A Quality View Workshop to Discuss Technical Excellence
Here is a step-by-step workshop to guide a team to drawing a Quality View. Use it to discuss investment in agile technical excellence with stakeholders.
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agile
How to estimate velocity in Scrum to escape the feature factory
Poker Planning is a collaborative game… that developers often lose! Here are the original fair rules that will provide developers time for technical work.
Leverage Scrum to workaround feature-factory sprint planning
Is “Business Value” the only thing that matters for sprint plannings? Here are 3 Scrum practices that will buy developers some time for technical work!.
Scrum with component teams leads to Waterfall Agile!
This infographic presents the perils of Scrum with component teams. It pushes organizations back in Waterfall Agile, late deliveries and non-sustainable work.
7 Books About Data Driven Software Engineering
Software is mostly built according to experts opinions. These 7 data driven software engineering books show us another way to a productive and sustainable pa...
10 Pair Programming Best Practices Questions & Answers
Pair programming is not just sitting together in front of an IDE. Here are battle tested answers to common questions that will make pairing work for you.
A serious game for learning ‘built-in quality at the source’
Skip studying queuing theory! Play this 1h15 serious game for learning why building-in quality at the source leads to a productive and sustainable pace.
Reducing the risks of large organization changes with the Mikado Method - part 3
In the previous posts, I presented how to use the Mikado Method to large organization changes. Drawn from the programming world, this technique keeps a low t...
Reducing the risks of large organization changes with the Mikado Method - part 2
In the previous post, I presented both large scale code and organization changes. I highlighted how they face similar difficulties of huge Work In Progress. ...
Reducing the risks of large organization changes with the Mikado Method - part 1
Large scale agile transformations are often painful, stressful and … failed ! Mixing the Improvement Kata and the Mikado Method can make them more successful.
Why Agile transformations usually don’t work - part 4 - Transparency
This is the fourth and last post in a series about making large organizations more agile. I encourage you to start with the beginning.
Why Agile transformations usually don’t work - part 3 - What to do
This is the third post in a series about making large organizations more agile. I encourage you to start with the beginning.
Why Agile transformations usually don’t work - part 2 - The problem
This is the second post in a series about making large organizations more agile. I encourage you to start with the beginning.
Why Agile transformations usually don’t work - part 1 - The situation
In Aesop’s famous tale, a farmer kills his goose that lays a golden egg every day to get all the eggs at once. He finds no eggs, lost his goose, and remains ...
Sustainable productivity in eXtreme Programming
eXtreme programming will not improve your short term productivity. But it will drastically improve your long term productivity.
Are Software Developers Overworked or Undecided ?
During the last 15 years, I’ve worked in many different teams. Every team has its own way of working. I’ve been at places where everyone seemed busy all the ...
Mobbing around the world for 48h … who’s in ?
In Far From the mobbing crowd the Cucumber guys explain how they combined mob programming and remote work. Matt and Steve also explain that a mob is both res...
What Rails teaches us about building platforms and frameworks
More than ever, the cheapest way to build a framework is to refactor it out of a specific app.
How to run your first improvement kata
The improvement kata can solve problems that typical retrospectives fail to address. Although there is a halo of mystery around it, it’s actually not that di...
Lessons learned from running our first improvement kata
During the past few weeks, I blogged the story of our first improvement kata.
How we used the improvement kata to gain 25% of productivity - Part 5
This is the fifth (and last) post of a series of 5 about the improvement kata. If you haven’t read the beginning of the story, I recommend you start from par...
How we used the improvement kata to gain 25% of productivity - Part 4
This is the fourth post on a series of 5 about the improvement kata. If you haven’t read the beginning of the story, I recommend you start from part 1.
How we used the improvement kata to gain 25% of productivity - Part 3
This is the third post on a series of 5 about the improvement kata. If you haven’t read the beginning of the story, I recommend you start from part 1.
How we used the improvement kata to gain 25% of productivity - Part 2
In my previous post, I described the productivity issue our team was facing. How retrospectives did not work, and how I started looking at the improvement ka...
How we used the improvement kata to gain 25% of productivity - Part 1
If you are serious about continuous improvement, you should learn the improvement kata.
eXtreme eXtreme Programming (2017)
What would XP look like if it was invented today ?
5 Remote energizer tips that will make your remote retrospectives rock
Do you remember how people who are not used to the phone tend to shout in it, for the message to get far ? Read on and I’ll explain how this silly habit will...
Don’t stick to TDD’s Red-Green-Refactor loop to the letter
As long as you are writing your tests before your code and doing regular refactoring, you are doing TDD !
Most Scrum teams are not agile
Being agile is about adapting to change and continuously improving. I’ve seen (and been) in too many teams blindly following Scrum (Scrum Zombies) without fi...
A Straightforward Way to Scale to More Than 1 Scrum Team
How come the “agile scaling” landscape seems so daunting and bloated ?
Incremental architecture, a cure against architecture astronauts
Back in 2001, when I started to code for a living, fresh out of school, I was mainly doing a form of cowboy coding. After a few months of maintaining my own ...
Overclocking a Scrum Team to 12
From Wikipedia : Overclocking is configuration of computer hardware components to operate faster than certified by the original manufacturer …
Video for our talk ‘Extreme Practices’ is on YouTube
As I already wrote about before, my colleague Ahmad from Beirut gave a talk at Agile Tour Beirut about how we adopted XP to a distributed team at work. I was...
How to kill Scrum Zombies ?
First of all, what is that ? Usually, Scrum zombies go in groups, and quite often, you’ll find a full team of them :
ReXP : Remote eXtreme Programming
My colleague Ahmad from Beirut gave a talk at Agile Tour Beirut on Saturday about how we adopted XP to a distributed team at work. I gave him a hand and play...
Kudo Boxes for Kids
How do you get your kids to participate with housekeeping ? I guess that’s the dream of all parents. As so, we’ve tried quite a lot of tactics throughout the...
How to Grow a Culture Book
Have you read valve’s Handbook for new employees ?
Real Developers Ship
If you are a developer and you are not shipping, you’re in the danger zone. I believe it’s mostly your fault, and it’s time to act.
Pair Programming, From Pain Zone To Skill Zone
We’re doing pair programming almost all the the time in our team. A few weeks ago, we went to Devoxx Paris, and 2 team mates used pair programming at a hands...
How We Decentralized Our Company’s Training Program
Maybe your company too has a development program you can use to track and organize your training path. That’s already great ! It is often not perfect though....
Scrum teams do not need A Scrum Master
We don’t have an official scrum master in our team anymore. We now have 7 ! A different team member assumes the full scrum master role at every sprint.
Stop feeling like a kid every time you ask a day off
Most companies don’t have unlimited vacations. Most likely, if you are an employee, your days off need to be validated by your boss. If you are like me, this...
Are Most Agile Teams Doing Continuous Improvement The Silly Way ?
A few weeks ago, as I was looking the internet for Lean principles to improve our way of working, I fell upon this book Petit guide de management lean a l’us...
Recipes For An Agile Workspace
Nowadays, start-ups and tech companies seem to be competing for the most beautiful offices in order to attract top talents.
How To Keep Programming When Assigned A Management Job
Remaining a competent developer is a career long effort, if you stop programming, you’ll loose it ! As time goes, we are regularly offered pushed into manage...
How We Started Exploratory Testing
Manual testing is important. Here is how we got to love exploratory testing.
How To Write Good Performance Stories
If you’re having difficulties writing good performance related stories for your project, that’s no surprise ! We’ve been through the same troubles and we fou...
The technical debt ponzi scheme
Madoff would have been better off managing software projects than investing on Wall Street !
Binary Hand Planning Poker
At work, we are using as we all have Android phones, we are using the Scrum Poker Cards app to do our planning poker.
Feedback On 360° Feedback Session
If you remove your job, you are promoted. (a classic lean quote)
A Plan For Technical Debt (Lean Software Development Part 7)
The sad truth :
You don’t have to ask your boss for a fast build (Lean Software Development part 6)
A slow build costs money. I mean it costs a whole lot of money all the time !
The Agile Change Management Viral Hack
We just discovered a hack to spread agile (BDD by the way) through an organization. It works provided :
Trellospectives : Remote Retrospectives with Trello
As a distributed team working from Paris and Beirut, after pair programming, it was time for our retrospectives to get remote !
What Optimization Should We Work On (Lean Software Development Part 5)
At work, we are building a risk aggregation system. As it’s dealing with a large bunch of numbers, it’s a huge heap of optimizations. Once that its most stan...
Measure The Business Value of Your Spikes and Take High Payoff Risks (Lean Software Development Part 4)
Lately at work, we’ve unexpectedly been asked by other teams if they could use our product for something that we had not forseen. As we are not sure whether ...
From Zero to Pair Programming Hero
In my team at Murex, we’ve been doing Pair programming 75% of our time for the past 9 months now.
Can agile teams commit?
Making commitments to deliver software is always difficult. Whatever the margin you might take, it invariably seems wrong afterward …
Performance is a feature
Now that is a widespread title for blog articles ! Just search Google, and you’ll find “Performance is a feature” in Coding Horror and others.
How to measure your speed with your business value ? (Lean Software Development Part 3)
There is a french idiom that basicaly is
Why eXtreme Programming works ? (Lean Software Development part 2)
I’ve been programming for quite some time now, in different teams, using various methodologies. I also had the luck to do XP for at least 3 different project...
The Flow book summary (lean software development part 1)
A few weeks ago, I read The principles of product development flow from Donald G. Reinertsen.
Enabling agile practices and elephant taming
Everybody knows about the agile software development promise “Regularly and continuously deliver value”. This is how it is supposed to work :
My new gem for creating rspec proxies
I already wrote a lot about test proxies (here, here and here).
How we introduced efficient agile retrospectives
6 months ago, our team started to run systematic iteration retrospectives. Within these 6 months, our team became more agile than ever. Running efficient ret...
My humble advices about how to write maintainable tests
I love writing automated tests … or rather, I hate having to work in untested code. I find it makes my life unnecessarily stressful. On the other hand, the c...
Sprints are not sprints
I really don’t know why Scrum Sprints are called sprints ! From my experience, the number one mistake made by team starting with Scrum is to work as quickly ...
www.agileavatars.com : order customized avatar magnets
As agile and lean methodologies are gaining some place inside the workplace, especially in large corporations, I heard and saw quite a few teams struggling w...
Scaling Agile
I have worked in small agile teams, and it does indeed work a lot better than the classical waterfall & hierarchic environment. When speaking with other ...
Collecting agile and XP best practices
There is a huge difference between reading about agile software developpment, and being an agile developper or team. There are a lot of practical best practi...
testing
A complete workshop for your team to see what’s a good test strategy
Teams often disagree about what is a good test strategy! So here is an all-in workshop to capture practices, define testing terms and agree on improvements.
How to make your team learn TDD for Legacy Code, and love it!
Legacy code is where TDD is the trickiest. Start practicing the gilded rose kata with your team today! Your teammates will soon feel safe to apply TDD for le...
Make Testing Legacy Code Viral: Mikado Method and Test Data Builders
When testing legacy code, combine the test data builder pattern with the mikado method. This snowballs into more and more objects that are easy to set up in ...
Why Machine Learning in Software Engineering #3: The Future
There are many opportunities for Machine Learning in Software Engineering: testing, product management, processes… It might even set a sustainable pace!
Why Machine Learning in Software Engineering #2: An Experiment
A Machine Learning in Software Engineering intern identified critical tests to run. He also confirmed the open-closed principle, modular code, and small-comm...
When is testing using mocks still a good idea ?
In the previous 7 articles of this series, I’ve tried my best get rid of mocks. I’m pretty sure that using these techniques will get you a long way out of mo...
Get rid of mock maintenance with full fledged in-memory fakes
Last week’s post was about how hexagonal architecture results in fast, mock-free tests around your core domain. Unfortunately, that does not remove all mocks...
Avoid mocks and test your core domain faster with Hexagonal Architecture
As I’ve written in my last few posts, we can get a long way to avoid mocks with small scale coding best practices. Unfortunately, when systems reach a certai...
How Custom Assertion Matchers will keep mocks away
Custom assertions are a handy compromise alternative to mocks when we don’t have the time to refactor to a functional style.
How to use Test Data Builders to avoid mocks and keep your tests clear
We are sometimes tempted to use mocks to shortcut test data initialization. Unfortunately, excessive mocking makes tests difficult to maintain. As Uncle Bob ...
Immutable Value Objects vs Mocks : Fizz Buzz
In my previous post I explained how Immutable Value Objects help us to avoid mocks. In this post, I’ll illustrate this in practice with real code.
How Immutable Value Objects fight Mocks
Excessive use of mocks makes tests very painful to maintain. If we stick painful mocks for too long, we’ll end up abandoning unit testing. Eventually, the sy...
Careless Mocking Considered Harmful
💡 Mock hell : when excessive use of test mocks makes refactoring extremely slow or difficult.
What Rails teaches us about building platforms and frameworks
More than ever, the cheapest way to build a framework is to refactor it out of a specific app.
Lessons learned from running our first improvement kata
During the past few weeks, I blogged the story of our first improvement kata.
How we used the improvement kata to gain 25% of productivity - Part 5
This is the fifth (and last) post of a series of 5 about the improvement kata. If you haven’t read the beginning of the story, I recommend you start from par...
Forget unit tests, only fast tests matter
Don’t worry if your unit tests go to the DB, that might not be so bad.
Don’t stick to TDD’s Red-Green-Refactor loop to the letter
As long as you are writing your tests before your code and doing regular refactoring, you are doing TDD !
Speed up the TDD feedback loop with better assertion messages
There is a rather widespread TDD practice to have a single assertion per test. The goal is to have faster feedback loop while coding. When a test fails, it c...
20 Bad Excuses For Not Writing Unit Tests
I guess we always find excuses to keep on with our bad habits, don’t we? Stephen King
From apprentice to master, how to learn TDD (Test Driven Development)
I started to learn Test Driven Development a long time ago. Since then, even though I’m still not a master, it’s been my most useful programming skill, by fa...
How to mock your browser’s timezone with Jasmine and MomentJS
Last week, I’ve been working at adding a distributed countdown to my Online Planning Poker App. As our team works from Paris and Beirut, I wanted to unit tes...
5 minutes hack to speed up RSpec in Rails 5 using in-memory SQLite
Here is the story : you have a Rails 5 app that uses RSpec, but your RSpec suite is getting slower and slower to run. You’ve already considered some solution...
Flavors of TDD
During the years doing some coding dojos with the same circle of people, I came up with my own style of practicing TDD. Lately, I had the chance to do a pair...
How NOT to use mocks, my talk at Paris.rb
As I already wrote about, mocks can be trecherous … I gave a talk about how to avoid them last tuesday at Paris.rb meetup. Here are the slides.
How We Started Exploratory Testing
Manual testing is important. Here is how we got to love exploratory testing.
The Agile Change Management Viral Hack
We just discovered a hack to spread agile (BDD by the way) through an organization. It works provided :
Performance is a feature
Now that is a widespread title for blog articles ! Just search Google, and you’ll find “Performance is a feature” in Coding Horror and others.
Enabling agile practices and elephant taming
Everybody knows about the agile software development promise “Regularly and continuously deliver value”. This is how it is supposed to work :
Cucumber_tricks gem : my favorite Gherkin and Cucumber tricks
I just compiled my Gherkin and Cucumber goodies into a gem. It’s called cucumber_tricks and the source code can be found on github. It’s also tested on travi...
My new gem for creating rspec proxies
I already wrote a lot about test proxies (here, here and here).
My humble advices about how to write maintainable tests
I love writing automated tests … or rather, I hate having to work in untested code. I find it makes my life unnecessarily stressful. On the other hand, the c...
How I organized my javascript assets in Rails
Lately, I have been introducing javascript and coffeescript in www.mes-courses.fr (with structural architecture issues as a side effect, but that’s another s...
RSpec Matchers Combinators 2 : spec_combos gem
I already wrote about my RSpec Matchers Combinators, I decided to extract them into the spec_combos gem.
RSpec matchers combinators
Rspec matchers are a lot like predicates. Predicates that can talk … The good thing about predicates, as anybody who has done a bit of functional programming...
Spork alternative compatible with cucumber
Version 1.3.0 of Cucumber droped spork support, so I had to find something else. I am using Guard setup with rspec and Cucumber for my Rails app.
Simplest way to speed up rspec with in memory sqlite db
There are already a lot of articles explaining how to setup an in memory SQLite database to speed up Rails specs or unit tests. Most of them explain how to c...
Jasmine and coffeescript setup for rails
As I started to write more javascript code in my rails app, it became obvious that I should be testing it ! I wanted to use jasmine and coffeescript. I searc...
Ditching autotest for guard
I have been using autotest for 2 years, and it’s been great ! The first time I ran it I thought “This rocks !” and I have always been using it since …
Be careful not to bundle FakeWeb in production
For testing purpose, I added FakeWeb to my app. Later, I deployed it to a staging env on heroku to find out that my scrapper started to fail with some strang...
Matching meta tags with Capybara 2
As I updated my bundle, some capybara have_selector(…) matches started to fail. Here was the message :
Hitting the middle ground between classicist and mockist TDD
From Martin Fowler’s point of view, I must have been a mockist. With using mocks extensively comes quite a few advantages :
Display full backtraces in rspec
I use rspec a lot. I thinks it’s a great testing framework.
Don’t repeat names in cucumber scenarios
Update 06/12/2014: I created a gem for this and other things
If new cucumber transform breaks everyhing …
After reading The cucumber book I decided to add clever cucumber transforms but steps started to fail all over the place … Even completly unrelated scenarios...
How to stub around a call to the original method with rspec ?
Update 05/23/2014: I created a gem for this, read an introduction here
The poor man’s memory profiling
While working on www.mes-courses.fr, a background scheduled task that was running fine on heroku started to fail with out of memory errors. After searching a...
Windows licker like with C#
In Growing object-oriented software guided by tests they use a java library called Window Licker to pilot a gui running in test thread. Next time I started a...
stub_model and mock_model
I decided to stop using stub_model and mock_model. I do not use them enough to get fluent with them. Every time I have to deal with them, something breaks in...
How to test a class using an implementation helper ?
Suppose you have some duplicated code in the Foo & Bar classes. You managed to extracted this code in a helper class. Fine, the helper class can now be t...
