Exploring Extreme Programming
We’ll look at Test-Driven Development (TDD) and Test-Commit-Revert (TCR) in terms of how they work with frequent commits to source control. Test-Driven Development (TDD) Test-Driven Development is often described with this cycle: Red-Green-Refactor (or Red-Green-Gold, as I learned from Alex Continue reading TDD, TCR, and Frequent Commits
How do you think about stories? We’ve talked about different levels of stories. Scalable stories let us gradually increase the intensity and utility of system behaviors. As before, I’ll use LinkedIn.com for examples. (This is a reverse-engineering exercise; I have Continue reading Scalable Story Examples
Stories Have Multiple Granularities User stories may seem like they are about specifications but they’re really a lightweight way to explore possibilities. Many teams get too focused on the “card” aspect, using tools to turn user stories into an atomized Continue reading Multi-Level Stories
Kent Beck’s TCR workflow experiment has generated some good discussion. Rachel Carmena has documented several TDD workflows. I’d like to add an approach that I’ve used for a while: “Call Your Shots”. Call Your Shots If you’re playing pool seriously, you don’t just Continue reading The “Call Your Shots” TDD Workflow
Teams often don’t pay enough attention to language. A team can improve its language by using what Eric Evans calls Ubiquitous Language: “A language structured around the domain model and used by all team members to connect all the activities Continue reading Ubiquitous Language – A Triple-Play for Words
Martin Fowler writes, “Refactoring is the process of changing a software system in such a way that it does not alter the external behavior of the code yet it improves its internal structure.” [Refactoring, 1999, p. xvi] But what does Continue reading Limits of Refactoring: What IS Behavior?
The vocabulary of your user stories frames the domain of discourse: what are your stories about? It’s helpful to think of “the headline” and “the rest”. “The headline” is what you’d write on an index card or as a title Continue reading User Story Vocabulary: Problem, Solution, or Widget?
How do you handle delivery of new features or new systems? The easiest way is to just add the new features or replace the existing system, with no transition, but this is not the only approach. We’ll consider several strategies Continue reading Delivery Strategies
We’ll look at two refactorings suitable for conditional statements: Pull Up Common Head of Conditional and Pull Down Common Tail of Conditional. I originally learned these as performance optimizations but they also help simplify and clarify code. In Refactoring, Martin Continue reading Refactoring: Pull Common Code from Conditional
Rather than focusing on “splitting” a story, figure out a minimal form of a story, and intensify it – make it more powerful or desirable. We’ll explore one dimension, prediction: how can we make a story better by improving how the Continue reading Intensifying Stories Through Prediction