As I mentioned a while back I quit my job at the beginning of January to take a break and check out the market. I wasn’t really sure how it was all going to work out, considering the last time I was unemployed (back in 2003) I was out of work for 6 months. As […]
For some reason I enjoy supporting multiple operating systems at home. I have a couple Debian boxes, the Powerbook, and my wife’s Windows XP machine which I use on occasion when she’s not trying to produce a PhD thesis. All these systems are in place for various reasons, but it comes down to the fact […]
How taking away the fun takes away from the software
When it comes right down to it, Scrum (or any other agile methodology for that matter) is still just a process that some people somewhere have apparently had success with. It is just a set of techniques/steps that people have used to develop software. Scrum is still subject to abuse, mis-use, mis-implementation and incorrect targeting […]
I’ve been meaning to comment about what Paul said a few weeks ago, but just haven’t had the chance. He is quite right that agile has been commoditized and is now seen as a software development process itself. People are getting “Agile” books and saying “Let’s do Agile”. Then they do what the book says. […]
In a nutshell, the point of pliant software development is this. There is no software development technique or set of techniques, that is both necessary and sufficient for successful software development. If you can think of one, let me know (but remember, I have counter-examples 🙂 )
It seems to me that “agile” methodologies like Scrum and XP are very distinctly _not_ agile (i.e. not flexible) for the individual members of the team. There are strict rules that basically dictate a 9 to 5 work day with mandatory things such as daily (at least) meetings, pair programming and unit testing that make […]
James Bach has some good things to say about “best practices”, namely that they don’t exist and we are wasting our time trying to figure out what they are. He’s a testing guy, but all his points can be applied to software development in general. My favorite quotes: “There are no best practices. By this […]
Ok, here’s the situation. There are many ways to develop software. Some of them are generally recognized as being good, some of them are generally recognized as being bad. However there are no absolutes. There are no 12-step programs for successful software development. Sorry to break it to those of you who have zealously attached […]