Automaticaly rollback static overrides when testing legacy code
When working with legacy code, writing tests requires to exploit seams to -hack- inject custom behaviour. In Working Effectively with Legacy Code, Michael Fe...
ruby
When is testing using mocks still a good idea ?
In the previous 7 articles of this series, I’ve tried my best get rid of mocks. I’m pretty sure that using these techniques will get you a long way out of mo...
Get rid of mock maintenance with full fledged in-memory fakes
Last week’s post was about how hexagonal architecture results in fast, mock-free tests around your core domain. Unfortunately, that does not remove all mocks...
Avoid mocks and test your core domain faster with Hexagonal Architecture
As I’ve written in my last few posts, we can get a long way to avoid mocks with small scale coding best practices. Unfortunately, when systems reach a certai...
How Custom Assertion Matchers will keep mocks away
Custom assertions are a handy compromise alternative to mocks when we don’t have the time to refactor to a functional style.
How to use Test Data Builders to avoid mocks and keep your tests clear
We are sometimes tempted to use mocks to shortcut test data initialization. Unfortunately, excessive mocking makes tests difficult to maintain. As Uncle Bob ...
Immutable Value Objects vs Mocks : Fizz Buzz
In my previous post I explained how Immutable Value Objects help us to avoid mocks. In this post, I’ll illustrate this in practice with real code.
5 minutes hack to speed up RSpec in Rails 5 using in-memory SQLite
Here is the story : you have a Rails 5 app that uses RSpec, but your RSpec suite is getting slower and slower to run. You’ve already considered some solution...
Verify the Big O Complexity of Ruby Code in RSpec
It might be possible to discover performance regressions before running your long and large scale benchmarks !
How NOT to use mocks, my talk at Paris.rb
As I already wrote about, mocks can be trecherous … I gave a talk about how to avoid them last tuesday at Paris.rb meetup. Here are the slides.
How to prepare a new Ruby env in 3 minutes using Docker
One or two weeks ago, I registered to the Paris Ruby Workshop Meetup and needed a Ruby env. I have been using Vagrant quite a lot to isolate my different dev...
Most Common Ways To Speed up an algorithm
Algorithms are hard, and making them fast is even harder … But there are shortcuts that work quite often !
Mining GitHub For New Hires
In search of an experienced software engineer
Setting up Octopress with Vagrant and rbenv
I recently got hands on an abandonned laptop that was better than the one I was currently using for my personnal hackings, so I decided to switch to this one...
Cucumber_tricks gem : my favorite Gherkin and Cucumber tricks
I just compiled my Gherkin and Cucumber goodies into a gem. It’s called cucumber_tricks and the source code can be found on github. It’s also tested on travi...
My new gem for creating rspec proxies
I already wrote a lot about test proxies (here, here and here).
Better error messages when testing html views
When testing html views, either from RSpec or from Cucumber, XPath can be really helpful to quickly find expected elements.
Auchandirect-ScrAPI : an unofficial API Ruby Gem
Every brands should provide an API for developpers … unfortunately, it far from the truth right now. A few years ago, when I started my mes-courses.fr side p...
Online store scrapping DSL gem
Since I decided to stop Mes Courses to focus on AgileAvatars, I have been extracting open source gems from the code base. The last one is Storexplore : a dec...
RSpec Matchers Combinators 2 : spec_combos gem
I already wrote about my RSpec Matchers Combinators, I decided to extract them into the spec_combos gem.
RSpec matchers combinators
Rspec matchers are a lot like predicates. Predicates that can talk … The good thing about predicates, as anybody who has done a bit of functional programming...
Ruby regex captures oneliner
Surely this post is nothing new for experienced ruby developpers, but I found it so handy, that I thought it deserved a post of its own though. The problem i...
Spork alternative compatible with cucumber
Version 1.3.0 of Cucumber droped spork support, so I had to find something else. I am using Guard setup with rspec and Cucumber for my Rails app.
Simplest way to speed up rspec with in memory sqlite db
There are already a lot of articles explaining how to setup an in memory SQLite database to speed up Rails specs or unit tests. Most of them explain how to c...
Jasmine and coffeescript setup for rails
As I started to write more javascript code in my rails app, it became obvious that I should be testing it ! I wanted to use jasmine and coffeescript. I searc...
Ditching autotest for guard
I have been using autotest for 2 years, and it’s been great ! The first time I ran it I thought “This rocks !” and I have always been using it since …
Be careful not to bundle FakeWeb in production
For testing purpose, I added FakeWeb to my app. Later, I deployed it to a staging env on heroku to find out that my scrapper started to fail with some strang...
Matching meta tags with Capybara 2
As I updated my bundle, some capybara have_selector(…) matches started to fail. Here was the message :
Hitting the middle ground between classicist and mockist TDD
From Martin Fowler’s point of view, I must have been a mockist. With using mocks extensively comes quite a few advantages :
Display full backtraces in rspec
I use rspec a lot. I thinks it’s a great testing framework.
Don’t repeat names in cucumber scenarios
Update 06/12/2014: I created a gem for this and other things
If new cucumber transform breaks everyhing …
After reading The cucumber book I decided to add clever cucumber transforms but steps started to fail all over the place … Even completly unrelated scenarios...
Rubular: a really usefull ruby regex tool
Working with regular expressions is always a try and fail and retry … experience. It really helps to have an interactive tool with which to tune up your expr...
How to stub around a call to the original method with rspec ?
Update 05/23/2014: I created a gem for this, read an introduction here
The poor man’s memory profiling
While working on www.mes-courses.fr, a background scheduled task that was running fine on heroku started to fail with out of memory errors. After searching a...
TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS when changing ssl requirements
While I was trying to enforce no ssl on a page of www.mes-courses.fr with Rack::SslEnforcer, I lost a few hours trying to fix a TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS error … Th...
How to install a patched ruby interpreter with rbenv and ruby-build
A background scheduled task I am trying to run on heroku is failing because it gets out of memory. I needed to use a ruby memory profiler to understand exact...
Cloning an rbenv version
There is no doc about this, but it turns out to be very simple, just copy the version directory :
Rails autoload good practices
I started using rails autoload to load files in my lib folder of http://www.mes-courses.fr. Before that, I had been using hand written require statements, an...
Rails url_helpers mixup when using rails engines
I just tried to integrate the blogit rails engine directly inside www.mes-courses.fr. Up till now, I was using a separated radiant app to deal with the blog ...
Setting up Postgre 9.1 for rails development
I am using rails to build www.mes-courses.fr. I use ubuntu for my development os, and heroku for deployment. As heroku enforces the usage of Postgre, I chose...
Ruby thirdparties best practices
I am just finishing migrating www.mes-courses.fr from rails 2 to rails 3, and I can assure that I learnt these lessons the hard way …
stub_model and mock_model
I decided to stop using stub_model and mock_model. I do not use them enough to get fluent with them. Every time I have to deal with them, something breaks in...
Including Rails.application.routes.url_helpers from a module
When I migrated from rails 2.0 to rails 3.0, I had to change inclusion of ActionController::UrlWriter to Rails.application.routes.url_helpers. I started to g...
Using stock ruby with rbenv
While migrating to ruby 1.9, I started using rbenv. I was wondering how it would handle my stock ubuntu ruby 1.8. It works out of the box with the rbenv “sys...
Order of execution of before blocks in RSpec
I discovered that before blocks in RSpec’s examples are executed in the order they are declared. There is no great deal about it, but it can be useful when u...
external gem rails generator not found
When trying to use devise 1.0.11 with rails 2.3.8 and bundler 1.0.10, I got the error could not find generator ... when running bundle exec script/generate d...
Don’t forget the heroku stack
Don’t waste your time as I did !
Rspec messes up stubs and expectations
Here is an example showing the issue :
Using gems instead of rails plugins on heroku
Heroku is great, you can have a rails app running live in a few minutes ! There are still a few tricky points you’ve got to sort out a little differently. On...
coaching
A Quality View Workshop to Discuss Technical Excellence
Here is a step-by-step workshop to guide a team to drawing a Quality View. Use it to discuss investment in agile technical excellence with stakeholders.
How to avoid the “large-scale impact” pitfall
Applying willpower to have a “wider than team” impact on an organization is a recipe for burnout! Check the “Local Actions, Global Impact” strategy instead.
A “Slow Code Retreat” to be less in a hurry
“Developers will always have more work than time” We can race our TODO lists or accept and slow down NOW. The “Slow Code Retreat” helps us do that!
A complete workshop for your team to see what’s a good test strategy
Teams often disagree about what is a good test strategy! So here is an all-in workshop to capture practices, define testing terms and agree on improvements.
How to make TCR evolutionary design practice sessions irresistible
Getting participants in a TCR code kata exercise seems complicated! Yet, given what TCR is, these sessions can radiate genuine fun and direct applicability!
A Surprising Way How To Teach Evolutionary Design
Evolutionary Design might be the most valuable yet impenetrable XP practice. Use TCR to practice baby-steps coding, the cornerstone of Evolutionary Design.
How to help a team to find their preferred mob programming rules?
A dysfunctional mob makes coaching impossible! So here is a workshop for team members to try and find the mob programming rules that work for them.
How to handle “TDD does not work in real life!” during code katas
Doing code katas to learn real-life TDD can at first look like a scam to many developers. So here are three techniques to maintain a constructive mood.
How to estimate velocity in Scrum to escape the feature factory
Poker Planning is a collaborative game… that developers often lose! Here are the original fair rules that will provide developers time for technical work.
Leverage Scrum to workaround feature-factory sprint planning
Is “Business Value” the only thing that matters for sprint plannings? Here are 3 Scrum practices that will buy developers some time for technical work!.
5 Whole-Team Workshops To Increase Developers’ Role In Sprint Planning
Run these activities with the whole team to increase not only the developers’ role in sprint plannings, but also collaboration, engagement, and value creation!
3 Questions To Let-Go Technical Agile Coaching Measures
Let’s give up trying to measure technical agile coaching! Instead, use these 3 liberating questions to self-assess how well you are doing at any moment.
How to measure (and report 😢) your tech agile coaching effectiveness?
Technical agile coaching is complex. Many organizations would track our work with inadequate measures. Here is how hypothesis-driven goals can keep us safe.
How the pandemic made us discover better ways of coaching
This pandemic year has transformed the way we do technical agile coaching. It’s now more asynchronous, self-service, gamified, open, and inclusive!
5 technical agile coaching tips to fight exhaustion from laggards
Trying to coach laggards will exhaust you. Here are 5 tips to deal with them, sustain you, and make you spend your energy where it matters.
How to coach a team that has been burnt by bad TDD
Once exposed to bad TDD, teams are a challenge for any technical agile coach. Instead of trying to sell them TDD, XP, or whatever, fix their pains!
How to make change stick by training part-time technical agile coaches
Too often, teams revert to their old habits when the technical agile coach leaves. Training part-time coaches is a powerful way to make the change stick.
How to coach developers to get a chat with their product experts
Getting these crucial chats with product experts is often a brain-teaser! Let’s show devs how to trigger short, practical, immediate Example-Mapping sessions.
7 collaboration ideas to make remote pair programming more fun
Prolonged remote-only work can be depressing. Here are 7 remote-pairing collaboration ideas to inject fun into the teams we are coaching!
Introduce Team G Morning Learning Sessions to Coach the Growth Mindset
Keeping our skills up to date is challenging. Remote work is a perfect excuse to run group learning sessions and to demo growth mindset to our coachees.
5 pair-programming tips and tricks for coaching a remote team
Remote work is an extra challenge for technical agile coaching. Here are 5 opportunistic remote pair-programming tips and tricks to show a better way of work...
How the Samman Method helps to sell technical coaching internally?
Emily Bache wrote an accessible guide for technical agile coaches. Here is my review, plus my bonus section: How to sell your technical coaching services int...
7 tricks to influence a team resisting to change its technical habits
There are many ways to manage team resistance. Here are some of the technical agile coach’s tricks that influence: testimonies, experiments, and more!
How to deliver a remote training with code-katas and randori in pairs
Randori-in-pairs code-katas maximize learning thanks to code and interaction. With git-handover and breakout rooms, it becomes a practical remote training.
How to make your team learn TDD for Legacy Code, and love it!
Legacy code is where TDD is the trickiest. Start practicing the gilded rose kata with your team today! Your teammates will soon feel safe to apply TDD for le...
3 Good and Bad Ways to Write Team Coding Standards and Conventions
Writing team coding standards and conventions is hard but critical. Brainstorming doesn’t work, so let’s use asynchronous decision making or mob programming!
The story about how we do Agile Technical Coaching
You will not find an Agile Technical Coach Job Description. This job is more invented than found. Here is the story of how we came to practice it at Murex.
How to run a Remote-First Open-Space Technology Un-Conference
Open-space technology un-conference is a powerful self-organized workshop. Here is a guide to making it remote-first, and even more inclusive!
Let’s give Remote-First Open-Space Technology Un-Conferences a try!
Open-space technology un-conference is a powerful self-organized workshop. Here is the story of how we made it remote-first to grow a community of practice.
Reducing the risks of large organization changes with the Mikado Method - part 3
In the previous posts, I presented how to use the Mikado Method to large organization changes. Drawn from the programming world, this technique keeps a low t...
Reducing the risks of large organization changes with the Mikado Method - part 2
In the previous post, I presented both large scale code and organization changes. I highlighted how they face similar difficulties of huge Work In Progress. ...
Reducing the risks of large organization changes with the Mikado Method - part 1
Large scale agile transformations are often painful, stressful and … failed ! Mixing the Improvement Kata and the Mikado Method can make them more successful.
Why Agile transformations usually don’t work - part 4 - Transparency
This is the fourth and last post in a series about making large organizations more agile. I encourage you to start with the beginning.
Why Agile transformations usually don’t work - part 3 - What to do
This is the third post in a series about making large organizations more agile. I encourage you to start with the beginning.
Why Agile transformations usually don’t work - part 2 - The problem
This is the second post in a series about making large organizations more agile. I encourage you to start with the beginning.
Why Agile transformations usually don’t work - part 1 - The situation
In Aesop’s famous tale, a farmer kills his goose that lays a golden egg every day to get all the eggs at once. He finds no eggs, lost his goose, and remains ...
5 SPA Conference takeaways that could make us better software professionals
Last week, my colleague Ahmad Atwi and I went to the London SPA Conference to give our Remote eXtreme Practice talk.
How to kill Scrum Zombies ?
First of all, what is that ? Usually, Scrum zombies go in groups, and quite often, you’ll find a full team of them :
Pair Programming, From Pain Zone To Skill Zone
We’re doing pair programming almost all the the time in our team. A few weeks ago, we went to Devoxx Paris, and 2 team mates used pair programming at a hands...
The Agile Change Management Viral Hack
We just discovered a hack to spread agile (BDD by the way) through an organization. It works provided :
event storming
How to make a team facilitate agile architecture workshops
In The Serverless Mindset, I blogged about Event Storming and Example Mapping for agile architecture. How do you coach teams to adopt these workshops?
5 Whole-Team Workshops To Increase Developers’ Role In Sprint Planning
Run these activities with the whole team to increase not only the developers’ role in sprint plannings, but also collaboration, engagement, and value creation!
21 More Event Storming Tips - part 3 - Anti and Meta Patterns
Even more Event Storming tips! 3 will help you to avoid the mistakes we did. The last 2 are the recipe to learn more tips by yourself!
21 More Event Storming Tips - Part 2 - Facilitation and Existing Code
More Event Storming tips! 4 tips to delight attendees with fantastic facilitation. 3 tips about animating an Event Storming when there is existing code.
21 More Event Storming Tips - Part 1 - Understanding and Rhythm
You’ve just invited 10 people to join your 8h Event Storming. Here are 9 Event Storming tips to maximize knowledge sharing and the use of everyone’s time.
First rule of DDD is: let’s not talk about DDD
DDD jargon is a domain expert repellent! Let’s not talk about DDD, but instead, start engaging domain experts in doing DDD workshops!
Organization refactoring: Event Storming and DDD injection - part 2
The key to successful DDD and Event Storming injection is to wait for the perfect challenge. Otherwise, we’ll have no choice but to hack the organization!
Organization refactoring: Event Storming and DDD injection - part 1
Injecting DDD or Event Storming in your organization can be tricky. Here are techniques to onboard your domain experts, one step at a time!
How to fight priority paralysis with Event Storming and DDD
Where should we start? It’s easy to fall into priority paralysis as you envision an ambitious product. Let’s use DDD Event Storming to scope your next step!
Sustain Collective Intelligence with Event Storming
Event Storming builds collective intelligence. We can keep it alive if we continue to work closely together and regularly repeat Event Storming.
7 tactics that will make your DDD Design-Level Event Storming pay-off
What should we do after a DDD Design-Level Event Storming? How do we capture shared knowledge? How do we make the workshop more effective? Find answers here!
Detailed agenda for a DDD Design-Level Event Storming - part 2
The most valuable activities in a DDD Design-Level Event Storming are UX and Aggregates explorations. Here is a step by step agenda that will lead us there.
Detailed agenda for a DDD Design-Level Event Storming - part 1
Running a DDD Design-Level Event Storming is not rocket science! It’s still crucial to start the right way: with domain events and the Picture that explains ...
Why should we use Design Level Event Storming for DDD?
Design Level Event Storming is a collaborative design workshop. Use it to build and share the design of critical parts of systems using Event Sourcing and DDD.
Is XP the middle child of Agile?
In this podcast, you’ll learn about eXtreme Programming. Where did it come from? What are its differences between XP and Scrum or Kanban? How things like DDD...
The Similarities between Machine Learning and DDD
We discovered that DDD concepts like Event Storming, Bounded Contexts, Ubiquitous Language, Entities and Values are useful in machine learning projects.
5 Views to Capture the Outputs of an Event Storming workshop
Recording the full Event Storming board is a waste of time. Here are examples of quick, focused, and digestible views that capture the board’s knowledge.
How to Capture the Outputs of an Event Storming Workshop?
Event Storming builds ‘shared understanding’. This is often not enough to bring key action-oriented people in! Here are concrete techniques to convince them.
Event Storming lessons from Post-It haters
After going through why Event Storming uses post-its, we’ll go over alternatives. We’ll then see how to use these techniques to improve Event Storming!
How to use Event Storming to introduce Domain Driven Design
Although incredibly effective, DDD is overlooked by developers because of its abstractness. Event Storming is a great way to introduce DDD without naming it!
