I know, long time since the last post. Life is rich. Thanks for asking. I was at Agile Open San Diego last week. Thi sis annual event where smart people get together to learn from each other. I highly recommend it
Agile in a COBOL World
Can Agile work for mainframe projects? A recent coaching client is a small company that wanted to transition their entire development department to Agile. It was an easy sell to the applications people, harder to the maintenance people (until I
Leave Some Space Between the Notes
Trust your subconscious mind to be a smart partner. If you get stuck, don’t keep slamming against the dam. Do something else for a while. Then consult someone else. Do some lateral thinking. Get outside the box. Maybe do no thinking at all. And even when things are going well, give your brain a break. Leave some space between the notes.
Testing the Hard Stuff
My favorite class to teach is TDD. I like to challenge developers to stretch their brains into new territory. They do it every day in other ways. Learning TDD is a level higher than solving algorithm and design challenges. It
Agile As-Built Design Document
Once upon a time I worked in a place that required design documents before any code was written. I won’t go into all of the pros and cons of that particular practice here. You have probably heard them all by
No Time to Unit Test
While reading Scott Bain’s great book Emergent Design, I was reminded of a story. It took place a couple of years ago inside a very tall building in a very large city. I was giving an early version of my Test