InfoQ Homepage Methodologies Content on InfoQ
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The Decisions You Don't Know You're Making: QCon Keynote Explores Hidden Choices in Engineering
Engineering teams make their most consequential decisions not in architecture reviews or sprint planning, but through invisible choices embedded in metrics, defaults, and everyday behaviors. In their QCon San Francisco 2025 keynote, Shawna Martell and Dan Fike challenged the industry's focus on documented decision-making while the decisions that truly shape systems and culture go unrecognized.
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Producing a Better Software Architecture with Residuality Theory
Software architecture is tough because it blends coding, math, and business systems. Due to surprises, architectures tend to become irrelevant over time, Barry O'Reilly said. He presented residuality theory, where he suggested stressing naive architectures to reveal hidden “attractors” in complex business systems. This allows designs to better survive change and uncertainty.
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Navigating Software Architecture at Scale: Insights from Decathlon’s Architecture Process
Raphaël Tahar, staff engineer at Decathlon, recently published his insights from co-leading an architecture process at scale. He depicts how, by combining methodologies like architecture committees, the C4 model, and System Thinking and emphasizing the importance of ADRs and centralized documentation, Decathlon ensures its teams are well-equipped to make informed, strategic decisions.
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Programming Foundations for Test Automation
Proper programming foundations can improve your test automation, making it easier to maintain testing code, and reduce stress. A foundation of the theory and basic principles of coding and programming can help to bring test automation to the next level. Object-oriented programming principles can help to overcome code smells.
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Transitioning to Modern Testing: How Testers Can Stop Being the Training Wheels for Teams
Traditional testing, where testers act as safety nets and testing is separated from implementation, can have a detrimental impact on quality. Testers can instead act as coaches, collaborate in teams, and foster change, to stop becoming the training wheels for teams. Culture is key, particularly in that the environment provides psychological safety.
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Scaling Software Architecture via Conversations: the Advice Process
Andrew Harmel-Law recently published an article describing a decentralised, scalable software architecture process based on the "Advice Process". The Advice Process promotes software architecture by encouraging a series of conversations driven by an empowering, almost anarchistic, decision-making technique. It comprises one rule - anyone can make an architectural decision.
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IBM Launches Equal Access Toolkit to Help Developers Write Accessible Applications
IBM recently released the IBM Equal Access Toolkit and the Accessibility Checker, two new open-source toolkits that strive to give designers, developers, and testers a set of tools to make websites and applications accessible.
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When Deferring Decisions Leads to Better Codebases: Boris Litvinsky at ReactiveConf 2019
Boris Litvinsky, tech lead at Wix, recently presented in a talk at ReactiveConf 2019 in Prague why he thinks deferring decisions taken in the software development process can result in a better codebase. He also discussed some design and coding practices which support delaying or reversing decisions.
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13th Annual State of Agile Survey is Open
The 13th annual State of Agile survey has been announced by CollabNet VersionOne. This yearly survey explores the worldwide adoption of agile.
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How No and Low Code Approaches Support Business Users and Professional Developers
No code approaches aim to support business users in developing and maintaining their own applications, where low code simplifies the developer’s work and makes them more productive. Both approaches enable faster development at lower costs. As the distinction between these approaches is becoming smaller, business users and developers can team up and use them together.
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First Annual Retrospective Report Published
The First Annual Retrospective Report provides a deeper understanding of how retrospectives are used in the real world. The results indicate that retrospectives lead to improved team communication and productivity and help to create an environment of trust. Major challenges are that topics discussed cannot be solved by the team and people do not feel comfortable speaking up.
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Strategy for Mobile and Web Test Coverage
Teams need to match testing with the market usage patterns across geographies of their apps as consumers are expecting smooth apps functionality across all digital channels. Here's a methodology and index for considering device/OS combinations together with other characteristics like aging, screen parameters and other testing related guidelines for data driven test coverage of the mobile market.
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GitLab Survey Highlights Some Trends among Developers
GitLab has released the outcomes of a survey they conducted among software professionals from 362 startups from July 6 through July 27. Main highlights are developers' preference for using latest tools and more collaboration; security is high-priority, but 81 percent admitted to releasing software before it’s ready.
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Achieving Cloud-Native Operability
To drive operational maturity you need a microservices architecture, continuous delivery process, DevOps culture and platform automation. Together these four help you to transform your whole organization for achieving cloud-native operability to continuously deliver additional value to your customers.
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Don't Copy the Spotify Model
The Spotify model can help you to understand how things are done at Spotify, but you shouldn’t copy it in your own organization. It changes all the time as people at Spotify learn and discover new things. There is no one way in which software is developed at Spotify.