How to max out DDD Big Picture Event Storming with other Workshops
DDD Big Picture Event Storming is a prelude and catalyst to other workshops. Ex: Design Level Event Storming, Example Mapping, Story Mapping & Impact Map...
Feature Teams vs Component Teams? Decide with Event Storming and DDD
Team organization is tough. Event Storming builds enough shared knowledge and architecture for successful team re-organization workshops.
Rewrite vs Refactor? Get Insights from Event Storming and DDD
With legacy code, rewrite vs refactor is a valuable but tricky question. Here is an Event Storming activity that shows how far we are from the target.
Using Event Storming and DDD to prototype (micro)services and NFRs - 2
With Event Storming and DDD, we can draft services boundaries and NFR prototypes. In this post sequel, we’ll see that microservices are no silver bullet.
Using Event Storming and DDD to prototype (micro)services and NFRs - 1
DDD Big Picture Event Storming is a great support to draft (micro)services boundaries and NFR prototypes. Let’s see how to with this workshop activity.
How to use Event Storming and DDD for Evolutionary Architecture
Big Picture Event Storming and DDD let us share an architecture vision. Here is a way to realize it through evolutionary architecture and emergent design.
Focus on the Core with Event Storming and DDD Domain Relationships - 2
The advanced DDD Domain Relationships shine as they keep the core upstream. Here is the end of an Event Storming activity to pick the best relationships.
Focus on the Core with Event Storming and DDD Domain Relationships - 1
Bounded Contexts are a key aspect of DDD. Here is a DDD and Event Storming activity to find what kind of domain relationships will ensure focus on core conte...
Ensure core contexts have the upper hand with Event Storming and DDD
Event Storming and DDD can identify bounded contexts. In a bounded contexts relationship, one side will have the upper hand (be upstream). Core contexts shou...
Build or Buy Software? Identify your core bounded contexts with Event Storming and DDD
Event Storming and DDD are great at identifying bounded contexts. It’s even more valuable to identify the core contexts to focus on, and the generic ones to ...
Drafting a Functional Architecture Vision with Event Storming and DDD
We did the 1st phase of DDD Big Picture Event Storming. It’s time to build on the shared knowledge to draft a functional architecture vision. All in just a f...
4 tips that will make your DDD Big Picture Event Storming successful
Although not rocket science, running a DDD Big Picture Event Storming can be tricky. Here are 4 hard won tips that will make your first workshop successful.
Detailed Agenda of a DDD Big Picture Event Storming - Part 3
Thanks to massive knowledge sharing, a DDD Big Picture Event Storming is the 1st step to collaboratively draft a Rough Design Up Front. Here are its last ste...
Detailed Agenda of a DDD Big Picture Event Storming - Part 2
The DDD Big Picture Event Storming is a creative game. It sticks to the classic open-explore-close flow. Here is the second part of its detailed agenda.
Detailed Agenda of a DDD Big Picture Event Storming - Part 1
Kick starting a project with a DDD Big Picture Event Storming can be chaotic. Here is a detailed agenda and a sample briefing to set it on the right track.
How to prepare the room for a DDD Big Picture Event Storming
Running a DDD Big Picture Event Storming is a great way to kick start a project. Fortunately, it only requires common supplies. Here is a detailed checklist.
How to prepare a DDD Big Picture Event Storming workshop
The massive domain knowledge sharing of a Big Picture Event Storming unlocks DDD. Good preparation makes running one easy. Here’s the 1st of a 4 posts step b...
architecture
A Quality View Workshop to Discuss Technical Excellence
Here is a step-by-step workshop to guide a team to drawing a Quality View. Use it to discuss investment in agile technical excellence with stakeholders.
A Surprising Way How To Teach Evolutionary Design
Evolutionary Design might be the most valuable yet impenetrable XP practice. Use TCR to practice baby-steps coding, the cornerstone of Evolutionary Design.
How to make a team facilitate agile architecture workshops
In The Serverless Mindset, I blogged about Event Storming and Example Mapping for agile architecture. How do you coach teams to adopt these workshops?
3 Things You Need to Master to Get Your Team Ready to Work With Serverless
In this guest post, serverless expert Marco Troisi highlights 3 key skills to go serverless, and how, as coaches, we can help a team to learn them.
How to fight priority paralysis with Event Storming and DDD
Where should we start? It’s easy to fall into priority paralysis as you envision an ambitious product. Let’s use DDD Event Storming to scope your next step!
Sustain Collective Intelligence with Event Storming
Event Storming builds collective intelligence. We can keep it alive if we continue to work closely together and regularly repeat Event Storming.
7 tactics that will make your DDD Design-Level Event Storming pay-off
What should we do after a DDD Design-Level Event Storming? How do we capture shared knowledge? How do we make the workshop more effective? Find answers here!
Detailed agenda for a DDD Design-Level Event Storming - part 2
The most valuable activities in a DDD Design-Level Event Storming are UX and Aggregates explorations. Here is a step by step agenda that will lead us there.
Detailed agenda for a DDD Design-Level Event Storming - part 1
Running a DDD Design-Level Event Storming is not rocket science! It’s still crucial to start the right way: with domain events and the Picture that explains ...
Why should we use Design Level Event Storming for DDD?
Design Level Event Storming is a collaborative design workshop. Use it to build and share the design of critical parts of systems using Event Sourcing and DDD.
Event Storming lessons from Post-It haters
After going through why Event Storming uses post-its, we’ll go over alternatives. We’ll then see how to use these techniques to improve Event Storming!
How to use Event Storming to introduce Domain Driven Design
Although incredibly effective, DDD is overlooked by developers because of its abstractness. Event Storming is a great way to introduce DDD without naming it!
How to max out DDD Big Picture Event Storming with other Workshops
DDD Big Picture Event Storming is a prelude and catalyst to other workshops. Ex: Design Level Event Storming, Example Mapping, Story Mapping & Impact Map...
Feature Teams vs Component Teams? Decide with Event Storming and DDD
Team organization is tough. Event Storming builds enough shared knowledge and architecture for successful team re-organization workshops.
Rewrite vs Refactor? Get Insights from Event Storming and DDD
With legacy code, rewrite vs refactor is a valuable but tricky question. Here is an Event Storming activity that shows how far we are from the target.
Using Event Storming and DDD to prototype (micro)services and NFRs - 2
With Event Storming and DDD, we can draft services boundaries and NFR prototypes. In this post sequel, we’ll see that microservices are no silver bullet.
Using Event Storming and DDD to prototype (micro)services and NFRs - 1
DDD Big Picture Event Storming is a great support to draft (micro)services boundaries and NFR prototypes. Let’s see how to with this workshop activity.
How to use Event Storming and DDD for Evolutionary Architecture
Big Picture Event Storming and DDD let us share an architecture vision. Here is a way to realize it through evolutionary architecture and emergent design.
Focus on the Core with Event Storming and DDD Domain Relationships - 2
The advanced DDD Domain Relationships shine as they keep the core upstream. Here is the end of an Event Storming activity to pick the best relationships.
Focus on the Core with Event Storming and DDD Domain Relationships - 1
Bounded Contexts are a key aspect of DDD. Here is a DDD and Event Storming activity to find what kind of domain relationships will ensure focus on core conte...
Ensure core contexts have the upper hand with Event Storming and DDD
Event Storming and DDD can identify bounded contexts. In a bounded contexts relationship, one side will have the upper hand (be upstream). Core contexts shou...
Build or Buy Software? Identify your core bounded contexts with Event Storming and DDD
Event Storming and DDD are great at identifying bounded contexts. It’s even more valuable to identify the core contexts to focus on, and the generic ones to ...
Drafting a Functional Architecture Vision with Event Storming and DDD
We did the 1st phase of DDD Big Picture Event Storming. It’s time to build on the shared knowledge to draft a functional architecture vision. All in just a f...
4 tips that will make your DDD Big Picture Event Storming successful
Although not rocket science, running a DDD Big Picture Event Storming can be tricky. Here are 4 hard won tips that will make your first workshop successful.
Detailed Agenda of a DDD Big Picture Event Storming - Part 3
Thanks to massive knowledge sharing, a DDD Big Picture Event Storming is the 1st step to collaboratively draft a Rough Design Up Front. Here are its last ste...
Detailed Agenda of a DDD Big Picture Event Storming - Part 2
The DDD Big Picture Event Storming is a creative game. It sticks to the classic open-explore-close flow. Here is the second part of its detailed agenda.
Detailed Agenda of a DDD Big Picture Event Storming - Part 1
Kick starting a project with a DDD Big Picture Event Storming can be chaotic. Here is a detailed agenda and a sample briefing to set it on the right track.
How to prepare the room for a DDD Big Picture Event Storming
Running a DDD Big Picture Event Storming is a great way to kick start a project. Fortunately, it only requires common supplies. Here is a detailed checklist.
How to prepare a DDD Big Picture Event Storming workshop
The massive domain knowledge sharing of a Big Picture Event Storming unlocks DDD. Good preparation makes running one easy. Here’s the 1st of a 4 posts step b...
How I learned to do Big Design Up Front in 2 days of Event Storming
The combination of Incremental Design and Event Storming is a better alternative to Big Design Up Front. It’s faster, safer and creates natural buy-in.
Misadventures with Big Design Up Front
Although a nice idea in theory, Big Design Up Front has many problems that I learned the hard way. We should avoid BDUF most of the time.
When is testing using mocks still a good idea ?
In the previous 7 articles of this series, I’ve tried my best get rid of mocks. I’m pretty sure that using these techniques will get you a long way out of mo...
Get rid of mock maintenance with full fledged in-memory fakes
Last week’s post was about how hexagonal architecture results in fast, mock-free tests around your core domain. Unfortunately, that does not remove all mocks...
Avoid mocks and test your core domain faster with Hexagonal Architecture
As I’ve written in my last few posts, we can get a long way to avoid mocks with small scale coding best practices. Unfortunately, when systems reach a certai...
What Rails teaches us about building platforms and frameworks
More than ever, the cheapest way to build a framework is to refactor it out of a specific app.
Incremental architecture, a cure against architecture astronauts
Back in 2001, when I started to code for a living, fresh out of school, I was mainly doing a form of cowboy coding. After a few months of maintaining my own ...
programming
A “Slow Code Retreat” to be less in a hurry
“Developers will always have more work than time” We can race our TODO lists or accept and slow down NOW. The “Slow Code Retreat” helps us do that!
You should refuse to develop what you don’t understand
Understanding is key to building quality software. Here are 3 levels of understanding we should go through before we start coding.
When is testing using mocks still a good idea ?
In the previous 7 articles of this series, I’ve tried my best get rid of mocks. I’m pretty sure that using these techniques will get you a long way out of mo...
Get rid of mock maintenance with full fledged in-memory fakes
Last week’s post was about how hexagonal architecture results in fast, mock-free tests around your core domain. Unfortunately, that does not remove all mocks...
Avoid mocks and test your core domain faster with Hexagonal Architecture
As I’ve written in my last few posts, we can get a long way to avoid mocks with small scale coding best practices. Unfortunately, when systems reach a certai...
How Custom Assertion Matchers will keep mocks away
Custom assertions are a handy compromise alternative to mocks when we don’t have the time to refactor to a functional style.
How to use Test Data Builders to avoid mocks and keep your tests clear
We are sometimes tempted to use mocks to shortcut test data initialization. Unfortunately, excessive mocking makes tests difficult to maintain. As Uncle Bob ...
Immutable Value Objects vs Mocks : Fizz Buzz
In my previous post I explained how Immutable Value Objects help us to avoid mocks. In this post, I’ll illustrate this in practice with real code.
How Immutable Value Objects fight Mocks
Excessive use of mocks makes tests very painful to maintain. If we stick painful mocks for too long, we’ll end up abandoning unit testing. Eventually, the sy...
Careless Mocking Considered Harmful
💡 Mock hell : when excessive use of test mocks makes refactoring extremely slow or difficult.
10 things to know that will make you great at refactoring legacy code
We write tons of legacy code everyday. Experienced developers understand that legacy code is not something special. Legacy code is our daily bread and butter.
How to start learning the tao of incremental code refactoring today
In my last post, I explained why incremental refactoring techniques will make you both more productive and relaxed.
7 reasons why learning refactoring techniques will improve your life as a software engineer
This post is a bold promise. Mastering incremental refactoring techniques makes our lives as software engineers more enjoyable.
How to get your team to do code reviews
As software developers, we very always often get to work in code bases that are not perfect. In this situation we have 3 choices : leave, grumble, or make so...
A seamless way to keep track of technical debt in your source code
I eventually stumbled upon a way to keep track of technical debt in source code that is both straightforward and already built-in most tools : simple TODO co...
Almost 15 years of using Design By Contract
I first read about Design By Contract in 2002, in Object Oriented Software Construction 2. As soon as I read it, I was convinced, today, I still believe it’s...
Developer ! Are you losing your rat race ?
A rat race is an endless, self-defeating, or pointless pursuit. It conjures up the image of the futile efforts of a lab rat trying to escape while running...
What Happens to Non-Enthusiast Programmers in the Long Run ?
A few months ago, after receiving good feedback from my regular readers, I posted my latest article Is There Any Room for the Not-Passionate Developer ? on H...
3 More Great Talks From JavaOne 2016
After the top 5 talks I attended at JavaOne here are more !
Top 5 talks I attended at JavaOne 2016 (Part 2)
This is my second post relating the talks I attended at JavaOne 2016. Here is the beginning of the story. Here we go.
Top 5 talks I attended at JavaOne 2016 (Part 1)
With a few other colleagues, I had the chance to be sent to San Francisco last week to attend the JavaOne 2016 conferences by my company.
Flavors of TDD
During the years doing some coding dojos with the same circle of people, I came up with my own style of practicing TDD. Lately, I had the chance to do a pair...
The Size Of Code
The CFO’s debt is visible in his balance sheet. The CTO’s technical debt is invisible. What about making it visible ?
Anti Ugly-Code Glasses
I think I found a way to fix the dirty code problem once and for all …
How To Keep Up With Software Technologies
Since I started to program professionally 15 years ago, a lot of things have changes. A lot of technologies appeared and became mainstream while others fell ...
Mining GitHub For New Hires
In search of an experienced software engineer
Bye Bye Programmer’s TODO List, Hello Personnal Kanban on Jira
EDIT 2017-03-03 : This article is old, I am now using an improved Jira Personnal Kanban.
Actors and Green Threads in Java Demystified
After finishing my concurrency-kata, one of the things that most surprised me, is how simple it was to prototype the Actor Model in Java using Green Threads.
Real Programmers Have Todo Lists
EDIT 2017-03-03 : This article is old, I am now using an improved Jira Personnal Kanban.
Coding as a living can be dangerous to your health
In 1991, John F. Woods wrote :
Programming as an exponential problem
As said Tom Cargill
tdd
A “Slow Code Retreat” to be less in a hurry
“Developers will always have more work than time” We can race our TODO lists or accept and slow down NOW. The “Slow Code Retreat” helps us do that!
A Surprising Way How To Teach Evolutionary Design
Evolutionary Design might be the most valuable yet impenetrable XP practice. Use TCR to practice baby-steps coding, the cornerstone of Evolutionary Design.
How to handle “TDD does not work in real life!” during code katas
Doing code katas to learn real-life TDD can at first look like a scam to many developers. So here are three techniques to maintain a constructive mood.
How to coach a team that has been burnt by bad TDD
Once exposed to bad TDD, teams are a challenge for any technical agile coach. Instead of trying to sell them TDD, XP, or whatever, fix their pains!
7 tricks to influence a team resisting to change its technical habits
There are many ways to manage team resistance. Here are some of the technical agile coach’s tricks that influence: testimonies, experiments, and more!
How to make your team learn TDD for Legacy Code, and love it!
Legacy code is where TDD is the trickiest. Start practicing the gilded rose kata with your team today! Your teammates will soon feel safe to apply TDD for le...
Does Programming equal Refactoring?
This infographics presents how TCR increases the share of refactoring in TDD. But Refactoring is already most of our daily work! We’d better learn it serious...
5 XP practices that will make your remote team more effective
By focusing on small increments and collaboration, XP practices like CI, Pair or Mob programming, TDD, continuous refactoring and TCR make remote work easier.
A coding dojo exercises plan towards refactoring legacy code
My current job at work is technical coach. I’m available for teams that need help to adopt incremental coding practices.
When is testing using mocks still a good idea ?
In the previous 7 articles of this series, I’ve tried my best get rid of mocks. I’m pretty sure that using these techniques will get you a long way out of mo...
Get rid of mock maintenance with full fledged in-memory fakes
Last week’s post was about how hexagonal architecture results in fast, mock-free tests around your core domain. Unfortunately, that does not remove all mocks...
Avoid mocks and test your core domain faster with Hexagonal Architecture
As I’ve written in my last few posts, we can get a long way to avoid mocks with small scale coding best practices. Unfortunately, when systems reach a certai...
How Custom Assertion Matchers will keep mocks away
Custom assertions are a handy compromise alternative to mocks when we don’t have the time to refactor to a functional style.
How to use Test Data Builders to avoid mocks and keep your tests clear
We are sometimes tempted to use mocks to shortcut test data initialization. Unfortunately, excessive mocking makes tests difficult to maintain. As Uncle Bob ...
Immutable Value Objects vs Mocks : Fizz Buzz
In my previous post I explained how Immutable Value Objects help us to avoid mocks. In this post, I’ll illustrate this in practice with real code.
How Immutable Value Objects fight Mocks
Excessive use of mocks makes tests very painful to maintain. If we stick painful mocks for too long, we’ll end up abandoning unit testing. Eventually, the sy...
Careless Mocking Considered Harmful
💡 Mock hell : when excessive use of test mocks makes refactoring extremely slow or difficult.
Frequently asked questions about the 20 hours of Code Katas
In my previous posts, I explained how to use the 20 hours of Code Katas technique to learn new languages. If you did not read these yet, start by the beginni...
Why 20 hours of code kata are so effective for learning new languages
In my previous post, I described how I’ve been using 20 hours of Code Katas to learn new languages. If you did not read it yet, have a look at it first. Let’...
How to learn a programming language in just 20 hours
We should not panic when asked to work with a new language. We should be bold enough to answer to job openings requiring technologies we are not used to. In ...
How to get the max out of your Team Coding Dojo ?
