Episode 171 – Beyond Legacy Code with David Bernstein

October 7, 2019 by The Agile Revolution

Craig is at Agile 2017 in Orlando, Florida and speaks with David Bernstein, author of “Beyond Legacy Code“, and they chat about agile technical practices:

Agile does have something to with software development
Agile 2017 talk “Create Software Quality
The real value of Agile is in the technical practices so we can build iteratively, but still very few people practice them
The future is already here, but it is not very well evenly distributed – the same applies to Agile
Companies are being consumed by their technical debt and they don’t even recognise it
What is always cheaper in the virtual domain is building quality
Continuous Integration makes the most painful thing in software development (integration) our greatest asset – this in turn gives us feedback
We don’t necessarily know there is a better way to do things – but there is a better way to do things
We traditionally think of software as a write once event, but it is write many – users want it changed
We think procedurally so object oriented code often ends up being procedural with a class statement wrapped around it
Test First Development – very few developers know how to write a good test because they haven’t been taught, it was intended to assist with refactoring
Studies show about 10% of people follow the Agile technical practices like XP, and only 10% of those are doing it correctly
The mindset of testing is different to the mindset of coding and they are mutually exclusive (in the same way we need editors when writing a book)
Refactoring is at two levels because we learn in chunks – we need to do while doing test first as well as in the large
“The Art of Agile Development” – spend 10% of your time refactoring
Communication – say what, why and for whom before how – we think in implementation
CLEAN code – cohesive, loosely coupled, encapsulated, assertiveness and non-redundant
Need to understand what quality means in software
Troy Magennis talk “I love the smell of DATA in the morning (Getting started with Agile Data Science)“

TheAgileRevolution-171 (34 minutes)

Episode 145: Working Effectively with (Legacy) Code with Michael Feathers

October 27, 2018 by The Agile Revolution

Craig is in Atlanta at Agile 2016 and catches up with Michael Feathers, author of “Working Effectively with Legacy Code” and they talk about the following:

Working Effectively with Legacy Code originally started as a book about Test First Programming but morphed into a book about the techniques for refactoring code in legacy systems
The Pinned Progress Curve – for many people there is no incentive to change so the mean gets larger between the status quo and good practices
Agile Alliance Deliver:Agile conference
Organisations that have technical founders have a very different character to their work internally, need to make knowledge of the quality of software more pervasive – the business need to understand more about the technical side, and the developers need to understand more about the business
Code that has excessive error handling typically has other design problems – benefit in thinking about whether certain things should be treated as errors or not
Entropy happens in all systems, including code, so technical debt is not a surprise, need to make the case for hygiene, putting a dollar amount on technical debt does not add much value
Use low impact probing to determine whether code is dead
Potsel’s Law – an implementation should be conservative in its sending behaviour, and liberal in its receiving behaviour
State of quality is improving and there is more recognition to build quality in
Property based testing is becoming more prevalent as we move from object oriented to functional languages
Holacracy was designed by a software person, Sociocracy talks about applying democratic principles to governance, these are all interesting experiments
It can be hard to recognise if something is intrinsically difficult or not something you are familiar with
We weren’t really battling waterfall, it was the lack of any process at all…

TheAgileRevolution-145 (33 minutes)

Episode 124: Talking Testing with Anne-Marie Charrett

January 18, 2017 by The Agile Revolution

Craig is at YOW! Conference and catches up with Anne-Marie Charrett who is well known in the testing community as a trainer, coach and consultant but also for her support of the community:

Don Reinertsen talk “Thriving in a Stochastic World“
Context-Driven Testing
Testing is a verb – it’s a doing thing and not an output, but the challenge is you cannot see doing
Anne-Marie’s class in Exploratory Testing
Where there is risk and failure, there is a job for testing
Exploratory testing – the key is feedback and using the learning to feedback into the next test
Agile testing – don’t try and test everything and don’t try and automate everything either, rather adopt a risk based approach
Unit testing – the usefulness depends on the programmer and the context and figuring out what you are trying to achieve
Sydney Testers Meetup
Speak Easy – Speak Easy is a voluntary program designed to increase diversity in tech conferences through dedicated conference spots, mentoring and events
YOW! WIT Program
WorkVentures – training marginalised youth
Testing challenges include microservices (the risk of bounded context and breaking things down and missing the whole) and working together as developers and testers
James Lewis podcast “Episode 120: Microservices & The Lean Enterprise with James Lewis“

TheAgileRevolution-124 (39 minutes)

Episode 83: Making Impacts with Gojko Adzic

November 30, 2014 by The Agile Revolution

Gojko Adzic “does computers” which means he helps people deliver software and he caught up with Craig on a recent YOW! DepthFirst tour of Australia. Gojko is the author of numerous books including “Bridging The Communication Gap“, “Specification by Example“, “Impact Mapping” and “50 Quick Ideas to Improve Your User Stories“.

XP – started with “Extreme Programming Explained” which was really about developers ruling the world – XP is not dead, it won!
TDD has crossed the chasm to mainstream
Sturgeons Law – 90% of anything is going to be crap
Continuous integration and automation has opened up a world of possibilities
“Bridging the Communication Gap” – about finding ways to break dysfunctional processes in organisations
“Agile Testing” by Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory
The most valuable companies in the world are software companies
It’s more about the right people being involved rather than narrowly defined roles
“Specification by Example” – a collaborative way of coming up with good requirements and tests involving a cross functional team
Pschologically people perceive that tests come after development – in that case you have already failed
BDD – no canonical definition, would love BDD and SBE to be the same thing
“Impact Mapping” – based on a Swedish interaction design process – about setting goals and strageies
Impact Mapping uptake outside of IT – Marcus Hammarberg on Doctors in Indonesia and Ahmad Fahmy on helping orphanges in Egypt
“50 Quick Ideas To Improve Your User Stories” – a lot more to good user stories than just a template
Hamburger Slicing – last resort technique for technical story breakdown to think about options for value
Product Management is the big missing piece – teams could benefit from doing this better
As an industry we produce too much software – need to change the percentage of software that can achieve something big

TheAgileRevolution-83 (45 minutes)

Episode 38: Coding With Exceptions (The Agile Story)

August 11, 2012 by The Agile Revolution

This is a special mashup episode recorded in Auckland, New Zealand. Craig catches up with Mark Derricut from the Illegal Argument podcast and Craig Aspinall from the Coding By Numbers podcast. Not your usual Agile podcast, the discussion starts around the definition of Agile (“crash often, crash regulary”) and trying to define quality and ends up in a chat about wicked problems, devops and software development skillsets.