Awesome Acceptance Testing

My notes on DanNorth and JoeWalnes‘ session at Spa 2008. Five artefacts: Automation – the glue that binds the tests to the code Vocabulary – the language that the tests are expressed in Syntax – the technology that the tests are expressed in (C#, Java) Intent – the actual scenario being tested Harness – the …

Retrospective: The Clue is in the Name

I facilitated our regular end-of-iteration retrospective last week, and although the feedback from the team was positive, I was left with a feeling that something wasn’t right. With our second major live release looming large on the horizon, I focussed the session on the theme of ‘Success’. My aim was to give the team a …

Kanban for Software Explained

Karl Scotland has posted a great description of how his team solved some issues they were having within their Scrum team by moving over to using a lean-thinking or Kanban system, based on a short buffer or Queue of Minimum Marketable Features (MMFs). It’s probably the clearest explanation I’ve seen yet of why and how …

Words Matter: Growing Software

Brian Marrrick makes a good point that ‘incremental’ and ‘iterative’ just look and sound way too similar to make the decent brand-names for ‘evil’ and ‘good’ software development practice respectively. Note to self: say ‘incremental assembly’ (boo!) and ‘iterative growth’ (yeah!). The more I think about it, the more I like the growth vs assembly …

What Time’s Your Stand-Up?

The stand-up meeting has had quite a lot of attention on my team over the last week. At our last retrospective, it was brought up as a problem that we nearly always had at least one person missing when we started the meeting. Obviously this hampers us reaching the goal of having a rich and …

Software as an Art Form

I just came across an article written five years ago by Richard Gabriel proposing a university course run along the lines of his own Master’s in Fine Arts in poetry. The idea evidently gathered some momentum at the time, but now seems to have come to a halt. What a shame. I’ve had an idea …

The Path to Greatness – Anyone Got a Map?

I just bumbled into a great post by Raganwald on the subject of certification for professional software developers. It’s something I’ve been giving some thought to lately. I coach my team informally on a daily basis as we work together and more formally at the end of each iteration during our retrospective. I’ve also been …

Integration Tests – Good or Evil?

As with most stupid questions like this, the answer is “neither”. There are times when integration tests really help, and there are times when they can be a pain in the neck. I was prompted to write this post when a colleague pointed me towards this page on the behaviour-driven wiki, which mentions the disadvantages …