If you’ve read my previous posts about Team Randori Coding Dojos, you should know why and how to run a successful one.
Coding Dojo Troubleshooting
In my last 2 blog posts, I’ve detailed why and how to start a team Randori Coding Dojo. That’s the easy part. As soon as you start your first dojo, you’ll fa...
How to start a team coding dojo Randori today
In my previous post, I explained why you should start a team coding dojo Randori as soon as you can. Here is a step by step guide to set one up today.
Why you should start a team coding dojo Randori right now
Coding Dojos are easy to start and have a high return on investment. They will improve everyone’s technical skills. That’s only the start though. Practiced a...
Throwing code away frequently
Here is the main feedback I got about my previous post eXtreme eXtreme Programming.
Forget unit tests, only fast tests matter
Don’t worry if your unit tests go to the DB, that might not be so bad.
Don’t stick to TDD’s Red-Green-Refactor loop to the letter
As long as you are writing your tests before your code and doing regular refactoring, you are doing TDD !
Speed up the TDD feedback loop with better assertion messages
There is a rather widespread TDD practice to have a single assertion per test. The goal is to have faster feedback loop while coding. When a test fails, it c...
From apprentice to master, how to learn TDD (Test Driven Development)
I started to learn Test Driven Development a long time ago. Since then, even though I’m still not a master, it’s been my most useful programming skill, by fa...
Flavors of TDD
During the years doing some coding dojos with the same circle of people, I came up with my own style of practicing TDD. Lately, I had the chance to do a pair...
My new gem for creating rspec proxies
I already wrote a lot about test proxies (here, here and here).
My humble advices about how to write maintainable tests
I love writing automated tests … or rather, I hate having to work in untested code. I find it makes my life unnecessarily stressful. On the other hand, the c...
continuous improvement
A Quality View Workshop to Discuss Technical Excellence
Here is a step-by-step workshop to guide a team to drawing a Quality View. Use it to discuss investment in agile technical excellence with stakeholders.
A “Slow Code Retreat” to be less in a hurry
“Developers will always have more work than time” We can race our TODO lists or accept and slow down NOW. The “Slow Code Retreat” helps us do that!
How to help a team to find their preferred mob programming rules?
A dysfunctional mob makes coaching impossible! So here is a workshop for team members to try and find the mob programming rules that work for them.
Leverage Scrum to workaround feature-factory sprint planning
Is “Business Value” the only thing that matters for sprint plannings? Here are 3 Scrum practices that will buy developers some time for technical work!.
3 compounding benefits of mob programming that make it cost-effective
Mob programming requires time to get used to it. With practice, though, you’ll discover unexpected and compounding long-term benefits of mob programming.
How to run a Remote-First Open-Space Technology Un-Conference
Open-space technology un-conference is a powerful self-organized workshop. Here is a guide to making it remote-first, and even more inclusive!
Let’s give Remote-First Open-Space Technology Un-Conferences a try!
Open-space technology un-conference is a powerful self-organized workshop. Here is the story of how we made it remote-first to grow a community of practice.
Why Machine Learning in Software Engineering #3: The Future
There are many opportunities for Machine Learning in Software Engineering: testing, product management, processes… It might even set a sustainable pace!
Why Machine Learning in Software Engineering #2: An Experiment
A Machine Learning in Software Engineering intern identified critical tests to run. He also confirmed the open-closed principle, modular code, and small-comm...
Why Machine Learning in Software Engineering #1: A World of Experts
It’s the opinions of experts that drive Software Engineering! Models, like Big O, would lead to more fact-based discussions and better decisions.
How we scripted everyone to code review in the team
Getting all the team to code review can be a real challenge. Here is the story of how a simple random review assigning tool nudged everyone to code review.
The unexpected contributions to a productivity increase by 25% of a fruit basket at work
As software people, we live in a complex-system world. To leverage on its non-linear effects, we need to multiply weird experiments.
How to avoid unnecessary meetings (a takeaway from Devoxx France 2018)
I had the chance to attend Devoxx France this year in Paris. Here is the most important lesson I learned :
Why and how to start a #ZeroBugs policy - part 4
This is the forth and last post of a series about the #ZeroBugs policy. In the previous posts, I detailed how we applied it in our team, what were the conseq...
Why and how to start a #ZeroBugs policy - part 3
This is the third post of a series about the #ZeroBugs policy. In the first 2 posts, I detailed how we applied it in our team, and what were the consequences.
Why and how to start a #ZeroBugs policy - part 2
This is the second post of a series about the #ZeroBugs policy. In the previous post, I detailed what a #ZeroBugs policy is and how we tried to apply it. I e...
Why and how to start a #ZeroBugs policy - part 1
Some teams spend 95% of their development time fixing bugs … An entrepreneur I worked with reported an even scarier story. He went bankrupt because bugs were...
How to run your first improvement kata
The improvement kata can solve problems that typical retrospectives fail to address. Although there is a halo of mystery around it, it’s actually not that di...
Lessons learned from running our first improvement kata
During the past few weeks, I blogged the story of our first improvement kata.
How we used the improvement kata to gain 25% of productivity - Part 5
This is the fifth (and last) post of a series of 5 about the improvement kata. If you haven’t read the beginning of the story, I recommend you start from par...
How we used the improvement kata to gain 25% of productivity - Part 4
This is the fourth post on a series of 5 about the improvement kata. If you haven’t read the beginning of the story, I recommend you start from part 1.
How we used the improvement kata to gain 25% of productivity - Part 3
This is the third post on a series of 5 about the improvement kata. If you haven’t read the beginning of the story, I recommend you start from part 1.
How we used the improvement kata to gain 25% of productivity - Part 2
In my previous post, I described the productivity issue our team was facing. How retrospectives did not work, and how I started looking at the improvement ka...
How we used the improvement kata to gain 25% of productivity - Part 1
If you are serious about continuous improvement, you should learn the improvement kata.
Most Scrum teams are not agile
Being agile is about adapting to change and continuously improving. I’ve seen (and been) in too many teams blindly following Scrum (Scrum Zombies) without fi...
How to get your team to do code reviews
As software developers, we very always often get to work in code bases that are not perfect. In this situation we have 3 choices : leave, grumble, or make so...
Trello Templates to Boost Your Remote Retrospectives
I already wrote how we started to use Trello to do our remote retrospectives. A while ago, my team mate Bilal Tayara started to collect our activities into t...
Are Most Agile Teams Doing Continuous Improvement The Silly Way ?
A few weeks ago, as I was looking the internet for Lean principles to improve our way of working, I fell upon this book Petit guide de management lean a l’us...
Trellospectives : Remote Retrospectives with Trello
As a distributed team working from Paris and Beirut, after pair programming, it was time for our retrospectives to get remote !
How we introduced efficient agile retrospectives
6 months ago, our team started to run systematic iteration retrospectives. Within these 6 months, our team became more agile than ever. Running efficient ret...
Motivation game
At MegaCorp where I am currently working, there is a small team that is dedicated to find solutions to software bugs that regularly happen in production. The...
refactoring
A Quality View Workshop to Discuss Technical Excellence
Here is a step-by-step workshop to guide a team to drawing a Quality View. Use it to discuss investment in agile technical excellence with stakeholders.
How to estimate velocity in Scrum to escape the feature factory
Poker Planning is a collaborative game… that developers often lose! Here are the original fair rules that will provide developers time for technical work.
Leverage Scrum to workaround feature-factory sprint planning
Is “Business Value” the only thing that matters for sprint plannings? Here are 3 Scrum practices that will buy developers some time for technical work!.
How to make your team learn TDD for Legacy Code, and love it!
Legacy code is where TDD is the trickiest. Start practicing the gilded rose kata with your team today! Your teammates will soon feel safe to apply TDD for le...
Make Testing Legacy Code Viral: Mikado Method and Test Data Builders
When testing legacy code, combine the test data builder pattern with the mikado method. This snowballs into more and more objects that are easy to set up in ...
21 More Event Storming Tips - Part 2 - Facilitation and Existing Code
More Event Storming tips! 4 tips to delight attendees with fantastic facilitation. 3 tips about animating an Event Storming when there is existing code.
Does Programming equal Refactoring?
This infographics presents how TCR increases the share of refactoring in TDD. But Refactoring is already most of our daily work! We’d better learn it serious...
Is XP the middle child of Agile?
In this podcast, you’ll learn about eXtreme Programming. Where did it come from? What are its differences between XP and Scrum or Kanban? How things like DDD...
How to maintain a business partnership about refactoring?
Becoming business partners grants us freedom to refactor. Careful though, we must not over-abuse this trust if we want to maintain this partnership.
Become a Business Partner and Stop Begging for Refactoring
When we, developers, earn enough trust from business people, we become their business partners. As such we enjoy a lot more freedom to refactor.
Making the business case for a large scale refactoring - Part 2
How to improve a factual business case for a refactoring to make it even more compelling to business people.
Making the business case for a large-scale refactoring - Part 1
With a bit of discipline, we can make a factual business case for a large-scale refactoring that business people won’t resist.
5 Effective warning signals that will get you sponsorship for a large scale refactoring
In 2005, professors Bizer and Petty showed something interesting about human behavior. People make more efforts to avoid what they don’t want, than to get wh...
Presenting a large scale refactoring as a business opportunity
Have you ever tried to talk about refactoring with business people ? Most of the time, the matter is pushed aside or received with rolling eyes … A few weeks...
Incremental Software Development Strategies for Large Scale Refactoring #4 : a Pattern Language
It can sometimes be a real challenge to integrate, let alone deploy, a refactoring step by step ! Here are some patterns that make this easier.
Incremental Software Development Strategies for Large Scale Refactoring #3 : Self-Organize !
Refactoring step by step generate a ton of small tasks here and there. Here are some organization best practices to keep track of them.
Incremental Software Development Strategies for Large Scale Refactoring #2 : Baby Steps
How can we exploit short time slots here and there to perform large scale refactoring?
Incremental Software Development Strategies for Large Scale Refactoring #1 : Constant Merciless Refactoring
Here’s everything you need to find the time for constant merciless refactoring … without asking for the permission!
Incremental Software Development for Large Scale Refactorings
In the end, incremental software development techniques are almost always the safest way to refactor. Here is why.
Principles that will make you become a badass developer
There are some simple attitude principles that badass developers follow to gain the business people trust.
5 mistakes badass developers never do
Here is a one sentence summary of my previous post.
Why we need Badass developers to perform large scale refactorings
My last post was about the challenge for dev teams to get sponsorship for large scale refactorings. I listed two main reasons :
How to convince your business of sponsoring a large scale refactoring
Whenever I present or suggest a good practice to dev teams, I often get the same remark. Here is how it goes :
Throwing code away frequently
Here is the main feedback I got about my previous post eXtreme eXtreme Programming.
10 things to know that will make you great at refactoring legacy code
We write tons of legacy code everyday. Experienced developers understand that legacy code is not something special. Legacy code is our daily bread and butter.
How to start learning the tao of incremental code refactoring today
In my last post, I explained why incremental refactoring techniques will make you both more productive and relaxed.
7 reasons why learning refactoring techniques will improve your life as a software engineer
This post is a bold promise. Mastering incremental refactoring techniques makes our lives as software engineers more enjoyable.
5 SPA Conference takeaways that could make us better software professionals
Last week, my colleague Ahmad Atwi and I went to the London SPA Conference to give our Remote eXtreme Practice talk.
Refactoring trick to insert a wrapper
Last week at work, we decided that we needed an Anticorruption Layer between our code and another team’s. They have been using our internal data structures a...
lean
Too busy to prioritize?
This infographic presents how the lack of prioritization triggers a vicious circle of bloated organizations, late deliveries, and a non-sustainable pace
7 Books About Data Driven Software Engineering
Software is mostly built according to experts opinions. These 7 data driven software engineering books show us another way to a productive and sustainable pa...
A serious game for learning ‘built-in quality at the source’
Skip studying queuing theory! Play this 1h15 serious game for learning why building-in quality at the source leads to a productive and sustainable pace.
Reducing the risks of large organization changes with the Mikado Method - part 3
In the previous posts, I presented how to use the Mikado Method to large organization changes. Drawn from the programming world, this technique keeps a low t...
Reducing the risks of large organization changes with the Mikado Method - part 2
In the previous post, I presented both large scale code and organization changes. I highlighted how they face similar difficulties of huge Work In Progress. ...
Reducing the risks of large organization changes with the Mikado Method - part 1
Large scale agile transformations are often painful, stressful and … failed ! Mixing the Improvement Kata and the Mikado Method can make them more successful.
Sustainable productivity in eXtreme Programming
eXtreme programming will not improve your short term productivity. But it will drastically improve your long term productivity.
Are Software Developers Overworked or Undecided ?
During the last 15 years, I’ve worked in many different teams. Every team has its own way of working. I’ve been at places where everyone seemed busy all the ...
How to run your first improvement kata
The improvement kata can solve problems that typical retrospectives fail to address. Although there is a halo of mystery around it, it’s actually not that di...
Lessons learned from running our first improvement kata
During the past few weeks, I blogged the story of our first improvement kata.
How we used the improvement kata to gain 25% of productivity - Part 5
This is the fifth (and last) post of a series of 5 about the improvement kata. If you haven’t read the beginning of the story, I recommend you start from par...
How we used the improvement kata to gain 25% of productivity - Part 4
This is the fourth post on a series of 5 about the improvement kata. If you haven’t read the beginning of the story, I recommend you start from part 1.
How we used the improvement kata to gain 25% of productivity - Part 3
This is the third post on a series of 5 about the improvement kata. If you haven’t read the beginning of the story, I recommend you start from part 1.
How we used the improvement kata to gain 25% of productivity - Part 2
In my previous post, I described the productivity issue our team was facing. How retrospectives did not work, and how I started looking at the improvement ka...
How we used the improvement kata to gain 25% of productivity - Part 1
If you are serious about continuous improvement, you should learn the improvement kata.
A seamless way to keep track of technical debt in your source code
I eventually stumbled upon a way to keep track of technical debt in source code that is both straightforward and already built-in most tools : simple TODO co...
Are Most Agile Teams Doing Continuous Improvement The Silly Way ?
A few weeks ago, as I was looking the internet for Lean principles to improve our way of working, I fell upon this book Petit guide de management lean a l’us...
Recipes For An Agile Workspace
Nowadays, start-ups and tech companies seem to be competing for the most beautiful offices in order to attract top talents.
My Dream Lean Software Development Tool (Lean Software Development part 9)
Current software project tracking tools suck !
How I’ll measure the lean startup value of information in my next side project (Lean Software Development Part 8)
There must be a way to know the real money value of Lean Startup ‘knowledge’.
Silosis
I just invented the word, I found it funny :
A Plan For Technical Debt (Lean Software Development Part 7)
The sad truth :
You don’t have to ask your boss for a fast build (Lean Software Development part 6)
A slow build costs money. I mean it costs a whole lot of money all the time !
What Optimization Should We Work On (Lean Software Development Part 5)
At work, we are building a risk aggregation system. As it’s dealing with a large bunch of numbers, it’s a huge heap of optimizations. Once that its most stan...
Measure The Business Value of Your Spikes and Take High Payoff Risks (Lean Software Development Part 4)
Lately at work, we’ve unexpectedly been asked by other teams if they could use our product for something that we had not forseen. As we are not sure whether ...
How to measure your speed with your business value ? (Lean Software Development Part 3)
There is a french idiom that basicaly is
Why eXtreme Programming works ? (Lean Software Development part 2)
I’ve been programming for quite some time now, in different teams, using various methodologies. I also had the luck to do XP for at least 3 different project...
The Flow book summary (lean software development part 1)
A few weeks ago, I read The principles of product development flow from Donald G. Reinertsen.
Scaling Agile
I have worked in small agile teams, and it does indeed work a lot better than the classical waterfall & hierarchic environment. When speaking with other ...
remote
How to help a team to find their preferred mob programming rules?
A dysfunctional mob makes coaching impossible! So here is a workshop for team members to try and find the mob programming rules that work for them.
How the pandemic made us discover better ways of coaching
This pandemic year has transformed the way we do technical agile coaching. It’s now more asynchronous, self-service, gamified, open, and inclusive!
7 collaboration ideas to make remote pair programming more fun
Prolonged remote-only work can be depressing. Here are 7 remote-pairing collaboration ideas to inject fun into the teams we are coaching!
Introduce Team G Morning Learning Sessions to Coach the Growth Mindset
Keeping our skills up to date is challenging. Remote work is a perfect excuse to run group learning sessions and to demo growth mindset to our coachees.
5 pair-programming tips and tricks for coaching a remote team
Remote work is an extra challenge for technical agile coaching. Here are 5 opportunistic remote pair-programming tips and tricks to show a better way of work...
How to deliver a remote training with code-katas and randori in pairs
Randori-in-pairs code-katas maximize learning thanks to code and interaction. With git-handover and breakout rooms, it becomes a practical remote training.
Best open source tools for remote pair programming
COVID-19 has thrown us into remote work. Here are 3 world-class open-source tools for remote pair programming that you can set up today.
3 Good and Bad Ways to Write Team Coding Standards and Conventions
Writing team coding standards and conventions is hard but critical. Brainstorming doesn’t work, so let’s use asynchronous decision making or mob programming!
21 More Event Storming Tips - part 3 - Anti and Meta Patterns
Even more Event Storming tips! 3 will help you to avoid the mistakes we did. The last 2 are the recipe to learn more tips by yourself!
How to run a Remote-First Open-Space Technology Un-Conference
Open-space technology un-conference is a powerful self-organized workshop. Here is a guide to making it remote-first, and even more inclusive!
Let’s give Remote-First Open-Space Technology Un-Conferences a try!
Open-space technology un-conference is a powerful self-organized workshop. Here is the story of how we made it remote-first to grow a community of practice.
TO DO list or Mind Map for programming
Maintaining a TO DO list or a Mind Map for programming task has many benefits. It improves collaboration, our decisions and our vision of what’s left to do.
5 XP practices that will make your remote team more effective
By focusing on small increments and collaboration, XP practices like CI, Pair or Mob programming, TDD, continuous refactoring and TCR make remote work easier.
How to use Mob Programming at the rescue of Pair Programming burnout
Full-time pair programming burns introverts out. Regular mob programming sessions yield the same benefits but are more sustainable.
