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28
AUG
2017

How to manage documents? Should that be a new story?

Continuing with our discussion of documentation, I wanted to address how we actually build these documents within our Sprints (or iterations).  Remember our key Agile principles related to documentation: “working software is the primary measure of progress” and...
03
JUL
2017

How does the traditional functional and technical documentation work in Agile?

In Scrum and Agile, there is not much guidance given on functional and technical documentation.  The Agile Manifesto states that Agile teams value “working software over comprehensive documentation.”  That provides clear guidance on what is the focus of an Agile team,...
19
JUL
2016

How to Improve Your Test-Driven Development

Test-Driven Development (TDD) is a fundamental programming skill in short supply today.  TDD is a powerful design technique that improves the quality and reliability of software as unit tests are automated and run more frequently.  One of the key concepts behind TDD is that the...
09
JUN
2016

How to Run a Coding Dojo

At Agile Portugal, I heard Emily Bache (@emilybache) give an inspiring keynote address on the importance of coding dojos to advance the art of programmers and testers.  Emily, much like myself, is a strong proponent of test-driven development (TDD), but recognizes that while TDD...
15
JUL
2014

Your Code Sucks!!

….is usually not an approach that works.  However, how do you start the conversation when there is an issue with somebody’s code (or work performance) that needs to be addressed that still preserves the relationship? Earlier this week in the Certified ScrumMasters...
09
JUN
2014

Who Is Responsible for Quality in Scrum?

To build a quality product we need to let go of the outdated 20th century idea that quality can be achieved through inspection alone, i.e. testing.  Instead, let us focus on constructing a framework that produces quality outcomes from the beginning and the two Lean concepts...
27
NOV
2013

Where are the System Specs in Scrum?

This was a really good question in the Scrum Practitioners LinkedIn group.  What started out as a short response, became a blog post so I decided to share my ideas here as well. Scrum is silent on the topic of specifications – it neither requires them nor prohibits them.  I...
14
SEP
2009

Seems Obvious Now

Just wanted to reiterate the value of TDD – I am working on a programming challenge and was surprised how easy it was to add a hunting and killing algorithm to my program.  Since it was written using TDD, I had a nice suite of fast tests which allowed me to incrementally...
12
JAN
2009

The problem with most TDD trainings is…

… they are too short. Mark Levison has posted an interesting article, Making TDD Stick, on InfoQ that covers some of my observations about how to sustain test-driven development (TDD) in an organization.  I have found the best way to teach TDD is to mentor\pair with an individual...
12
DEC
2008

Is Code Foreclosure In Your Future?

I want to use this post to talk about the concept of design debt (or technical debt) to describe the variety of “shortcuts” software developers take to compromise design quality in order to gain a short term boost in productivity.  While there may be many good reasons to take...
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