When developers know how their applications are really being used “in the wild,” they will build better software, more efficiently, and with greater confidence. Sebastian Holst shows you how using application analytics.
Tony Wong, a project management blackbelt, enumerates some practical points on individual procutivity. This article wonders how well these apply to software development and contrasts his list with that of other lists.
On the 1st November software engineer and author John R. Fox has published his book “Digital Work in an Analog World”. According to its subtitle “Improving Software Engineering by Applied Psychology”, the book does not consider software engineering in practice. Rather, it is focusing on the psychological aspects relevant and practices relevant for engineers.
Given the fact that the bulk of a developer's work is maintaining and enhancing existing code, Fabian Kiss makes the case for a lightweight approach to documenting the rationale and decision process behind design decisions to help later developers tie the source code syntax to its meaning in the application domain. Using simple tags and clearly thought out rationale to provide just-enough value.
Fixed price contracts are evil - this is what can often be heard from agilists. On the other hand those contracts are reality which many agile teams have to face. But what if we try to tame it instead of fighting against it? How can a company execute this kind of contract using agile practices to achieve better results with lower risk? This article will try to answer those questions.
Hamlet D'Arcy explains the Lean principles - Eliminate Waste, Build Quality In, Create Knowledge, Defer Commitment, Deliver Fast, Respect People, Optimize the Whole – in the context of using Groovy as programming language.
Traditional thinking says the more critical the application, the more tightly its development must be planned, staged and controlled. The truth is, a flexible culture is stronger, safer and more robust. This talk gives practical tips for adopting an agile approach to planning, team interactions and risk management. When the culture shifts, teams achieve goals sooner and safety is greatly enhanced.
In this interview filmed during RubyFringe 2008, Luke Francl explains his position towards testing. While supporting unit testing, he thinks testing is not going to reveal all application defects. Development teams should also practice code reviews and usability tests which are likely to discover bugs not visible though other methods.
Debate sprang up at JAOO '07 around Bob Martin's assertion that "nowadays it is irresponsible for a developer to ship a line of code he has not executed in a unit test." In this InfoQ video, he debated with Jim Coplien on this and other topics, including Design by Contract vs. TDD and how much up-front architecture is needed to keep a system consistent with the business domain model.