7 Remote pair programming best practices Q&A - Part 2
5 more best practices about remote pair programming. Let’s deal with a painful headphone, a todo list, time difference, eye contact and continuous improvement
7 Remote pair programming best practices Q&A - Part 1
Remote pair programming brings surprising benefits to a team! Daunting at first, it is quite manageable with the good practices. Here are the first 2 of 7!
10 Pair Programming Best Practices Questions & Answers
Pair programming is not just sitting together in front of an IDE. Here are battle tested answers to common questions that will make pairing work for you.
How to avoid unnecessary meetings (a takeaway from Devoxx France 2018)
I had the chance to attend Devoxx France this year in Paris. Here is the most important lesson I learned :
Mobbing around the world for 48h … who’s in ?
In Far From the mobbing crowd the Cucumber guys explain how they combined mob programming and remote work. Matt and Steve also explain that a mob is both res...
Throwing code away frequently
Here is the main feedback I got about my previous post eXtreme eXtreme Programming.
eXtreme eXtreme Programming (2017)
What would XP look like if it was invented today ?
5 Remote energizer tips that will make your remote retrospectives rock
Do you remember how people who are not used to the phone tend to shout in it, for the message to get far ? Read on and I’ll explain how this silly habit will...
Video for our talk ‘Extreme Practices’ is on YouTube
As I already wrote about before, my colleague Ahmad from Beirut gave a talk at Agile Tour Beirut about how we adopted XP to a distributed team at work. I was...
ReXP : Remote eXtreme Programming
My colleague Ahmad from Beirut gave a talk at Agile Tour Beirut on Saturday about how we adopted XP to a distributed team at work. I gave him a hand and play...
Trello Templates to Boost Your Remote Retrospectives
I already wrote how we started to use Trello to do our remote retrospectives. A while ago, my team mate Bilal Tayara started to collect our activities into t...
Trellospectives : Remote Retrospectives with Trello
As a distributed team working from Paris and Beirut, after pair programming, it was time for our retrospectives to get remote !
From Zero to Pair Programming Hero
In my team at Murex, we’ve been doing Pair programming 75% of our time for the past 9 months now.
software
Forget unit tests, only fast tests matter
Don’t worry if your unit tests go to the DB, that might not be so bad.
Don’t stick to TDD’s Red-Green-Refactor loop to the letter
As long as you are writing your tests before your code and doing regular refactoring, you are doing TDD !
13 Tricks for Successful Side Projects
As I said last week, I released the v0.1 of Philou’s Planning Poker, my latest side project. Although I have a day job, a wife, a family and a mortgage to pa...
Side Projects Matter
As a manager, you could benefit a lot from helping your developers with their side projects.
Speed up the TDD feedback loop with better assertion messages
There is a rather widespread TDD practice to have a single assertion per test. The goal is to have faster feedback loop while coding. When a test fails, it c...
20 Bad Excuses For Not Writing Unit Tests
I guess we always find excuses to keep on with our bad habits, don’t we? Stephen King
From apprentice to master, how to learn TDD (Test Driven Development)
I started to learn Test Driven Development a long time ago. Since then, even though I’m still not a master, it’s been my most useful programming skill, by fa...
Incremental architecture, a cure against architecture astronauts
Back in 2001, when I started to code for a living, fresh out of school, I was mainly doing a form of cowboy coding. After a few months of maintaining my own ...
Developer ! Are you losing your rat race ?
A rat race is an endless, self-defeating, or pointless pursuit. It conjures up the image of the futile efforts of a lab rat trying to escape while running...
A Plain English Introduction To Paxos Protocol
A few weeks ago, I had to have a look at the distributed consensus protocol Paxos. Even though I know its purpose and I’ve built and used distributed systems...
What Happens to Non-Enthusiast Programmers in the Long Run ?
A few months ago, after receiving good feedback from my regular readers, I posted my latest article Is There Any Room for the Not-Passionate Developer ? on H...
How I got my feet wet with machine learning with ‘The First 20 Hours’
I’m currently wrapping up an alpha of a unit testing ruby gem that allows to assert the complexity of a piece of code. It’s the result of an experiment to le...
Overclocking a Scrum Team to 12
From Wikipedia : Overclocking is configuration of computer hardware components to operate faster than certified by the original manufacturer …
How to use Hackernews and Reddit for blogging
A few weeks ago, I posted my latest article Is There Any Room for the Not-Passionate Developer ? on Hackernews and Reddit Programming. The post stayed on the...
How to prepare a new Ruby env in 3 minutes using Docker
One or two weeks ago, I registered to the Paris Ruby Workshop Meetup and needed a Ruby env. I have been using Vagrant quite a lot to isolate my different dev...
5 Years of Blogging About Software
5 years ago, I started blogging. I started really casually, my posts were personal reminders and notes rather than real well thought of articles. Nevertheles...
Software is like writing and revising a giant book
With time, I discovered a way of explaining the subtleties of my developer job to my uninformed relatives and friends.
How I fixed the unknown language Pygments error in Octopress
Last time I tried to insert a code snippet in my Octopress blog, I was hurt by the following error :
Real Developers Ship
If you are a developer and you are not shipping, you’re in the danger zone. I believe it’s mostly your fault, and it’s time to act.
How Long Can Your Inner Drive Last ?
Any software project (job, startup or side project) will require some time before one can get real feedback from real users.
Great Developers Are Free
For many reasons. But mostly because they are key to efficiently growing a software organization.
My Dream Lean Software Development Tool (Lean Software Development part 9)
Current software project tracking tools suck !
How I’ll measure the lean startup value of information in my next side project (Lean Software Development Part 8)
There must be a way to know the real money value of Lean Startup ‘knowledge’.
The technical debt ponzi scheme
Madoff would have been better off managing software projects than investing on Wall Street !
A Plan For Technical Debt (Lean Software Development Part 7)
The sad truth :
ddd
How to make a team facilitate agile architecture workshops
In The Serverless Mindset, I blogged about Event Storming and Example Mapping for agile architecture. How do you coach teams to adopt these workshops?
5 Whole-Team Workshops To Increase Developers’ Role In Sprint Planning
Run these activities with the whole team to increase not only the developers’ role in sprint plannings, but also collaboration, engagement, and value creation!
How to coach developers to get a chat with their product experts
Getting these crucial chats with product experts is often a brain-teaser! Let’s show devs how to trigger short, practical, immediate Example-Mapping sessions.
21 More Event Storming Tips - part 3 - Anti and Meta Patterns
Even more Event Storming tips! 3 will help you to avoid the mistakes we did. The last 2 are the recipe to learn more tips by yourself!
21 More Event Storming Tips - Part 2 - Facilitation and Existing Code
More Event Storming tips! 4 tips to delight attendees with fantastic facilitation. 3 tips about animating an Event Storming when there is existing code.
21 More Event Storming Tips - Part 1 - Understanding and Rhythm
You’ve just invited 10 people to join your 8h Event Storming. Here are 9 Event Storming tips to maximize knowledge sharing and the use of everyone’s time.
First rule of DDD is: let’s not talk about DDD
DDD jargon is a domain expert repellent! Let’s not talk about DDD, but instead, start engaging domain experts in doing DDD workshops!
Organization refactoring: Event Storming and DDD injection - part 2
The key to successful DDD and Event Storming injection is to wait for the perfect challenge. Otherwise, we’ll have no choice but to hack the organization!
Organization refactoring: Event Storming and DDD injection - part 1
Injecting DDD or Event Storming in your organization can be tricky. Here are techniques to onboard your domain experts, one step at a time!
How to fight priority paralysis with Event Storming and DDD
Where should we start? It’s easy to fall into priority paralysis as you envision an ambitious product. Let’s use DDD Event Storming to scope your next step!
Sustain Collective Intelligence with Event Storming
Event Storming builds collective intelligence. We can keep it alive if we continue to work closely together and regularly repeat Event Storming.
7 tactics that will make your DDD Design-Level Event Storming pay-off
What should we do after a DDD Design-Level Event Storming? How do we capture shared knowledge? How do we make the workshop more effective? Find answers here!
Detailed agenda for a DDD Design-Level Event Storming - part 2
The most valuable activities in a DDD Design-Level Event Storming are UX and Aggregates explorations. Here is a step by step agenda that will lead us there.
Detailed agenda for a DDD Design-Level Event Storming - part 1
Running a DDD Design-Level Event Storming is not rocket science! It’s still crucial to start the right way: with domain events and the Picture that explains ...
Why should we use Design Level Event Storming for DDD?
Design Level Event Storming is a collaborative design workshop. Use it to build and share the design of critical parts of systems using Event Sourcing and DDD.
Is XP the middle child of Agile?
In this podcast, you’ll learn about eXtreme Programming. Where did it come from? What are its differences between XP and Scrum or Kanban? How things like DDD...
The Similarities between Machine Learning and DDD
We discovered that DDD concepts like Event Storming, Bounded Contexts, Ubiquitous Language, Entities and Values are useful in machine learning projects.
5 Views to Capture the Outputs of an Event Storming workshop
Recording the full Event Storming board is a waste of time. Here are examples of quick, focused, and digestible views that capture the board’s knowledge.
How to Capture the Outputs of an Event Storming Workshop?
Event Storming builds ‘shared understanding’. This is often not enough to bring key action-oriented people in! Here are concrete techniques to convince them.
Event Storming lessons from Post-It haters
After going through why Event Storming uses post-its, we’ll go over alternatives. We’ll then see how to use these techniques to improve Event Storming!
How to use Event Storming to introduce Domain Driven Design
Although incredibly effective, DDD is overlooked by developers because of its abstractness. Event Storming is a great way to introduce DDD without naming it!
Incremental Software Development Strategies for Large Scale Refactoring #4 : a Pattern Language
It can sometimes be a real challenge to integrate, let alone deploy, a refactoring step by step ! Here are some patterns that make this easier.
Avoid mocks and test your core domain faster with Hexagonal Architecture
As I’ve written in my last few posts, we can get a long way to avoid mocks with small scale coding best practices. Unfortunately, when systems reach a certai...
How Immutable Value Objects fight Mocks
Excessive use of mocks makes tests very painful to maintain. If we stick painful mocks for too long, we’ll end up abandoning unit testing. Eventually, the sy...
Almost 15 years of using Design By Contract
I first read about Design By Contract in 2002, in Object Oriented Software Construction 2. As soon as I read it, I was convinced, today, I still believe it’s...
extreme programming
How to handle “TDD does not work in real life!” during code katas
Doing code katas to learn real-life TDD can at first look like a scam to many developers. So here are three techniques to maintain a constructive mood.
Best open source tools for remote pair programming
COVID-19 has thrown us into remote work. Here are 3 world-class open-source tools for remote pair programming that you can set up today.
5 XP practices that will make your remote team more effective
By focusing on small increments and collaboration, XP practices like CI, Pair or Mob programming, TDD, continuous refactoring and TCR make remote work easier.
Is XP the middle child of Agile?
In this podcast, you’ll learn about eXtreme Programming. Where did it come from? What are its differences between XP and Scrum or Kanban? How things like DDD...
10 Pair Programming Best Practices Questions & Answers
Pair programming is not just sitting together in front of an IDE. Here are battle tested answers to common questions that will make pairing work for you.
Sustainable productivity in eXtreme Programming
eXtreme programming will not improve your short term productivity. But it will drastically improve your long term productivity.
Mobbing around the world for 48h … who’s in ?
In Far From the mobbing crowd the Cucumber guys explain how they combined mob programming and remote work. Matt and Steve also explain that a mob is both res...
Throwing code away frequently
Here is the main feedback I got about my previous post eXtreme eXtreme Programming.
eXtreme eXtreme Programming (2017)
What would XP look like if it was invented today ?
How to start learning the tao of incremental code refactoring today
In my last post, I explained why incremental refactoring techniques will make you both more productive and relaxed.
7 reasons why learning refactoring techniques will improve your life as a software engineer
This post is a bold promise. Mastering incremental refactoring techniques makes our lives as software engineers more enjoyable.
5 SPA Conference takeaways that could make us better software professionals
Last week, my colleague Ahmad Atwi and I went to the London SPA Conference to give our Remote eXtreme Practice talk.
Incremental architecture, a cure against architecture astronauts
Back in 2001, when I started to code for a living, fresh out of school, I was mainly doing a form of cowboy coding. After a few months of maintaining my own ...
Video for our talk ‘Extreme Practices’ is on YouTube
As I already wrote about before, my colleague Ahmad from Beirut gave a talk at Agile Tour Beirut about how we adopted XP to a distributed team at work. I was...
ReXP : Remote eXtreme Programming
My colleague Ahmad from Beirut gave a talk at Agile Tour Beirut on Saturday about how we adopted XP to a distributed team at work. I gave him a hand and play...
What Optimization Should We Work On (Lean Software Development Part 5)
At work, we are building a risk aggregation system. As it’s dealing with a large bunch of numbers, it’s a huge heap of optimizations. Once that its most stan...
Measure The Business Value of Your Spikes and Take High Payoff Risks (Lean Software Development Part 4)
Lately at work, we’ve unexpectedly been asked by other teams if they could use our product for something that we had not forseen. As we are not sure whether ...
Why eXtreme Programming works ? (Lean Software Development part 2)
I’ve been programming for quite some time now, in different teams, using various methodologies. I also had the luck to do XP for at least 3 different project...
Scaling Agile
I have worked in small agile teams, and it does indeed work a lot better than the classical waterfall & hierarchic environment. When speaking with other ...
Collecting agile and XP best practices
There is a huge difference between reading about agile software developpment, and being an agile developper or team. There are a lot of practical best practi...
squash-BDUF-with-event-storming-series
How to max out DDD Big Picture Event Storming with other Workshops
DDD Big Picture Event Storming is a prelude and catalyst to other workshops. Ex: Design Level Event Storming, Example Mapping, Story Mapping & Impact Map...
Feature Teams vs Component Teams? Decide with Event Storming and DDD
Team organization is tough. Event Storming builds enough shared knowledge and architecture for successful team re-organization workshops.
Rewrite vs Refactor? Get Insights from Event Storming and DDD
With legacy code, rewrite vs refactor is a valuable but tricky question. Here is an Event Storming activity that shows how far we are from the target.
Using Event Storming and DDD to prototype (micro)services and NFRs - 2
With Event Storming and DDD, we can draft services boundaries and NFR prototypes. In this post sequel, we’ll see that microservices are no silver bullet.
Using Event Storming and DDD to prototype (micro)services and NFRs - 1
DDD Big Picture Event Storming is a great support to draft (micro)services boundaries and NFR prototypes. Let’s see how to with this workshop activity.
How to use Event Storming and DDD for Evolutionary Architecture
Big Picture Event Storming and DDD let us share an architecture vision. Here is a way to realize it through evolutionary architecture and emergent design.
Focus on the Core with Event Storming and DDD Domain Relationships - 2
The advanced DDD Domain Relationships shine as they keep the core upstream. Here is the end of an Event Storming activity to pick the best relationships.
Focus on the Core with Event Storming and DDD Domain Relationships - 1
Bounded Contexts are a key aspect of DDD. Here is a DDD and Event Storming activity to find what kind of domain relationships will ensure focus on core conte...
Ensure core contexts have the upper hand with Event Storming and DDD
Event Storming and DDD can identify bounded contexts. In a bounded contexts relationship, one side will have the upper hand (be upstream). Core contexts shou...
Build or Buy Software? Identify your core bounded contexts with Event Storming and DDD
Event Storming and DDD are great at identifying bounded contexts. It’s even more valuable to identify the core contexts to focus on, and the generic ones to ...
Drafting a Functional Architecture Vision with Event Storming and DDD
We did the 1st phase of DDD Big Picture Event Storming. It’s time to build on the shared knowledge to draft a functional architecture vision. All in just a f...
4 tips that will make your DDD Big Picture Event Storming successful
Although not rocket science, running a DDD Big Picture Event Storming can be tricky. Here are 4 hard won tips that will make your first workshop successful.
Detailed Agenda of a DDD Big Picture Event Storming - Part 3
Thanks to massive knowledge sharing, a DDD Big Picture Event Storming is the 1st step to collaboratively draft a Rough Design Up Front. Here are its last ste...
Detailed Agenda of a DDD Big Picture Event Storming - Part 2
The DDD Big Picture Event Storming is a creative game. It sticks to the classic open-explore-close flow. Here is the second part of its detailed agenda.
Detailed Agenda of a DDD Big Picture Event Storming - Part 1
Kick starting a project with a DDD Big Picture Event Storming can be chaotic. Here is a detailed agenda and a sample briefing to set it on the right track.
How to prepare the room for a DDD Big Picture Event Storming
Running a DDD Big Picture Event Storming is a great way to kick start a project. Fortunately, it only requires common supplies. Here is a detailed checklist.
How to prepare a DDD Big Picture Event Storming workshop
The massive domain knowledge sharing of a Big Picture Event Storming unlocks DDD. Good preparation makes running one easy. Here’s the 1st of a 4 posts step b...
How I learned to do Big Design Up Front in 2 days of Event Storming
The combination of Incremental Design and Event Storming is a better alternative to Big Design Up Front. It’s faster, safer and creates natural buy-in.
Misadventures with Big Design Up Front
Although a nice idea in theory, Big Design Up Front has many problems that I learned the hard way. We should avoid BDUF most of the time.
pair programming
A “Slow Code Retreat” to be less in a hurry
“Developers will always have more work than time” We can race our TODO lists or accept and slow down NOW. The “Slow Code Retreat” helps us do that!
7 collaboration ideas to make remote pair programming more fun
Prolonged remote-only work can be depressing. Here are 7 remote-pairing collaboration ideas to inject fun into the teams we are coaching!
5 pair-programming tips and tricks for coaching a remote team
Remote work is an extra challenge for technical agile coaching. Here are 5 opportunistic remote pair-programming tips and tricks to show a better way of work...
How to set up pairing office hours to avoid teammates interruptions
Part of the tech lead role is to be available for help. Setting up office hours and pair programming is vital to avoid the mental load of task switching.
Best open source tools for remote pair programming
COVID-19 has thrown us into remote work. Here are 3 world-class open-source tools for remote pair programming that you can set up today.
TO DO list or Mind Map for programming
Maintaining a TO DO list or a Mind Map for programming task has many benefits. It improves collaboration, our decisions and our vision of what’s left to do.
