-a-new-face/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2013/10/02/ssw-tv-has-a-new-face/Guys, I’m happy to tell you that we have completely redesigned SSW TV and I’d love if you could spare a few moments to take a look! http://tv.ssw.com/ Here are the top 3 changes I think you will like: Quizzes: We wanted to provide more value to the viewer and give them an opportunity toWed, 02 Oct 2013 05:00:40 GMTgeneralssw-projectsuser-experienceAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2013/09/13/a-good-product-owner-can-make-or-break-a-project/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2013/09/13/a-good-product-owner-can-make-or-break-a-project/How do we make good Product Owners At my Teched talks this month (Australia and New Zealand) I talked about Product Owners. After my session there were lots of discussion around the Product Owner Scrum role, and what makes a good one. I loved hearing the stories of dysfunction about Product Owners wFri, 13 Sep 2013 05:35:46 GMTgeneralscrumAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2013/08/04/tfs-is-huge-in-china-part-2/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2013/08/04/tfs-is-huge-in-china-part-2/Update: Lei Xu has also posted this in Chinese. Let’s continue the story of a hair raising project. Nothing is small in China! Read Part I here. We’ve looked at the people factors, and now let’s look at the technical part. Lesson 3: Tune your SQL indexes – back to basics TIP: Read SSW RulesSun, 04 Aug 2013 05:10:21 GMTscrumssw-projectstfsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2013/08/04/tfs-is-huge-in-china-part-1/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2013/08/04/tfs-is-huge-in-china-part-1/Update: Lei Xu has also posted this in Chinese. Recently Lei Xu and I completed a hair-raising TFS 2012 project. We hit some snags trying to optimize Work Items with 20,000,000 records. Let me tell you the story… It was completed shortly after arriving home from the MVP Summit in Redmond. It was lucSun, 04 Aug 2013 04:00:21 GMTscrumssw-projectstfsAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2013/07/11/a-glimpse-into-your-asp-net-app/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2013/07/11/a-glimpse-into-your-asp-net-app/Diagnosing issues with your web app can be one of the most difficult things for developers. Sometimes, the browser just doesn’t show you what you expect. Visual Studio is the best possible IDE to help developers see what’s going on with their code during development, but what about what’s happening Thu, 11 Jul 2013 07:23:04 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2013/06/14/new-features-in-visual-studio-2013-and-tfs-2013/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2013/06/14/new-features-in-visual-studio-2013-and-tfs-2013/Brian Harry recently blogged about some great new features coming in Visual Studio 2013 and Team Foundation Server 2013 and I want to address the three aspects that affect our customers the most: TFS support for Epics, the new Team Explorer window in Visual Studio, and Cloud Load Testing. 1) TFS SupFri, 14 Jun 2013 00:47:33 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2013/05/08/the-business-value-field/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2013/05/08/the-business-value-field/Watch this SSW TV special video on “Estimating Business Value to order your backlog” and see a real-life video of a brand new Scrum team learn how to use the “Business Value” field. Yesterday I told you about the lightening fast, dead sexy movie site, ‘Event Cinemas’ that went live. Today I have a rWed, 08 May 2013 09:52:21 GMTgeneralscrumAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2013/05/08/eventcinemas-com-au-is-live/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2013/05/08/eventcinemas-com-au-is-live/A big thank you to Robin Maes, Andrew Turner and the whole Event Cinemas team who worked tirelessly with the SSW’s guys to deliver a great looking, super fast, site that was on time and to the fixed budget. Thanks to the Telerik Sitefinity team, our favourite Bulgarians, for giving us the updates wiWed, 08 May 2013 06:44:39 GMTscrumssw-projectsuser-experienceAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2013/02/13/2012-retrospective-for-ssw/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2013/02/13/2012-retrospective-for-ssw/Continuing on from December’s “My 2012 as Microsoft Regional Director” post, I thought I might reflect on how 2012 went at SSW. It really was another great year for SSW with the launch of our new Metro website as well as our new SSW TV site. In 2012, SSW TV went from zero to 30,000Wed, 13 Feb 2013 22:13:51 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2013/01/11/20-years-and-going-strong-sydney-net-user-group/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2013/01/11/20-years-and-going-strong-sydney-net-user-group/Video: Celebrating our first 20 years – Sydney .NET User Group I am proud to be able to say that I have been running the Sydney .NET User Group for over 20 years now. During that time we’ve had some great and memorable speakers sharing information about a range of .NET topics. We’ve kept evolvingFri, 11 Jan 2013 05:24:12 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2012/12/14/my-2012-as-a-microsoft-regional-director/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2012/12/14/my-2012-as-a-microsoft-regional-director/I’d like to let you know what I’ve been up to this year (next month, I’ll let you know what SSW has achieved). Since my main job is helping companies adopt and deploy Microsoft technologies, my roles at Microsoft are very useful