October 2008
The Archives
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10.25.08Faking classes under testWhen pairing with a coworker on a programming task this week, we found ourselves "faking" the class that we were trying to test. And that was weird. Here is the scenario (not the real code, but the same idea) We are building a system that classifies objects that a customer finds useful from a legacy application. The new system receives events with basic information about the legacy object and uses that to callback into the application to display more information about it. Here is an example: In our first version of our product, we offer classifications on persons, cars and houses. To ...
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10.21.08This team is mine! My precious…They're my programmers, my analysts, they're mine! Mine!! My precious! I hear it sometimes during meetings or casual conversations in the hallway. Scrum masters talking about their team like they are showing off geek blink. The tone of their voice is imperialist. You could tell that they can fix "the hot issue of the day" by commanding their troops to the urgent task; just by waving their hand. Maybe throw a programmer to a different type of work, or change the whole team direction for the rest of the iteration. They act as a proxy to management and play the role of a ...
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10.17.08Adopting Test Driven Development through Performance ReviewsActually, if I back off the TDD subject for a second, how do you motivate people to do their job in a different way? Let's put aside the fact that the "new" way of doing work might be better than the "old" way. Maybe it's just a "different" way with the same results... so, let's find a stupid example. <drama> I work in a burger joint flipping burgers. I have been doing that work for over 10 years, I must like it I guess. I have my techniques down. I could cook you a burger to perfection in no time with my ...
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10.09.08Talking about Agile SmellsEvery couple of months, we host a Book Club meeting. Today was our second meeting. We decided to review the book from Amr Elssamadisy: Patterns of Agile Practice Adoption. We picked it because we are practicing Agile methodologies for a few years now. We were also looking to grow our Book Club participation by not choosing a technical book. Our analysts were not thrilled about choosing Martin Fowler's Refactoring book for our first meeting. Not sure why. So, Patterns of Agile Practice Adoption was an opportunity to evaluate ourselves and take a fresh look at what's next for us. The outcome of ...
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10.08.08Collecting metrics helps you improve or are you just delaying the real work?I normally agree with the fact that collecting metrics helps you with measuring your steps towards a goal. Tracking your progress with several checkpoints along the way and revise your plan accordingly. But as long as the metrics are simple and require no complicated work to get them. Focusing more time on thinking about the collection of the right metrics or the "ideal" metrics take you away from the job at hand: getting better. And that's easy to do. Get a bunch of IT people into a room. Give them a problem. Soon enough, somebody will raise the question: "OK, we now ...