5 XP practices that will make your remote team more effective
By focusing on small increments and collaboration, XP practices like CI, Pair or Mob programming, TDD, continuous refactoring and TCR make remote work easier.
How to use Mob Programming at the rescue of Pair Programming burnout
Full-time pair programming burns introverts out. Regular mob programming sessions yield the same benefits but are more sustainable.
7 Remote pair programming best practices Q&A - Part 2
5 more best practices about remote pair programming. Let’s deal with a painful headphone, a todo list, time difference, eye contact and continuous improvement
7 Remote pair programming best practices Q&A - Part 1
Remote pair programming brings surprising benefits to a team! Daunting at first, it is quite manageable with the good practices. Here are the first 2 of 7!
How we scripted everyone to code review in the team
Getting all the team to code review can be a real challenge. Here is the story of how a simple random review assigning tool nudged everyone to code review.
10 Pair Programming Best Practices Questions & Answers
Pair programming is not just sitting together in front of an IDE. Here are battle tested answers to common questions that will make pairing work for you.
Mobbing around the world for 48h … who’s in ?
In Far From the mobbing crowd the Cucumber guys explain how they combined mob programming and remote work. Matt and Steve also explain that a mob is both res...
eXtreme eXtreme Programming (2017)
What would XP look like if it was invented today ?
5 SPA Conference takeaways that could make us better software professionals
Last week, my colleague Ahmad Atwi and I went to the London SPA Conference to give our Remote eXtreme Practice talk.
ReXP : Remote eXtreme Programming
My colleague Ahmad from Beirut gave a talk at Agile Tour Beirut on Saturday about how we adopted XP to a distributed team at work. I gave him a hand and play...
Pair Programming, From Pain Zone To Skill Zone
We’re doing pair programming almost all the the time in our team. A few weeks ago, we went to Devoxx Paris, and 2 team mates used pair programming at a hands...
From Zero to Pair Programming Hero
In my team at Murex, we’ve been doing Pair programming 75% of our time for the past 9 months now.
rails
What Rails teaches us about building platforms and frameworks
More than ever, the cheapest way to build a framework is to refactor it out of a specific app.
How to subscribe to an ActionCable channel on a specific page with custom data ?
In my spare time, I’m writing a Planning Poker App. As a reminder, planning poker is a group estimation technique designed to eliminate influence bias. Parti...
How I finally use Docker on small open source side projects
A few months ago, I started Philou’s Planning Poker, an open source side project to run planning poker estimate sessions remotely. The main technology is Rai...
5 minutes hack to speed up RSpec in Rails 5 using in-memory SQLite
Here is the story : you have a Rails 5 app that uses RSpec, but your RSpec suite is getting slower and slower to run. You’ve already considered some solution...
Continuously Deliver a Rails App to your DigitalOcean Box using Docker
I decided to use my latest side project as an occasion to learn Docker. I first used Heroku as a platform for deployment (see previous post). It works fine b...
How to setup Rails, Docker, PostgreSQL (and Heroku) for local development ?
My current side project is an online tool to do remote planning pokers. I followed my previous tutorial to setup Rails, Docker and Heroku.
How to boot a new Rails project with Docker and Heroku
A few years ago, I used Heroku to deploy my side-project. It provides great service, but I remember that updates to the Heroku Stack was a nightmare … Versio...
How I organized my javascript assets in Rails
Lately, I have been introducing javascript and coffeescript in www.mes-courses.fr (with structural architecture issues as a side effect, but that’s another s...
Simplest way to speed up rspec with in memory sqlite db
There are already a lot of articles explaining how to setup an in memory SQLite database to speed up Rails specs or unit tests. Most of them explain how to c...
Jasmine and coffeescript setup for rails
As I started to write more javascript code in my rails app, it became obvious that I should be testing it ! I wanted to use jasmine and coffeescript. I searc...
Rails autoload good practices
I started using rails autoload to load files in my lib folder of http://www.mes-courses.fr. Before that, I had been using hand written require statements, an...
Rails url_helpers mixup when using rails engines
I just tried to integrate the blogit rails engine directly inside www.mes-courses.fr. Up till now, I was using a separated radiant app to deal with the blog ...
Setting up Postgre 9.1 for rails development
I am using rails to build www.mes-courses.fr. I use ubuntu for my development os, and heroku for deployment. As heroku enforces the usage of Postgre, I chose...
Including Rails.application.routes.url_helpers from a module
When I migrated from rails 2.0 to rails 3.0, I had to change inclusion of ActionController::UrlWriter to Rails.application.routes.url_helpers. I started to g...
Devise, SSL requirements and post data
I am using rails 2.3.8, devise 1.0.11 and ssl_requirements 0.1.0. I am having strange behaviour when mixing devise with ssl_requirements. When a form posts t...
external gem rails generator not found
When trying to use devise 1.0.11 with rails 2.3.8 and bundler 1.0.10, I got the error could not find generator ... when running bundle exec script/generate d...
personal-productivity
3 Questions To Let-Go Technical Agile Coaching Measures
Let’s give up trying to measure technical agile coaching! Instead, use these 3 liberating questions to self-assess how well you are doing at any moment.
How to measure (and report 😢) your tech agile coaching effectiveness?
Technical agile coaching is complex. Many organizations would track our work with inadequate measures. Here is how hypothesis-driven goals can keep us safe.
Introduce Team G Morning Learning Sessions to Coach the Growth Mindset
Keeping our skills up to date is challenging. Remote work is a perfect excuse to run group learning sessions and to demo growth mindset to our coachees.
How to set up pairing office hours to avoid teammates interruptions
Part of the tech lead role is to be available for help. Setting up office hours and pair programming is vital to avoid the mental load of task switching.
TO DO list or Mind Map for programming
Maintaining a TO DO list or a Mind Map for programming task has many benefits. It improves collaboration, our decisions and our vision of what’s left to do.
Vertical Kanban Board Setups
Turning Kanban boards vertically fits western cultures better. Improving UX of our process tools would eventually lead to a more effective and sustainable pa...
The best 10 seconds I spent on my Kanban board setup
Flipping your Kanban board columns is a cheap way to reduce multitasking and stress. Eventually, it contributes to a more sustainable pace.
How to avoid unnecessary meetings (a takeaway from Devoxx France 2018)
I had the chance to attend Devoxx France this year in Paris. Here is the most important lesson I learned :
Frequently asked questions about the 20 hours of Code Katas
In my previous posts, I explained how to use the 20 hours of Code Katas technique to learn new languages. If you did not read these yet, start by the beginni...
Why 20 hours of code kata are so effective for learning new languages
In my previous post, I described how I’ve been using 20 hours of Code Katas to learn new languages. If you did not read it yet, have a look at it first. Let’...
How to learn a programming language in just 20 hours
We should not panic when asked to work with a new language. We should be bold enough to answer to job openings requiring technologies we are not used to. In ...
13 Tricks for Successful Side Projects
As I said last week, I released the v0.1 of Philou’s Planning Poker, my latest side project. Although I have a day job, a wife, a family and a mortgage to pa...
My Ultimate Jira Personal Kanban
A few years ago, I wrote about how I started to use Jira as my personal Kanban board at work. A lot of things have changed since then, which brought me to up...
How To Keep Programming When Assigned A Management Job
Remaining a competent developer is a career long effort, if you stop programming, you’ll loose it ! As time goes, we are regularly offered pushed into manage...
Bye Bye Programmer’s TODO List, Hello Personnal Kanban on Jira
EDIT 2017-03-03 : This article is old, I am now using an improved Jira Personnal Kanban.
Real Programmers Have Todo Lists
EDIT 2017-03-03 : This article is old, I am now using an improved Jira Personnal Kanban.
technical debt
How to estimate velocity in Scrum to escape the feature factory
Poker Planning is a collaborative game… that developers often lose! Here are the original fair rules that will provide developers time for technical work.
Leverage Scrum to workaround feature-factory sprint planning
Is “Business Value” the only thing that matters for sprint plannings? Here are 3 Scrum practices that will buy developers some time for technical work!.
5 Whole-Team Workshops To Increase Developers’ Role In Sprint Planning
Run these activities with the whole team to increase not only the developers’ role in sprint plannings, but also collaboration, engagement, and value creation!
3 compounding benefits of mob programming that make it cost-effective
Mob programming requires time to get used to it. With practice, though, you’ll discover unexpected and compounding long-term benefits of mob programming.
Making the business case for a large scale refactoring - Part 2
How to improve a factual business case for a refactoring to make it even more compelling to business people.
Making the business case for a large-scale refactoring - Part 1
With a bit of discipline, we can make a factual business case for a large-scale refactoring that business people won’t resist.
5 Effective warning signals that will get you sponsorship for a large scale refactoring
In 2005, professors Bizer and Petty showed something interesting about human behavior. People make more efforts to avoid what they don’t want, than to get wh...
A coding dojo exercises plan towards refactoring legacy code
My current job at work is technical coach. I’m available for teams that need help to adopt incremental coding practices.
10 things to know that will make you great at refactoring legacy code
We write tons of legacy code everyday. Experienced developers understand that legacy code is not something special. Legacy code is our daily bread and butter.
A seamless way to keep track of technical debt in your source code
I eventually stumbled upon a way to keep track of technical debt in source code that is both straightforward and already built-in most tools : simple TODO co...
The Size Of Code
The CFO’s debt is visible in his balance sheet. The CTO’s technical debt is invisible. What about making it visible ?
Anti Ugly-Code Glasses
I think I found a way to fix the dirty code problem once and for all …
The technical debt ponzi scheme
Madoff would have been better off managing software projects than investing on Wall Street !
A Plan For Technical Debt (Lean Software Development Part 7)
The sad truth :
coding dojo
A “Slow Code Retreat” to be less in a hurry
“Developers will always have more work than time” We can race our TODO lists or accept and slow down NOW. The “Slow Code Retreat” helps us do that!
How to make TCR evolutionary design practice sessions irresistible
Getting participants in a TCR code kata exercise seems complicated! Yet, given what TCR is, these sessions can radiate genuine fun and direct applicability!
A Surprising Way How To Teach Evolutionary Design
Evolutionary Design might be the most valuable yet impenetrable XP practice. Use TCR to practice baby-steps coding, the cornerstone of Evolutionary Design.
How to handle “TDD does not work in real life!” during code katas
Doing code katas to learn real-life TDD can at first look like a scam to many developers. So here are three techniques to maintain a constructive mood.
How to coach a team that has been burnt by bad TDD
Once exposed to bad TDD, teams are a challenge for any technical agile coach. Instead of trying to sell them TDD, XP, or whatever, fix their pains!
How to deliver a remote training with code-katas and randori in pairs
Randori-in-pairs code-katas maximize learning thanks to code and interaction. With git-handover and breakout rooms, it becomes a practical remote training.
The story about how we do Agile Technical Coaching
You will not find an Agile Technical Coach Job Description. This job is more invented than found. Here is the story of how we came to practice it at Murex.
Incremental Software Development Strategies for Large Scale Refactoring #2 : Baby Steps
How can we exploit short time slots here and there to perform large scale refactoring?
A coding dojo exercises plan towards refactoring legacy code
My current job at work is technical coach. I’m available for teams that need help to adopt incremental coding practices.
Frequently asked questions about the 20 hours of Code Katas
In my previous posts, I explained how to use the 20 hours of Code Katas technique to learn new languages. If you did not read these yet, start by the beginni...
Why 20 hours of code kata are so effective for learning new languages
In my previous post, I described how I’ve been using 20 hours of Code Katas to learn new languages. If you did not read it yet, have a look at it first. Let’...
How to learn a programming language in just 20 hours
We should not panic when asked to work with a new language. We should be bold enough to answer to job openings requiring technologies we are not used to. In ...
How to get the max out of your Team Coding Dojo ?
If you’ve read my previous posts about Team Randori Coding Dojos, you should know why and how to run a successful one.
Coding Dojo Troubleshooting
In my last 2 blog posts, I’ve detailed why and how to start a team Randori Coding Dojo. That’s the easy part. As soon as you start your first dojo, you’ll fa...
How to start a team coding dojo Randori today
In my previous post, I explained why you should start a team coding dojo Randori as soon as you can. Here is a step by step guide to set one up today.
Why you should start a team coding dojo Randori right now
Coding Dojos are easy to start and have a high return on investment. They will improve everyone’s technical skills. That’s only the start though. Practiced a...
rspec
5 minutes hack to speed up RSpec in Rails 5 using in-memory SQLite
Here is the story : you have a Rails 5 app that uses RSpec, but your RSpec suite is getting slower and slower to run. You’ve already considered some solution...
Verify the Big O Complexity of Ruby Code in RSpec
It might be possible to discover performance regressions before running your long and large scale benchmarks !
My new gem for creating rspec proxies
I already wrote a lot about test proxies (here, here and here).
Better error messages when testing html views
When testing html views, either from RSpec or from Cucumber, XPath can be really helpful to quickly find expected elements.
RSpec Matchers Combinators 2 : spec_combos gem
I already wrote about my RSpec Matchers Combinators, I decided to extract them into the spec_combos gem.
RSpec matchers combinators
Rspec matchers are a lot like predicates. Predicates that can talk … The good thing about predicates, as anybody who has done a bit of functional programming...
Spork alternative compatible with cucumber
Version 1.3.0 of Cucumber droped spork support, so I had to find something else. I am using Guard setup with rspec and Cucumber for my Rails app.
Simplest way to speed up rspec with in memory sqlite db
There are already a lot of articles explaining how to setup an in memory SQLite database to speed up Rails specs or unit tests. Most of them explain how to c...
Hitting the middle ground between classicist and mockist TDD
From Martin Fowler’s point of view, I must have been a mockist. With using mocks extensively comes quite a few advantages :
Display full backtraces in rspec
I use rspec a lot. I thinks it’s a great testing framework.
How to stub around a call to the original method with rspec ?
Update 05/23/2014: I created a gem for this, read an introduction here
stub_model and mock_model
I decided to stop using stub_model and mock_model. I do not use them enough to get fluent with them. Every time I have to deal with them, something breaks in...
Order of execution of before blocks in RSpec
I discovered that before blocks in RSpec’s examples are executed in the order they are declared. There is no great deal about it, but it can be useful when u...
Rspec messes up stubs and expectations
Here is an example showing the issue :
mocking
Make Testing Legacy Code Viral: Mikado Method and Test Data Builders
When testing legacy code, combine the test data builder pattern with the mikado method. This snowballs into more and more objects that are easy to set up in ...
When is testing using mocks still a good idea ?
In the previous 7 articles of this series, I’ve tried my best get rid of mocks. I’m pretty sure that using these techniques will get you a long way out of mo...
Get rid of mock maintenance with full fledged in-memory fakes
Last week’s post was about how hexagonal architecture results in fast, mock-free tests around your core domain. Unfortunately, that does not remove all mocks...
Avoid mocks and test your core domain faster with Hexagonal Architecture
As I’ve written in my last few posts, we can get a long way to avoid mocks with small scale coding best practices. Unfortunately, when systems reach a certai...
How Custom Assertion Matchers will keep mocks away
Custom assertions are a handy compromise alternative to mocks when we don’t have the time to refactor to a functional style.
How to use Test Data Builders to avoid mocks and keep your tests clear
We are sometimes tempted to use mocks to shortcut test data initialization. Unfortunately, excessive mocking makes tests difficult to maintain. As Uncle Bob ...
Immutable Value Objects vs Mocks : Fizz Buzz
In my previous post I explained how Immutable Value Objects help us to avoid mocks. In this post, I’ll illustrate this in practice with real code.
How Immutable Value Objects fight Mocks
Excessive use of mocks makes tests very painful to maintain. If we stick painful mocks for too long, we’ll end up abandoning unit testing. Eventually, the sy...
Careless Mocking Considered Harmful
💡 Mock hell : when excessive use of test mocks makes refactoring extremely slow or difficult.
How NOT to use mocks, my talk at Paris.rb
As I already wrote about, mocks can be trecherous … I gave a talk about how to avoid them last tuesday at Paris.rb meetup. Here are the slides.
My new gem for creating rspec proxies
I already wrote a lot about test proxies (here, here and here).
Hitting the middle ground between classicist and mockist TDD
From Martin Fowler’s point of view, I must have been a mockist. With using mocks extensively comes quite a few advantages :
stub_model and mock_model
I decided to stop using stub_model and mock_model. I do not use them enough to get fluent with them. Every time I have to deal with them, something breaks in...
How to mock an out of process COM server with C#
I am currently working to replace a legacy command line front end on a COM out of process server.
team building
A Quality View Workshop to Discuss Technical Excellence
Here is a step-by-step workshop to guide a team to drawing a Quality View. Use it to discuss investment in agile technical excellence with stakeholders.
A complete workshop for your team to see what’s a good test strategy
Teams often disagree about what is a good test strategy! So here is an all-in workshop to capture practices, define testing terms and agree on improvements.
How to help a team to find their preferred mob programming rules?
A dysfunctional mob makes coaching impossible! So here is a workshop for team members to try and find the mob programming rules that work for them.
7 collaboration ideas to make remote pair programming more fun
Prolonged remote-only work can be depressing. Here are 7 remote-pairing collaboration ideas to inject fun into the teams we are coaching!
3 compounding benefits of mob programming that make it cost-effective
Mob programming requires time to get used to it. With practice, though, you’ll discover unexpected and compounding long-term benefits of mob programming.
3 Good and Bad Ways to Write Team Coding Standards and Conventions
Writing team coding standards and conventions is hard but critical. Brainstorming doesn’t work, so let’s use asynchronous decision making or mob programming!
How we scripted everyone to code review in the team
Getting all the team to code review can be a real challenge. Here is the story of how a simple random review assigning tool nudged everyone to code review.
A serious game for learning ‘built-in quality at the source’
Skip studying queuing theory! Play this 1h15 serious game for learning why building-in quality at the source leads to a productive and sustainable pace.
How to get the max out of your Team Coding Dojo ?
If you’ve read my previous posts about Team Randori Coding Dojos, you should know why and how to run a successful one.
Coding Dojo Troubleshooting
In my last 2 blog posts, I’ve detailed why and how to start a team Randori Coding Dojo. That’s the easy part. As soon as you start your first dojo, you’ll fa...
How to start a team coding dojo Randori today
In my previous post, I explained why you should start a team coding dojo Randori as soon as you can. Here is a step by step guide to set one up today.
