HOT TIP: Ted Young’s "Make Your Code More Testable" class is coming up August 23rd. The class is excellent (and covers much of what I talk about below), Ted is a wonderful teacher – and I scored you a discount code. Go to MakeTestable.com and use code GEEPAW when you sign up to get $75 off! Folks, I see a lot of ideas and opinions about TDD fly around, passed off as holy writ. By way of counter, I offer […]
Ten I-Statements About TDD See Full Post
How much are you able to learn on your own? For some people, reading books, articles, and going to certain training courses are all they need to keep steadily growing their skillset. For teams however, things are a bit more challenging. Retrospectives are indeed a great help, but these are still from the team’s own perspective. Sending a team to training could help as well, but how do you know what training to pick? Sometimes external help, in the form
Three Software Engineering Coaches Get Coached By GeePaw Hill (FourScouts TV) See Full Post
I’m long past on record that I think the use of auto-mockers outside of legacy rescue situations is bad policy. First, it’s easy to write "psuedo-tests" using an automocker. Psuedo-tests are tests that appear to prove things about your code that they don’t actually prove. Now, note, I’m not saying auto-mockers force one to write psuedo-tests. They don’t. But they do make it awfully easy. How? The combination of "don’t care" arguments in mocked method specs with hardwired returns makes
On (Not) Using Mocking Frameworks See Full Post
A respondent asked that I combine these three short Pro-Tip muses into one post, so here goes: Coaching Pro-Tip #1: Everything good about agility is rooted in relationship, so everything good about coaching is, too. As coaches, we usually start from negative trust, and our central priority has to be reversing that position. In the early days of most coaching engagements, one sees lots of issues, of various size and shape. The temptation to start issuing criticism and directives is
Three Short Coaching Pro-Tips See Full Post
Two recurring phrases in my work are 1) It is like this because we built it to be like this. 2) The code works for you, you don’t work for the code. Two sides of one page, phrased on the front as negative critique, and on the verso as positive encouragement. Before we dig in, I remind you of the relative unimportance of geekery to me just now. This is just respite. Please work for change and support the others
Two Mantras, One Theme See Full Post
"Path-focused design", of stories, architecture, code, is design that understands that we can only reach a distant City on the Hill by taking one stride-limited shipping step at a time. Sunday muse-day, comfort food for the geek in me and in you, but please remember, we don’t really just want to change code, we want to change the world. Stay safe, stay strong, stay angry, stay kind. Black Lives Matter. In the software design theory of the ’80s and ’90s,
Path-Focused Design See Full Post
Big-batch releases, coordinated and controlled by a central intelligence, fail, and fail frequently. Several aspects of this are fascinating, because of the interplay of hard mathematical reality with human frailty. Let’s take a swing. It’s Sunday muse-day, comfort food for the geekery-inclined. Enjoy, take respite, but don’t forget we want to change a lot more than just code. Black Lives Matter. Stay safe, stay strong, stay angry, stay kind. We can characterize releases by the number of stories in them.
Big Batch Releases See Full Post
You can put all your configuration in a shared library and eliminate just about every mis-configuration in your multi-process application. It’s not free, but it’s cheap, and it kills a lot of minor pain. Let’s take a gander. It’s Sunday geek comfort-food time. I hope you enjoy it, and I also hope you remember it’s not the most important story out there. Please keep working for change, once you’re rested. Stay safe, stay strong, stay kind, stay angry. Black Lives
Sharing Configurations See Full Post
When large teams struggle with trunk-based development (TBD) or continuous integration/deployment (CI/CD), a good strategy is to re-orient how the teams face "backsteps", moments in our workflow where a discovery forces us to re-open a stage we thought was closed. It’s been a hard stretch for those of us seeking peace and equity. I offer this geekery not to suggest it matters as much as that does, but only to give us a little respite. Stay safe, stay strong, stay
Re-Orienting Around Backsteps See Full Post
A couple of days back, I tweeted about SAFe. It created some stir on the timeline, which was great, as I got to see a lot of perspectives. I want to use that tweet as an excuse to talk about something much larger. This will be a long one. 🙂 Meanwhile, I remind you, geekery’s not as important right now as some other things. Please, stay safe, stay strong, stay angry, stay kind. Black Lives Matter. We are the only
On Agile Methods See Full Post
