Author: Kevin

  • Things I’ve done on break

    Yes, I now have an MBA!

  • Scrum Ceremonies, part 3

    So, we have covered Retrospectives and the Daily Stand Ups in previous posts. Today we will actually go through the rest of the major ceremonies that a Scrum Master must deal with each and every sprint. Sprint Planning is simply a meeting where it is determined what will be worked on during the next sprint.…

  • Scrum Ceremonies, part 2

    So, last time, we talked about Stand Up. There are so many other ceremonies that a good scrum master should be working through with the team. Let’s try to step thru some more of them, shall we? Possibly my favorite of the scrum ceremonies is the Retrospective, commonly referred to as the Retro. The Retro…

  • Windowing Functions Exercises

    So, using the Lahman’s baseball database – found here – let’s go thru some practice exercises to try out your new windowing functions skills: Find the first year that each park was played in Show the rank with ties (both ways) of the games started in 1983 for each league for all players Place the…

  • Scrum Ceremonies, part 1

    Last post, we talked about all of the responsibilities of a Scrum Master. Now, it’s time to talk about the biggest responsibility of a Scrum Master and where they are thought of the most – during the Scrum Ceremonies. The time that you will be thought of the most is during the Daily Stand Up.…

  • Scrum Masters

    Roles and Responsibilities of a Good Scrum Master

  • Gettin’ the Party Started

    In our last blog post, we discussed processes. Now, I’d like to discuss what it takes to get that process started. First thing that has to happen is for someone to have an idea. After lots of meetings, agreements, disagreements, budget meetings, passing of budgets, stalls because of other priorities, and other who-knows-what, finally the…

  • Processes

    Every now and again, you’ll hear someone in IT say the word “process.” What does that really mean? Is it just a “black box” that data is shoved into and, magically, a file is created or a dashboard show you your data? According to Dictionary.com, a process is simply “a systematic series of actions directed…

  • Data Loss

    In our last post, we quickly mentioned the phrase “data loss”. What does that really mean? Well, according to Wikipedia, data loss is “an error condition … in which information is destroyed by failures or neglect in storage, transmission, or processing.” The important part that I want to talk about there, is the “neglect in… processing.” Sadly,…

  • Try/Catch vs RAISERROR

    Now I’m sure after the last post , you’re thinking “Oh, ever-so humble author, why, oh, why, would I pick one of these over the other?” Well, I’m glad you’re checking in today, because that’s exactly what we’re going over! Now, the easiest scenario is if the SQL Server you’re working with is somewhere between…