Why you should start a team coding dojo Randori right now
Coding Dojos are easy to start and have a high return on investment. They will improve everyone’s technical skills. That’s only the start though. Practiced a...
Recipes For An Agile Workspace
Nowadays, start-ups and tech companies seem to be competing for the most beautiful offices in order to attract top talents.
Great Developers Are Free
For many reasons. But mostly because they are key to efficiently growing a software organization.
large-scale-refactoring-sponsorship-series
How to maintain a business partnership about refactoring?
Becoming business partners grants us freedom to refactor. Careful though, we must not over-abuse this trust if we want to maintain this partnership.
Become a Business Partner and Stop Begging for Refactoring
When we, developers, earn enough trust from business people, we become their business partners. As such we enjoy a lot more freedom to refactor.
Making the business case for a large scale refactoring - Part 2
How to improve a factual business case for a refactoring to make it even more compelling to business people.
Making the business case for a large-scale refactoring - Part 1
With a bit of discipline, we can make a factual business case for a large-scale refactoring that business people won’t resist.
5 Effective warning signals that will get you sponsorship for a large scale refactoring
In 2005, professors Bizer and Petty showed something interesting about human behavior. People make more efforts to avoid what they don’t want, than to get wh...
Presenting a large scale refactoring as a business opportunity
Have you ever tried to talk about refactoring with business people ? Most of the time, the matter is pushed aside or received with rolling eyes … A few weeks...
Incremental Software Development Strategies for Large Scale Refactoring #4 : a Pattern Language
It can sometimes be a real challenge to integrate, let alone deploy, a refactoring step by step ! Here are some patterns that make this easier.
Incremental Software Development Strategies for Large Scale Refactoring #3 : Self-Organize !
Refactoring step by step generate a ton of small tasks here and there. Here are some organization best practices to keep track of them.
Incremental Software Development Strategies for Large Scale Refactoring #2 : Baby Steps
How can we exploit short time slots here and there to perform large scale refactoring?
Incremental Software Development Strategies for Large Scale Refactoring #1 : Constant Merciless Refactoring
Here’s everything you need to find the time for constant merciless refactoring … without asking for the permission!
Incremental Software Development for Large Scale Refactorings
In the end, incremental software development techniques are almost always the safest way to refactor. Here is why.
Principles that will make you become a badass developer
There are some simple attitude principles that badass developers follow to gain the business people trust.
5 mistakes badass developers never do
Here is a one sentence summary of my previous post.
Why we need Badass developers to perform large scale refactorings
My last post was about the challenge for dev teams to get sponsorship for large scale refactorings. I listed two main reasons :
How to convince your business of sponsoring a large scale refactoring
Whenever I present or suggest a good practice to dev teams, I often get the same remark. Here is how it goes :
change management
How to avoid the “large-scale impact” pitfall
Applying willpower to have a “wider than team” impact on an organization is a recipe for burnout! Check the “Local Actions, Global Impact” strategy instead.
How to make TCR evolutionary design practice sessions irresistible
Getting participants in a TCR code kata exercise seems complicated! Yet, given what TCR is, these sessions can radiate genuine fun and direct applicability!
How the pandemic made us discover better ways of coaching
This pandemic year has transformed the way we do technical agile coaching. It’s now more asynchronous, self-service, gamified, open, and inclusive!
5 technical agile coaching tips to fight exhaustion from laggards
Trying to coach laggards will exhaust you. Here are 5 tips to deal with them, sustain you, and make you spend your energy where it matters.
How to coach a team that has been burnt by bad TDD
Once exposed to bad TDD, teams are a challenge for any technical agile coach. Instead of trying to sell them TDD, XP, or whatever, fix their pains!
How to make change stick by training part-time technical agile coaches
Too often, teams revert to their old habits when the technical agile coach leaves. Training part-time coaches is a powerful way to make the change stick.
5 pair-programming tips and tricks for coaching a remote team
Remote work is an extra challenge for technical agile coaching. Here are 5 opportunistic remote pair-programming tips and tricks to show a better way of work...
How the Samman Method helps to sell technical coaching internally?
Emily Bache wrote an accessible guide for technical agile coaches. Here is my review, plus my bonus section: How to sell your technical coaching services int...
7 tricks to influence a team resisting to change its technical habits
There are many ways to manage team resistance. Here are some of the technical agile coach’s tricks that influence: testimonies, experiments, and more!
First rule of DDD is: let’s not talk about DDD
DDD jargon is a domain expert repellent! Let’s not talk about DDD, but instead, start engaging domain experts in doing DDD workshops!
Organization refactoring: Event Storming and DDD injection - part 2
The key to successful DDD and Event Storming injection is to wait for the perfect challenge. Otherwise, we’ll have no choice but to hack the organization!
Organization refactoring: Event Storming and DDD injection - part 1
Injecting DDD or Event Storming in your organization can be tricky. Here are techniques to onboard your domain experts, one step at a time!
How we scripted everyone to code review in the team
Getting all the team to code review can be a real challenge. Here is the story of how a simple random review assigning tool nudged everyone to code review.
How to use Event Storming to introduce Domain Driven Design
Although incredibly effective, DDD is overlooked by developers because of its abstractness. Event Storming is a great way to introduce DDD without naming it!
planning
How to estimate velocity in Scrum to escape the feature factory
Poker Planning is a collaborative game… that developers often lose! Here are the original fair rules that will provide developers time for technical work.
How to fight priority paralysis with Event Storming and DDD
Where should we start? It’s easy to fall into priority paralysis as you envision an ambitious product. Let’s use DDD Event Storming to scope your next step!
How to play planning poker… Badass Mode!
Planning poker and story points often turn into a power struggle where everyone loses. Here are 2 winning strategies for how to play planning poker as dev te...
How to maintain a business partnership about refactoring?
Becoming business partners grants us freedom to refactor. Careful though, we must not over-abuse this trust if we want to maintain this partnership.
Become a Business Partner and Stop Begging for Refactoring
When we, developers, earn enough trust from business people, we become their business partners. As such we enjoy a lot more freedom to refactor.
Making the business case for a large scale refactoring - Part 2
How to improve a factual business case for a refactoring to make it even more compelling to business people.
Making the business case for a large-scale refactoring - Part 1
With a bit of discipline, we can make a factual business case for a large-scale refactoring that business people won’t resist.
Incremental Software Development Strategies for Large Scale Refactoring #1 : Constant Merciless Refactoring
Here’s everything you need to find the time for constant merciless refactoring … without asking for the permission!
How to convince your business of sponsoring a large scale refactoring
Whenever I present or suggest a good practice to dev teams, I often get the same remark. Here is how it goes :
My Dream Lean Software Development Tool (Lean Software Development part 9)
Current software project tracking tools suck !
How I’ll measure the lean startup value of information in my next side project (Lean Software Development Part 8)
There must be a way to know the real money value of Lean Startup ‘knowledge’.
A Plan For Technical Debt (Lean Software Development Part 7)
The sad truth :
Can agile teams commit?
Making commitments to deliver software is always difficult. Whatever the margin you might take, it invariably seems wrong afterward …
selforganizing
How to run a Remote-First Open-Space Technology Un-Conference
Open-space technology un-conference is a powerful self-organized workshop. Here is a guide to making it remote-first, and even more inclusive!
Let’s give Remote-First Open-Space Technology Un-Conferences a try!
Open-space technology un-conference is a powerful self-organized workshop. Here is the story of how we made it remote-first to grow a community of practice.
Incremental Software Development Strategies for Large Scale Refactoring #3 : Self-Organize !
Refactoring step by step generate a ton of small tasks here and there. Here are some organization best practices to keep track of them.
How to Grow a Culture Book
Have you read valve’s Handbook for new employees ?
A Lego Office Experiment
Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither will be your Lego Office … This week is Devoxx in Paris, for the occasion, we decided to stream a Lego office experiment ...
How We Decentralized Our Company’s Training Program
Maybe your company too has a development program you can use to track and organize your training path. That’s already great ! It is often not perfect though....
How to deal with the incentive system in an agile team ?
For an organization, there’s something schizophrenic about valuing team work, wanting agility but sticking to individual objectives and assessments.
Make hiring everyone’s business
Let me tell you a typical hiring story. A bit more than 10 years ago, I was contractor at a bank on a C++ front office application. The system had initially ...
Scrum teams do not need A Scrum Master
We don’t have an official scrum master in our team anymore. We now have 7 ! A different team member assumes the full scrum master role at every sprint.
Stop feeling like a kid every time you ask a day off
Most companies don’t have unlimited vacations. Most likely, if you are an employee, your days off need to be validated by your boss. If you are like me, this...
Recipes For An Agile Workspace
Nowadays, start-ups and tech companies seem to be competing for the most beautiful offices in order to attract top talents.
How To Keep Programming When Assigned A Management Job
Remaining a competent developer is a career long effort, if you stop programming, you’ll loose it ! As time goes, we are regularly offered pushed into manage...
Great Developers Are Free
For many reasons. But mostly because they are key to efficiently growing a software organization.
learning
A Surprising Way How To Teach Evolutionary Design
Evolutionary Design might be the most valuable yet impenetrable XP practice. Use TCR to practice baby-steps coding, the cornerstone of Evolutionary Design.
How to make a team facilitate agile architecture workshops
In The Serverless Mindset, I blogged about Event Storming and Example Mapping for agile architecture. How do you coach teams to adopt these workshops?
How to coach a team that has been burnt by bad TDD
Once exposed to bad TDD, teams are a challenge for any technical agile coach. Instead of trying to sell them TDD, XP, or whatever, fix their pains!
Introduce Team G Morning Learning Sessions to Coach the Growth Mindset
Keeping our skills up to date is challenging. Remote work is a perfect excuse to run group learning sessions and to demo growth mindset to our coachees.
7 tricks to influence a team resisting to change its technical habits
There are many ways to manage team resistance. Here are some of the technical agile coach’s tricks that influence: testimonies, experiments, and more!
How to deliver a remote training with code-katas and randori in pairs
Randori-in-pairs code-katas maximize learning thanks to code and interaction. With git-handover and breakout rooms, it becomes a practical remote training.
Frequently asked questions about the 20 hours of Code Katas
In my previous posts, I explained how to use the 20 hours of Code Katas technique to learn new languages. If you did not read these yet, start by the beginni...
Why 20 hours of code kata are so effective for learning new languages
In my previous post, I described how I’ve been using 20 hours of Code Katas to learn new languages. If you did not read it yet, have a look at it first. Let’...
How to learn a programming language in just 20 hours
We should not panic when asked to work with a new language. We should be bold enough to answer to job openings requiring technologies we are not used to. In ...
10 things to know that will make you great at refactoring legacy code
We write tons of legacy code everyday. Experienced developers understand that legacy code is not something special. Legacy code is our daily bread and butter.
How to start learning the tao of incremental code refactoring today
In my last post, I explained why incremental refactoring techniques will make you both more productive and relaxed.
From apprentice to master, how to learn TDD (Test Driven Development)
I started to learn Test Driven Development a long time ago. Since then, even though I’m still not a master, it’s been my most useful programming skill, by fa...
How I got my feet wet with machine learning with ‘The First 20 Hours’
I’m currently wrapping up an alpha of a unit testing ruby gem that allows to assert the complexity of a piece of code. It’s the result of an experiment to le...
mob programming
A “Slow Code Retreat” to be less in a hurry
“Developers will always have more work than time” We can race our TODO lists or accept and slow down NOW. The “Slow Code Retreat” helps us do that!
How to help a team to find their preferred mob programming rules?
A dysfunctional mob makes coaching impossible! So here is a workshop for team members to try and find the mob programming rules that work for them.
How to handle “TDD does not work in real life!” during code katas
Doing code katas to learn real-life TDD can at first look like a scam to many developers. So here are three techniques to maintain a constructive mood.
How to coach a team that has been burnt by bad TDD
Once exposed to bad TDD, teams are a challenge for any technical agile coach. Instead of trying to sell them TDD, XP, or whatever, fix their pains!
How the Samman Method helps to sell technical coaching internally?
Emily Bache wrote an accessible guide for technical agile coaches. Here is my review, plus my bonus section: How to sell your technical coaching services int...
3 compounding benefits of mob programming that make it cost-effective
Mob programming requires time to get used to it. With practice, though, you’ll discover unexpected and compounding long-term benefits of mob programming.
Best open source tools for remote pair programming
COVID-19 has thrown us into remote work. Here are 3 world-class open-source tools for remote pair programming that you can set up today.
3 Good and Bad Ways to Write Team Coding Standards and Conventions
Writing team coding standards and conventions is hard but critical. Brainstorming doesn’t work, so let’s use asynchronous decision making or mob programming!
The story about how we do Agile Technical Coaching
You will not find an Agile Technical Coach Job Description. This job is more invented than found. Here is the story of how we came to practice it at Murex.
TO DO list or Mind Map for programming
Maintaining a TO DO list or a Mind Map for programming task has many benefits. It improves collaboration, our decisions and our vision of what’s left to do.
5 XP practices that will make your remote team more effective
By focusing on small increments and collaboration, XP practices like CI, Pair or Mob programming, TDD, continuous refactoring and TCR make remote work easier.
How to use Mob Programming at the rescue of Pair Programming burnout
Full-time pair programming burns introverts out. Regular mob programming sessions yield the same benefits but are more sustainable.
How we scripted everyone to code review in the team
Getting all the team to code review can be a real challenge. Here is the story of how a simple random review assigning tool nudged everyone to code review.
mikado-method
Make Testing Legacy Code Viral: Mikado Method and Test Data Builders
When testing legacy code, combine the test data builder pattern with the mikado method. This snowballs into more and more objects that are easy to set up in ...
TO DO list or Mind Map for programming
Maintaining a TO DO list or a Mind Map for programming task has many benefits. It improves collaboration, our decisions and our vision of what’s left to do.
Incremental Software Development Strategies for Large Scale Refactoring #3 : Self-Organize !
Refactoring step by step generate a ton of small tasks here and there. Here are some organization best practices to keep track of them.
Incremental Software Development Strategies for Large Scale Refactoring #2 : Baby Steps
How can we exploit short time slots here and there to perform large scale refactoring?
Reducing the risks of large organization changes with the Mikado Method - part 3
In the previous posts, I presented how to use the Mikado Method to large organization changes. Drawn from the programming world, this technique keeps a low t...
Reducing the risks of large organization changes with the Mikado Method - part 2
In the previous post, I presented both large scale code and organization changes. I highlighted how they face similar difficulties of huge Work In Progress. ...
Reducing the risks of large organization changes with the Mikado Method - part 1
Large scale agile transformations are often painful, stressful and … failed ! Mixing the Improvement Kata and the Mikado Method can make them more successful.
10 things to know that will make you great at refactoring legacy code
We write tons of legacy code everyday. Experienced developers understand that legacy code is not something special. Legacy code is our daily bread and butter.
Most Scrum teams are not agile
Being agile is about adapting to change and continuously improving. I’ve seen (and been) in too many teams blindly following Scrum (Scrum Zombies) without fi...
A Plan For Technical Debt (Lean Software Development Part 7)
The sad truth :
Refactoring trick to insert a wrapper
Last week at work, we decided that we needed an Anticorruption Layer between our code and another team’s. They have been using our internal data structures a...
management30
Why Agile transformations usually don’t work - part 4 - Transparency
This is the fourth and last post in a series about making large organizations more agile. I encourage you to start with the beginning.
Why Agile transformations usually don’t work - part 3 - What to do
This is the third post in a series about making large organizations more agile. I encourage you to start with the beginning.
Kudo Boxes for Kids
How do you get your kids to participate with housekeeping ? I guess that’s the dream of all parents. As so, we’ve tried quite a lot of tactics throughout the...
How to Grow a Culture Book
Have you read valve’s Handbook for new employees ?
How We Decentralized Our Company’s Training Program
Maybe your company too has a development program you can use to track and organize your training path. That’s already great ! It is often not perfect though....
How to deal with the incentive system in an agile team ?
For an organization, there’s something schizophrenic about valuing team work, wanting agility but sticking to individual objectives and assessments.
Make hiring everyone’s business
Let me tell you a typical hiring story. A bit more than 10 years ago, I was contractor at a bank on a C++ front office application. The system had initially ...
Scrum teams do not need A Scrum Master
We don’t have an official scrum master in our team anymore. We now have 7 ! A different team member assumes the full scrum master role at every sprint.
Stop feeling like a kid every time you ask a day off
Most companies don’t have unlimited vacations. Most likely, if you are an employee, your days off need to be validated by your boss. If you are like me, this...
How To Keep Programming When Assigned A Management Job
Remaining a competent developer is a career long effort, if you stop programming, you’ll loose it ! As time goes, we are regularly offered pushed into manage...
Feedback On 360° Feedback Session
If you remove your job, you are promoted. (a classic lean quote)
joke
5 Effective warning signals that will get you sponsorship for a large scale refactoring
In 2005, professors Bizer and Petty showed something interesting about human behavior. People make more efforts to avoid what they don’t want, than to get wh...
20 Bad Excuses For Not Writing Unit Tests
I guess we always find excuses to keep on with our bad habits, don’t we? Stephen King
The Size Of Code
The CFO’s debt is visible in his balance sheet. The CTO’s technical debt is invisible. What about making it visible ?
Anti Ugly-Code Glasses
I think I found a way to fix the dirty code problem once and for all …
The technical debt ponzi scheme
Madoff would have been better off managing software projects than investing on Wall Street !
Binary Hand Planning Poker
At work, we are using as we all have Android phones, we are using the Scrum Poker Cards app to do our planning poker.
Silosis
I just invented the word, I found it funny :
Coding as a living can be dangerous to your health
In 1991, John F. Woods wrote :
management
How to set up pairing office hours to avoid teammates interruptions
Part of the tech lead role is to be available for help. Setting up office hours and pair programming is vital to avoid the mental load of task switching.
5 SPA Conference takeaways that could make us better software professionals
Last week, my colleague Ahmad Atwi and I went to the London SPA Conference to give our Remote eXtreme Practice talk.
Side Projects Matter
As a manager, you could benefit a lot from helping your developers with their side projects.
How to kill Scrum Zombies ?
First of all, what is that ? Usually, Scrum zombies go in groups, and quite often, you’ll find a full team of them :
How to Grow a Culture Book
Have you read valve’s Handbook for new employees ?
