This past Monday and Tuesday, I attended all-day training sessions led by David Hussman. He’s a big Agile guy, but more than Agile he kind of picks and chooses the parts he believes work – i.e. he’s huge on TDD and pair programming and continuous integration. Pointedly, he said if you don’t have the chops […]
Code Review Observers
How many people does it really take to ensure that code is correct? I’m faced with a bit of a paradox. On one hand, having ~20 people on a code review seems like overkill. It has the potential to slow down reviews and create a bottleneck to getting anything done. On the other hand, what […]
Lessons Learned in Automated UI Testing
Automated UI testing can be tricky and is very easy to do wrong. At SEP we’ve done several projects using TestComplete; it is a nice tool, but the early days were painful. We made every mistake in the book, and learned our lessons the hard way. These days, our TestComplete testing efforts are pretty slick. […]
Plain language
“Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.” – Cicero This is the basis of Plain Language. The goal is to write documents (emails, web pages, manuals, proposals, etc) in an everyday language, without waffle, jargon, or ambiguity, so that the reader can easily find and understand the information […]
You Won’t Know, If You Never Ask…
I was recently copied on an email thread where some requirements were discussed between a project lead (Bob) and the client (Fred). (FYI – the names are made up) Bob asked Fred about a specific requirement that read (paraphrased): The Error Indicator should display every 60 seconds. My next task was to add this indicator […]
I Don’t Have Time
This phrase takes me back nearly 25 years to my first butt-kicking by a businessman with 40 years of experience on me. Nathan Fouch (father of one of SEP’s founders, Mike Fouch) was very blunt in saying that I needed to take better care of myself. It was great advice. Guess what I said? “I […]
Test First Programming – It is kind of like Martial Arts…
Test-Driven-Development/Design (TDD) has been a hot topic of conversation in our office recently (lots of external and internal training about TDD). I think the biggest* “ah, ha”* for me, throughout these conversations, was that TDD is nothing more than a tool. A very powerful tool that has numerous benefits. TDD is not, however, some silver […]
“Motion != Progress” – Code moves in 5 different ways…
Week #4 of the SEP Blog Battle 2012. This week our title was “Motion is not Progress”. If you are making changes to your source code, then clearly your are making progress. Right? Wrong. Code can move in 5 different ways – you can add functionality, remove functionality, refactor code, delete code, or leave the […]
Spec Driven Versus Client Satisfaction in Outsourcing
Chris Shinkle introduced us to the Kano model of customer satisfaction while internally presenting his Stop Doing Kanban, Start Learning lecture that he delivered at this year’s LSSC. The Kano Model of Customer Satisfaction: As an outsourcing partner, this model has direct implications for SEP. The Performance axis represents our client’s needs in a solution. […]
