practice

Software development is a whole team activity – avoid silos and barriers to communication.  Extreme Programming introduced the idea of the Whole Team, which includes business representatives, testers, and of course programmers.  These teams work together, ideally within the same … Continued

What is Pain Driven Development (PDD)? It means waiting to apply principles, patterns, and practices to your code until there is some pain the current approach is causing that must be addressed. It’s a variation of YAGNI that ensures you … Continued

A great deal of the time, software developers can mostly figure things out by just trying things, and seeing what fits.  Maybe it’s a matter of trying different combinations until the compile error disappears, or maybe it’s a matter of … Continued

Sometimes the process of describing a problem, even to an inanimate object, can reveal the solution. Rubber duck debugging refers to the practice of using a small toy, like a rubber duck, as your first assistant when you are faced … Continued

Never lose sight of the fact that until you ship your product, it is not providing value to anybody.  Joel Spolsky put it well when he wrote: A 50%-good solution that people actually have solves more problems and survives longer … Continued

When you miss a deadline or milestone, don’t just blindly shift the planned deadline back by a day. This is an opportunity to quickly re-assess the project’s status, update the plan, and communicate the new plan to all of the … Continued