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Is It Beautiful?—Aesthetics in Software Testing

With all the faces it presents, surely software can be said to possess or lack beauty. But, what does it mean to have beautiful software, and how do we evaluate it? In this installment of his series on philosophy and testing, Rick Scott takes a closer look at software aesthetics.

Rick Scott's picture Rick Scott
How to Lose a Customer

Giving your clients the opportunity to voice their opinions after conducting business with you is a great way to express your interest in continuing to work with them. Just make sure you're earnest in hearing their thoughts and that you don't simply think this is accomplished with a survey alone.

Naomi Karten's picture Naomi Karten
Edit Those Epics

It can be tricky for managers and technical leaders to make the transition to agile. They’re likely accustomed to doing things a particular way. What’s more, they may try to squeeze their old ways into the new, agile approach. Here, Johanna Rothman describes why that isn’t a good idea, especially regarding stories that are too big.

Johanna Rothman's picture Johanna Rothman
Agile or Not: How to Get Things Done

Agile software development always felt intuitive to me. Developing software incrementally, in close collaboration with the customer is the obvious way to deal with the uncertainty inherent in both software requirements and implementation. The technical practices of automating necessary but time consuming tests, and deploying, early and often are the obvious ways to give an team the ability to evaluate the  functionality you have and to to decide if the software works as expected. And it's also important to decide if what you built still makes sense given the current environment.

Steve Berczuk's picture Steve Berczuk
drawing a flow chart Getting to "Done" in Agile Development

When the tasks in the "Done" column needed more attention, the team created a "Done Done" column. Later, they created a "Done Done Done" column. In this article, Brian Bozzuto discusses how you can stop adding columns and honestly get to "done" without having to kid yourself.

Brian  Bozzuto's picture Brian Bozzuto
More on Being Done

Continuing the conversation from last week, Andy Singleton followed up on my post on being done with this post. Which is good as this is one of those questions that sounds simple in theory, but in practice contains some subtlety.

Steve Berczuk's picture Steve Berczuk
What Does "Being Done" Really Mean in Software Development?

Agile New England (which used to be called the New England Agile Bazaar, and which was started by Ken Schwaber) , has this wonderful activity before the main event each month: they host Agile 101 sessions, where people who know something about agile lead a short (30 minutes) small (about 10 people) class on agile basics for those who want to learn more about some aspect of agile. 

Steve Berczuk's picture Steve Berczuk
The Agile Success Factor: Continuous Integration

Kirk Knoernschild discusses the subtle though significant ways that continuous integration can be leveraged—from helping to align IT with the business to enforcing architectural constraints—and shows that this fundamental aspect of agility is the defining and necessary element of a truly agile development experience.

Kirk Knoernschild
One-Minute Management and Project Teams

Managing expectations and providing useful feedback are incredibly important skills for managers, whether you’re dealing with one employee or many. In this article, Laura Brandenburg takes a closer look at how some of the principles from the book The One Minute Manager apply to project teams.

Laura Brandenburg's picture Laura Brandenburg
Assessing a Selected Agile Method Assessing an Organization’s Capability to Effectively Implement Its Selected Agile Method

Shvetha Soundararajan and Dr. James D. Arthur write that the agile philosophy provides an organization or a team with the flexibility to adopt a selected subset of principles and practices. However, more often than not, these customized approaches fail to reflect the agile principles associated with the practices.

TechWell Contributor's picture TechWell Contributor

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