How We Decentralized Our Company’s Training Program
Maybe your company too has a development program you can use to track and organize your training path. That’s already great ! It is often not perfect though....
Scrum teams do not need A Scrum Master
We don’t have an official scrum master in our team anymore. We now have 7 ! A different team member assumes the full scrum master role at every sprint.
Stop feeling like a kid every time you ask a day off
Most companies don’t have unlimited vacations. Most likely, if you are an employee, your days off need to be validated by your boss. If you are like me, this...
How To Keep Programming When Assigned A Management Job
Remaining a competent developer is a career long effort, if you stop programming, you’ll loose it ! As time goes, we are regularly offered pushed into manage...
The Holy Code Antipattern
As I’ve encountered this situation in different disguise in different companies, I now assume it’s a widely applied antipattern.
improvement kata
A complete workshop for your team to see what’s a good test strategy
Teams often disagree about what is a good test strategy! So here is an all-in workshop to capture practices, define testing terms and agree on improvements.
The unexpected contributions to a productivity increase by 25% of a fruit basket at work
As software people, we live in a complex-system world. To leverage on its non-linear effects, we need to multiply weird experiments.
Reducing the risks of large organization changes with the Mikado Method - part 2
In the previous post, I presented both large scale code and organization changes. I highlighted how they face similar difficulties of huge Work In Progress. ...
How to run your first improvement kata
The improvement kata can solve problems that typical retrospectives fail to address. Although there is a halo of mystery around it, it’s actually not that di...
Lessons learned from running our first improvement kata
During the past few weeks, I blogged the story of our first improvement kata.
How we used the improvement kata to gain 25% of productivity - Part 5
This is the fifth (and last) post of a series of 5 about the improvement kata. If you haven’t read the beginning of the story, I recommend you start from par...
How we used the improvement kata to gain 25% of productivity - Part 4
This is the fourth post on a series of 5 about the improvement kata. If you haven’t read the beginning of the story, I recommend you start from part 1.
How we used the improvement kata to gain 25% of productivity - Part 3
This is the third post on a series of 5 about the improvement kata. If you haven’t read the beginning of the story, I recommend you start from part 1.
How we used the improvement kata to gain 25% of productivity - Part 2
In my previous post, I described the productivity issue our team was facing. How retrospectives did not work, and how I started looking at the improvement ka...
How we used the improvement kata to gain 25% of productivity - Part 1
If you are serious about continuous improvement, you should learn the improvement kata.
heroku
How I finally use Docker on small open source side projects
A few months ago, I started Philou’s Planning Poker, an open source side project to run planning poker estimate sessions remotely. The main technology is Rai...
How to setup Rails, Docker, PostgreSQL (and Heroku) for local development ?
My current side project is an online tool to do remote planning pokers. I followed my previous tutorial to setup Rails, Docker and Heroku.
How to boot a new Rails project with Docker and Heroku
A few years ago, I used Heroku to deploy my side-project. It provides great service, but I remember that updates to the Heroku Stack was a nightmare … Versio...
Docker Compose trick : How to have an overridable environment variable in development mode ?
I have recently been playing with Docker and Docker Compose while starting my new side project. I’ve fallen into a situation where my production container us...
Automatic Travis daily build with Heroku scheduler
As I just released auchandirect-scrAPI, and that it relies on scrapping, I needed a daily build.
How to copy a database from an heroku app to another
For mes-courses.fr, I am using another heroku app as “integration” app, where I can do late verifications before deploying to my production app. If you don’t...
How I set up a trustico rapid ssl certificate on heroku ssl endpoint
This can be quite time consuming if it is the first time you set up an ssl endpoint. Here is how I did it :
Don’t forget the heroku stack
Don’t waste your time as I did !
Using gems instead of rails plugins on heroku
Heroku is great, you can have a rails app running live in a few minutes ! There are still a few tricky points you’ve got to sort out a little differently. On...
scrum
How to estimate velocity in Scrum to escape the feature factory
Poker Planning is a collaborative game… that developers often lose! Here are the original fair rules that will provide developers time for technical work.
Leverage Scrum to workaround feature-factory sprint planning
Is “Business Value” the only thing that matters for sprint plannings? Here are 3 Scrum practices that will buy developers some time for technical work!.
Scrum with component teams leads to Waterfall Agile!
This infographic presents the perils of Scrum with component teams. It pushes organizations back in Waterfall Agile, late deliveries and non-sustainable work.
The best 10 seconds I spent on my Kanban board setup
Flipping your Kanban board columns is a cheap way to reduce multitasking and stress. Eventually, it contributes to a more sustainable pace.
Most Scrum teams are not agile
Being agile is about adapting to change and continuously improving. I’ve seen (and been) in too many teams blindly following Scrum (Scrum Zombies) without fi...
A Straightforward Way to Scale to More Than 1 Scrum Team
How come the “agile scaling” landscape seems so daunting and bloated ?
How we introduced efficient agile retrospectives
6 months ago, our team started to run systematic iteration retrospectives. Within these 6 months, our team became more agile than ever. Running efficient ret...
Sprints are not sprints
I really don’t know why Scrum Sprints are called sprints ! From my experience, the number one mistake made by team starting with Scrum is to work as quickly ...
Scaling Agile
I have worked in small agile teams, and it does indeed work a lot better than the classical waterfall & hierarchic environment. When speaking with other ...
example mapping
How to make a team facilitate agile architecture workshops
In The Serverless Mindset, I blogged about Event Storming and Example Mapping for agile architecture. How do you coach teams to adopt these workshops?
5 Whole-Team Workshops To Increase Developers’ Role In Sprint Planning
Run these activities with the whole team to increase not only the developers’ role in sprint plannings, but also collaboration, engagement, and value creation!
How to coach developers to get a chat with their product experts
Getting these crucial chats with product experts is often a brain-teaser! Let’s show devs how to trigger short, practical, immediate Example-Mapping sessions.
First rule of DDD is: let’s not talk about DDD
DDD jargon is a domain expert repellent! Let’s not talk about DDD, but instead, start engaging domain experts in doing DDD workshops!
Organization refactoring: Event Storming and DDD injection - part 1
Injecting DDD or Event Storming in your organization can be tricky. Here are techniques to onboard your domain experts, one step at a time!
7 tactics that will make your DDD Design-Level Event Storming pay-off
What should we do after a DDD Design-Level Event Storming? How do we capture shared knowledge? How do we make the workshop more effective? Find answers here!
5 Views to Capture the Outputs of an Event Storming workshop
Recording the full Event Storming board is a waste of time. Here are examples of quick, focused, and digestible views that capture the board’s knowledge.
Event Storming lessons from Post-It haters
After going through why Event Storming uses post-its, we’ll go over alternatives. We’ll then see how to use these techniques to improve Event Storming!
How to max out DDD Big Picture Event Storming with other Workshops
DDD Big Picture Event Storming is a prelude and catalyst to other workshops. Ex: Design Level Event Storming, Example Mapping, Story Mapping & Impact Map...
retrospectives
Lessons learned from running our first improvement kata
During the past few weeks, I blogged the story of our first improvement kata.
How we used the improvement kata to gain 25% of productivity - Part 1
If you are serious about continuous improvement, you should learn the improvement kata.
5 Remote energizer tips that will make your remote retrospectives rock
Do you remember how people who are not used to the phone tend to shout in it, for the message to get far ? Read on and I’ll explain how this silly habit will...
Most Scrum teams are not agile
Being agile is about adapting to change and continuously improving. I’ve seen (and been) in too many teams blindly following Scrum (Scrum Zombies) without fi...
ReXP : Remote eXtreme Programming
My colleague Ahmad from Beirut gave a talk at Agile Tour Beirut on Saturday about how we adopted XP to a distributed team at work. I gave him a hand and play...
Trello Templates to Boost Your Remote Retrospectives
I already wrote how we started to use Trello to do our remote retrospectives. A while ago, my team mate Bilal Tayara started to collect our activities into t...
Trellospectives : Remote Retrospectives with Trello
As a distributed team working from Paris and Beirut, after pair programming, it was time for our retrospectives to get remote !
How we introduced efficient agile retrospectives
6 months ago, our team started to run systematic iteration retrospectives. Within these 6 months, our team became more agile than ever. Running efficient ret...
business value
3 compounding benefits of mob programming that make it cost-effective
Mob programming requires time to get used to it. With practice, though, you’ll discover unexpected and compounding long-term benefits of mob programming.
Too busy to prioritize?
This infographic presents how the lack of prioritization triggers a vicious circle of bloated organizations, late deliveries, and a non-sustainable pace
7 Books About Data Driven Software Engineering
Software is mostly built according to experts opinions. These 7 data driven software engineering books show us another way to a productive and sustainable pa...
Making the business case for a large scale refactoring - Part 2
How to improve a factual business case for a refactoring to make it even more compelling to business people.
Making the business case for a large-scale refactoring - Part 1
With a bit of discipline, we can make a factual business case for a large-scale refactoring that business people won’t resist.
My Dream Lean Software Development Tool (Lean Software Development part 9)
Current software project tracking tools suck !
How I’ll measure the lean startup value of information in my next side project (Lean Software Development Part 8)
There must be a way to know the real money value of Lean Startup ‘knowledge’.
How to measure your speed with your business value ? (Lean Software Development Part 3)
There is a french idiom that basicaly is
docker
How I finally use Docker on small open source side projects
A few months ago, I started Philou’s Planning Poker, an open source side project to run planning poker estimate sessions remotely. The main technology is Rai...
How I fixed ‘devicemapper’ error when deploying my Docker app
A few months ago, I started continuously deploying my latest side project to a Digital Ocean box. If you are interested, here is the full story of how I did ...
Continuously Deliver a Rails App to your DigitalOcean Box using Docker
I decided to use my latest side project as an occasion to learn Docker. I first used Heroku as a platform for deployment (see previous post). It works fine b...
How to prepare a new Ruby env in 3 minutes using Docker
One or two weeks ago, I registered to the Paris Ruby Workshop Meetup and needed a Ruby env. I have been using Vagrant quite a lot to isolate my different dev...
How to setup Rails, Docker, PostgreSQL (and Heroku) for local development ?
My current side project is an online tool to do remote planning pokers. I followed my previous tutorial to setup Rails, Docker and Heroku.
How to boot a new Rails project with Docker and Heroku
A few years ago, I used Heroku to deploy my side-project. It provides great service, but I remember that updates to the Heroku Stack was a nightmare … Versio...
Docker Compose trick : How to have an overridable environment variable in development mode ?
I have recently been playing with Docker and Docker Compose while starting my new side project. I’ve fallen into a situation where my production container us...
how-to-avoid-mocks-series
When is testing using mocks still a good idea ?
In the previous 7 articles of this series, I’ve tried my best get rid of mocks. I’m pretty sure that using these techniques will get you a long way out of mo...
Get rid of mock maintenance with full fledged in-memory fakes
Last week’s post was about how hexagonal architecture results in fast, mock-free tests around your core domain. Unfortunately, that does not remove all mocks...
Avoid mocks and test your core domain faster with Hexagonal Architecture
As I’ve written in my last few posts, we can get a long way to avoid mocks with small scale coding best practices. Unfortunately, when systems reach a certai...
How Custom Assertion Matchers will keep mocks away
Custom assertions are a handy compromise alternative to mocks when we don’t have the time to refactor to a functional style.
How to use Test Data Builders to avoid mocks and keep your tests clear
We are sometimes tempted to use mocks to shortcut test data initialization. Unfortunately, excessive mocking makes tests difficult to maintain. As Uncle Bob ...
Immutable Value Objects vs Mocks : Fizz Buzz
In my previous post I explained how Immutable Value Objects help us to avoid mocks. In this post, I’ll illustrate this in practice with real code.
How Immutable Value Objects fight Mocks
Excessive use of mocks makes tests very painful to maintain. If we stick painful mocks for too long, we’ll end up abandoning unit testing. Eventually, the sy...
Careless Mocking Considered Harmful
💡 Mock hell : when excessive use of test mocks makes refactoring extremely slow or difficult.
collaborative work
A Quality View Workshop to Discuss Technical Excellence
Here is a step-by-step workshop to guide a team to drawing a Quality View. Use it to discuss investment in agile technical excellence with stakeholders.
A complete workshop for your team to see what’s a good test strategy
Teams often disagree about what is a good test strategy! So here is an all-in workshop to capture practices, define testing terms and agree on improvements.
How to run a Remote-First Open-Space Technology Un-Conference
Open-space technology un-conference is a powerful self-organized workshop. Here is a guide to making it remote-first, and even more inclusive!
Let’s give Remote-First Open-Space Technology Un-Conferences a try!
Open-space technology un-conference is a powerful self-organized workshop. Here is the story of how we made it remote-first to grow a community of practice.
5 Views to Capture the Outputs of an Event Storming workshop
Recording the full Event Storming board is a waste of time. Here are examples of quick, focused, and digestible views that capture the board’s knowledge.
How to Capture the Outputs of an Event Storming Workshop?
Event Storming builds ‘shared understanding’. This is often not enough to bring key action-oriented people in! Here are concrete techniques to convince them.
Event Storming lessons from Post-It haters
After going through why Event Storming uses post-its, we’ll go over alternatives. We’ll then see how to use these techniques to improve Event Storming!
How to use Event Storming to introduce Domain Driven Design
Although incredibly effective, DDD is overlooked by developers because of its abstractness. Event Storming is a great way to introduce DDD without naming it!
gem
Cucumber_tricks gem : my favorite Gherkin and Cucumber tricks
I just compiled my Gherkin and Cucumber goodies into a gem. It’s called cucumber_tricks and the source code can be found on github. It’s also tested on travi...
Auchandirect-ScrAPI : an unofficial API Ruby Gem
Every brands should provide an API for developpers … unfortunately, it far from the truth right now. A few years ago, when I started my mes-courses.fr side p...
Online store scrapping DSL gem
Since I decided to stop Mes Courses to focus on AgileAvatars, I have been extracting open source gems from the code base. The last one is Storexplore : a dec...
RSpec Matchers Combinators 2 : spec_combos gem
I already wrote about my RSpec Matchers Combinators, I decided to extract them into the spec_combos gem.
Rails url_helpers mixup when using rails engines
I just tried to integrate the blogit rails engine directly inside www.mes-courses.fr. Up till now, I was using a separated radiant app to deal with the blog ...
Ruby thirdparties best practices
I am just finishing migrating www.mes-courses.fr from rails 2 to rails 3, and I can assure that I learnt these lessons the hard way …
Using gems instead of rails plugins on heroku
Heroku is great, you can have a rails app running live in a few minutes ! There are still a few tricky points you’ve got to sort out a little differently. On...
large scale
Reducing the risks of large organization changes with the Mikado Method - part 3
In the previous posts, I presented how to use the Mikado Method to large organization changes. Drawn from the programming world, this technique keeps a low t...
Reducing the risks of large organization changes with the Mikado Method - part 2
In the previous post, I presented both large scale code and organization changes. I highlighted how they face similar difficulties of huge Work In Progress. ...
Reducing the risks of large organization changes with the Mikado Method - part 1
Large scale agile transformations are often painful, stressful and … failed ! Mixing the Improvement Kata and the Mikado Method can make them more successful.
Why Agile transformations usually don’t work - part 4 - Transparency
This is the fourth and last post in a series about making large organizations more agile. I encourage you to start with the beginning.
Why Agile transformations usually don’t work - part 3 - What to do
This is the third post in a series about making large organizations more agile. I encourage you to start with the beginning.
Why Agile transformations usually don’t work - part 2 - The problem
This is the second post in a series about making large organizations more agile. I encourage you to start with the beginning.
Why Agile transformations usually don’t work - part 1 - The situation
In Aesop’s famous tale, a farmer kills his goose that lays a golden egg every day to get all the eggs at once. He finds no eggs, lost his goose, and remains ...
badass-developer
How to make change stick by training part-time technical agile coaches
Too often, teams revert to their old habits when the technical agile coach leaves. Training part-time coaches is a powerful way to make the change stick.
The story about how we do Agile Technical Coaching
You will not find an Agile Technical Coach Job Description. This job is more invented than found. Here is the story of how we came to practice it at Murex.
How to play planning poker… Badass Mode!
Planning poker and story points often turn into a power struggle where everyone loses. Here are 2 winning strategies for how to play planning poker as dev te...
You should refuse to develop what you don’t understand
Understanding is key to building quality software. Here are 3 levels of understanding we should go through before we start coding.
Principles that will make you become a badass developer
There are some simple attitude principles that badass developers follow to gain the business people trust.
5 mistakes badass developers never do
Here is a one sentence summary of my previous post.
Why we need Badass developers to perform large scale refactorings
My last post was about the challenge for dev teams to get sponsorship for large scale refactorings. I listed two main reasons :
infographic
First rule of DDD is: let’s not talk about DDD
DDD jargon is a domain expert repellent! Let’s not talk about DDD, but instead, start engaging domain experts in doing DDD workshops!
Sustain Collective Intelligence with Event Storming
Event Storming builds collective intelligence. We can keep it alive if we continue to work closely together and regularly repeat Event Storming.
Does Programming equal Refactoring?
This infographics presents how TCR increases the share of refactoring in TDD. But Refactoring is already most of our daily work! We’d better learn it serious...
How to play planning poker… Badass Mode!
Planning poker and story points often turn into a power struggle where everyone loses. Here are 2 winning strategies for how to play planning poker as dev te...
Scrum with component teams leads to Waterfall Agile!
This infographic presents the perils of Scrum with component teams. It pushes organizations back in Waterfall Agile, late deliveries and non-sustainable work.
Too busy to prioritize?
This infographic presents how the lack of prioritization triggers a vicious circle of bloated organizations, late deliveries, and a non-sustainable pace
A serious game for learning ‘built-in quality at the source’
Skip studying queuing theory! Play this 1h15 serious game for learning why building-in quality at the source leads to a productive and sustainable pace.
blogging
How the pandemic made us discover better ways of coaching
This pandemic year has transformed the way we do technical agile coaching. It’s now more asynchronous, self-service, gamified, open, and inclusive!
How to use Hackernews and Reddit for blogging
A few weeks ago, I posted my latest article Is There Any Room for the Not-Passionate Developer ? on Hackernews and Reddit Programming. The post stayed on the...
5 Years of Blogging About Software
5 years ago, I started blogging. I started really casually, my posts were personal reminders and notes rather than real well thought of articles. Nevertheles