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Exploring Solution Spaces, Keith Ray's blog on Software development and other topics.

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keithray@mac.com

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“Adopting XP” Article 2002 (pdf)

“ Refactoring” Article 2006

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Lucien W. Dupont

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Johanna Rothman's Managing Product Development

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Esther Derby's Insights You Can Use

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Dale Emery's Conversations with Dale

Martin Fowler's Bliki

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Don't Let Your Programmer Tests Turn Into Fairy Tales

Maybe you start out with:

void testLittleRedRidingHood()
{
    LittleGirl child = new LittleRedRidingHood();
    assertTrue(child.hasHood());
}

but then you add something more

void testLittleRedRidingHood()
{
    LittleGirl child = new LittleRedRidingHood();
    assertTrue(child.hasHood());
    assertTrue(child.hasBasket());
    Basket basket = child.getBasket();
    assertTrue(basket.hasGoodies()); 
        // we're kind of drifting away from LittleRedRidingHood now...
}

and more

void testLittleRedRidingHood()
{
    LittleGirl child = new LittleRedRidingHood();
    assertTrue(child.hasHood());
    assertTrue(child.hasBasket());
    Basket basket = child.getBasket();
    assertTrue(basket.hasGoodies());
    Wolf wolf = new BigBadWolf(); 
        // now we're really going astray...
    assertTrue(wolf.hasBigTeeth());
}

If your programmer test (a.k.a. "unit test") is telling a long story, it's probably is too long, not focused enough.

Step Into Your Agile Groove With Industrial Logic’s Greatest Hits

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Spammers are using my email address

My email address used in this blog (k e i t h r a y @ m a c . c o m, not that anti-spam measures are going to help anymore) is being used as the return-address by spammers, so my inbox is filling up with automated spam rejection messages. I am not the one trying to sell you male enhancement drugs or devices, other "discounted" drugs, nor Florida real estate.

I hardly ever use that email address anymore, so I suppose I'll be shifting over to another address and closing that one down, sooner or later. Frakking spamers. :-(

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Making a Waterfall Project Succeed

Many moths ago, I read an informative and often amusing book called It Sounded Good When We Started: A Project Manager's Guide to Working with People on Projects by Roy O'Bryan and Dwayne Phillips about (among other things) a waterfall hardware/software project whose management got disconnected from reality and the author had to take over project management to get the project back on track. Many of the techniques he used (putting the project plan on the wall as a frequently-updated information radiator, low-overhead daily updating of current and near-future planned tasks, avoiding delays between engineering activities and quality assurance activities) are also used in Agile projects.

I think of Agile development methods as including lightweight ways of incorporating feedback into the process. It turns out making a Waterfall project successful requires the same thing: frequent, timely feedback.

Step Into Your Agile Groove With Industrial Logic’s Greatest Hits

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