bingo Agile: Agile is not the same thing that was practiced 20 years ago. Waterfall and traditional project planning simply don’t take in account the unique qualities inherent to software development. Software doesn’t have the same constraints and limitations as the construction industry and we shouldn’t treat them the same. Software is mutable and flexible; it can change as quickly as business…
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Story Points: The true value of assigning points to a story is to flush out discussion. If everyone is voting a similar number of points there may not need to be much discussion but, if the points are all over the place… let’s chat this out. Let’s assume the team is refining a story and the description is clear and the Acceptance Criteria seems well understood. Scenario 1: All team members but…
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supercharge Lint: Reading code written in an unfamiliar or inconsistent style is like reading poor handwriting. The code may be correct but it can take a ton of energy and brain cycles to simply understand what is going on. Conversely, reading code that adheres to a familiar style allows you to focus on what is important. Whether it’s someone else’s code or your own that you are returning to…
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tower Developer/Architect Today, all developers share some architectural responsibilities. Especially, Sr. developers are expected to make sound architecture decisions when faced with choices. A dev/arch is an architect who is also an individual contributor pulling stories out of the backlog just like everyone else. A dev/arch can be found having in-depth discussions in an effort to better…
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stacks Conventions Software frameworks have gotten really good at choosing Convention over Configuration and so too should your development teams. Having a tech stack where there are well defined patterns and conventions helps to lower the threshold for starting a new project, adding a new endpoint to an existing service or adding a new team member. Having fewer, ideally one, ways of solving the…
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sprinting 1. Focus on Commitments Team pays attention to the current sprint’s unassigned stories and the burndown chart during standup. We all know that a story takes the time that it takes regardless of your best estimations but, keeping an eye on the burndown helps the team evaluate what actions may help get things back on track. For example, by watching burndown you may realize that QA is often…
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