Agile development and modest fashion
December 19, 2019Seems to be I am the trendsetter nowadays.
Or - at least, I seem to invent things at the same time they become popular.
Modest fashion - as I have always wanted to Look Really Sexy,
but never face the issue of my eyes are up here.
Answer : wear really cool and comfy clothes, which turn heads,
but people still easily find your eyes as well !
Agile development - as I find "coding blind" very un-inspiring.
Why would I want to "sit in my own chamber"
developing programs and features nobody needs, and facing all my errors and issues alone
- being stuck weeks and months on end ?
There must be a better way, right ?
I start coding by loooooong brainstorms with the End Users.
Afterwards I try to decipher what did they possibly mean, and that leads me to get inspired
and I come up with all kinds of demos to show them.
Then I iterate.
It just works best that way - short cycles, involving end users right away.
The short cycle allows the end users gain more insight on the development process,
and some of them proceed to care about the testing of the tool.
Using enthusiastic testers throughout the development
evolves into a fully tested product with no effort at all
- all due the respectful decision to involve the users already in the beginning of the project.
Planning with End Users, and Testing Immediately, with short development cycles
- but wrapping up and making final documentation only when "relatively certain"
this is where we are headed :
when all feedback is consistently positive, and no new "confusing user cases", or
"this is a feature not a bug" situations appear.
To complete the picture of short cycles agile development
- anyone who says they can code "completely alone" is just kidding themselves ..
Two pairs of eyes are better than one :
having someone else's hands on your keyboard is of course insulting,
but nothing beats the feeling of sharing a projector screen
and typing corrections together to the shared development effort.
No need to get stuck for long periods of time
- even deciphering Stack Overflow is so much easier,
when you do the hard parts with four hands instead of two.