for my customers and staff. As a Microsoft Regional Director and ALM MVFri, 14 Dec 2012 02:23:44 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2012/11/18/microsoft-is-onto-something-here/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2012/11/18/microsoft-is-onto-something-here/I’ve just come back from Build 2012 where we have seen the fruits of Microsoft’s work over the last few years being Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and of course most importantly the Surface. I was lucky enough to be in the front row so I got to see things up close. We now haveSun, 18 Nov 2012 23:19:56 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2012/08/13/tfs-2012-rtm-to-rc-done/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2012/08/13/tfs-2012-rtm-to-rc-done/Last weekend, we decided to take the plunge and upgrade our SSW TFS 2012 RC instance to the shiny new TFS 2012 RTM. It was early I know, we considered the risks vs the rewards, made a roll-back plan with HyperV and quickly decided it was worth the effort. We ploughed ahead with the upgradeMon, 13 Aug 2012 10:00:26 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2012/08/13/german-cars-and-user-experience/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2012/08/13/german-cars-and-user-experience/Updated August 12, 2015: I bought a Tesla. It has the most enormous touchscreen – no irritating nobs to turn 🙂 G’day Developers! For the last month I was driving through Germany, Italy, Austria and Croatia. I hired 3 different cars. Having mainly driven Toyotas, I was keen on experiencing some variMon, 13 Aug 2012 08:00:54 GMTgadgetsuser-experienceAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2012/06/03/upgrading-tfs-2010-to-tfs-2012-rc-done/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2012/06/03/upgrading-tfs-2010-to-tfs-2012-rc-done/Over the weekend, we decided to take the plunge and upgrade the SSW TFS 2010 instance to the shiny new TFS 2012 release candidate. Initially, there was some debate as to whether we should upgrade what is the busiest server in our environment. One call to Grant Holliday made all the difference and weSun, 03 Jun 2012 13:29:21 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2012/01/05/jack-cogan-rip/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2012/01/05/jack-cogan-rip/1st February 1917 – 4th January 2012 94.9 years Figure: Jack Cogan’s British Passport Yesterday, 2 significant events occurred: · my eldest girl Eve, had her 10th birthday · my dad died at 94 The one thing I am most thankful for is that my dad still stayed himself, right to the end. He stillThu, 05 Jan 2012 10:14:44 GMTfamilyAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2011/07/18/juval-lowy-visits-ssw/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2011/07/18/juval-lowy-visits-ssw/Juval Löwy came to visit us at SSW last week to present an Architects Masterclass. He covered the Service-Oriented Development process and WCF and treated the attendees to some enthusiastic opinions on software development architecture. Cheers, @AdamCoganMon, 18 Jul 2011 05:44:18 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2011/05/31/professional-scrum-developer-course-new-delhi-day-1/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2011/05/31/professional-scrum-developer-course-new-delhi-day-1/I’m in India at the moment with Damian Brady and Adam Stephensen running a Professional Scrum Developer course. The training is with a group of 24 guys with varying roles – developers, testers, architects, and managers. At the end of the course, they will all have the opportunity to sit an online exTue, 31 May 2011 16:21:08 GMTscrumtrainingAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2009/08/11/ssw-agile-template-reports/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2009/08/11/ssw-agile-template-reports/Note: Originally on https://www.ssw.com.au/ssw/AgileTemplate/Reports/ With SSW Agile Template generating reports has never been easier. Listed below are the default Reports for Agile Template:Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:18:00 GMTgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2007/07/18/rules-to-better-project-management-with-tfs-creating-and-managing-release-plans/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2007/07/18/rules-to-better-project-management-with-tfs-creating-and-managing-release-plans/Note: This content is from old “RulesToBetterProjectManagementWithTFS.aspx”. The current rules to follow are SSW Rules to Better Scrum At SSW we advocate using the rich features of email and a release plan approachto getting work done. Follow these steps and you will have happier clients and clientsWed, 18 Jul 2007 15:36:00 GMTadams-diaries-from-old-rulesgeneralAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2003/01/04/eve-paraskevi-cogans-one-christening/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2003/01/04/eve-paraskevi-cogans-one-christening/Please come along and enjoy a day with Eve to celebrate her Christening. When: Saturday January 4 2003; 11am Where: Greek Church in Leichardt And afterwords at our place till 5pm. A few pictures from her first yearSat, 04 Jan 2003 11:00:29 GMTfamilyAdam Coganhttps://adamcogan.vercel.app/2002/01/04/eve-cogan-makes-world/https://adamcogan.vercel.app/2002/01/04/eve-cogan-makes-world/This is to announce that at 1.03 a.m. (Sydney Daylight Savings time) on Friday 4th January 2002 EVE PARASKEVI COGAN was born into the world by Anastasia and Adam Cogan. (In Greek Paraskevi means Friday). We can’t wait to hear Eve after Adam explained .NET to her.Fri, 04 Jan 2002 01:03:10 GMTfamilyAdam Cogan