Month: January 2007

Testing that no errors remain

On the Test Driven Development YahooGroup, Alan Baljeu asked, “It is my impression that whenever a feature is added, there may be many things which are affected by adding that feature…. And by not considering those things, you introduce bugs into the software.” In response, he got two types of advice. One was specific suggestions of software construction techniques that can reduce the occurrence of errors by reducing the number of places that need to change when adding a new feature.

The second type was general testing advice. Alan admitted, “I don’t see a way to properly identify what new behaviour will need to be covered. I want to be sure I’m not forgetting cases, but currently I’m overlooking too many of these effects.” In other words, the current test coverage is not catching all the errors. Read More

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Make it work before you make it standard

Matt Heusser has just published a post about standards. In it, he says

So, when people rush to standards, I hold back a bit. Having a standard means saying “We believe the value of doing things the same, every time, is more valuable than the value of the lessons we will learn by experimenting with new things.”

I, too, have been puzzled by the rush to standardize. Read More

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When do we get to the stage where we can tell the client what the answer is?

I saw this question in a blog post by Mark Schenk:

About two-thirds of the way through the workshop one of the students asked “when do we get to the stage where we can tell the client what the answer is?” This literally stopped us in our tracks ““ we were so accustomed to working on the basis that complex problems have no single correct answer that we hadn’t explicitly explained this and we had bumped headlong into a prevailing management mindset.

That question struck a chord. I thought back to the days when I first learned XP. Most of the ideas and practices resonated strongly with me. The one that seemed most foreign, Test Driven Development, became a personal fixture after trying it for three days. Yep, this was the way software development should be done! It was so obvious and right, and I told everyone I knew.

They all immediately agreed and thanked me for the information. Well, not exactly. Read More

Book Report: Communication Gaps and How to Close Them

Communication Gaps and How to Close Them I attended a session with Naomi Karten at the AYE Conference last Fall, so I knew she had a lot of good things to teach me. In spite of those high expectations, I was blown away by this book. In fact, the only negative thing I can say is that there’s material for two or three books in here. Having read through it once, I know I’m going to have to re-read it in sections. Read More