Pomodoro Technique® Considered Harmful (don’t worry: you are not using it)

So, you have your shining, ticketing, tomato-shaped timer on your desk and you are a proud practitioner of the Pomodoro Technique®.

I’ve got bad news and good news.

Advertisement

The Definition of Definition of Done

TL;DR

Want to help editing a collaborative version of Definition Of Done checklist, driven by questions, rationales and “don’ts”?
Click here and feel free to share your ideas!

Preemptive commit comments

tl;dr version

Rule #1: write commit comments before coding
Rule #2: write what the software should be supposed to do, not what you did

You won’t believe how old TDD is

Kent Beck is credited as the TDD inventor.
Yet, he claims he just re-discovered it.

8 Practical Rules For Producing Decent Estimates

This the second part of How I Was Able To Be Successful Even When Forced To Use Waterfall

Rule #1: take your time

Luckily, your estimation meeting will be much more fortunate than mine (see Part I).
In my previous Scrummerfall experience, since I was forced to produce a big-planning-up-front phase, I was used to always plan 2 or 3 days for it. I was asking for an estimation when my ignorance of the problem was at the maximum level, hence I needed a lot of analysis.

Concerto – A Board For Agile Teams

Concerto collects some ideas for a better and more effective board to be used in Agile projects.

For an unfortunate coincidence, I chose the same name of the famous Parasoft’s development management software, which I didn’t know before.
Concerto board has nothing to do with Parasoft.

Concerto – A Board For Agile Teams from Arialdo Martini on Vimeo.

8 rules for being successful even when forced to use Waterfall (with a pretty good estimation)

Waterfall can work

No it cannot.
I mean: actually, it does, but adopting new and modern methodologies, you can dramatically improve your team productivity.
Yet, I believe most teams are using a mix of Agile and Waterfall. The reason is Waterfall is the sole methodology able to give the only information your manager needs to know: how much the project will cost and what’s the delivery date. About this, read the excellent post by Christopher Goldsbury Why Agile Adoption Fails in Some Organizations

Help me, because I think Martin Fowler has a Merge Paranoia

There must be something very wrong with me: for the first time in my life I think that Martin Fowler is wrong on a specific topic. And, since Martin is Martin and I’m just a humble developer (Arialdo who?) I’m likely to be the one who’s completely off the track.Nevertheless, unfortunately, no matter how much I dig into the topic, I’m not able to convince myself that Martin Fowler’s arguments about Feature Branching, Continuous Integration and Feature Toggling are right.

Please, help me to understand what I’m missing.

Unit tests lie: that’s why I love them

When a unit test for a method implementing some feature is green, it does not mean the feature is working. The corresponding end-to-end or integration tests reveal if it’s working or if it’s broken. To Product Owner’s point of view, end-to-end tests are all that matters. Unit tests are useless.

Unit tests are meant to lie. They rely on the often wrong assumption that the rest of the world is correctly working, but only because they are explicitly mocking it: using a fake world is a deliberate lie.

To me, that’s exactly why they are so useful.

Software Developers Are Not Coders

I got shocked by Mike Gualtieri’s post about agile. I’m not expert enough to claim if he’s right or wrong. He surely gave me a lot to think, though.

The 3 most valuable qualities a candidate should have to bring value to a team

Very recently I asked Giacomo Tesio, author of Epic Framework, which developing methodology was the more successful, from his point of view.

Wrong estimation, help! I’m late! Cut features and stop waterfalling!

I won’t be able to deliver on time. My estimation was too optimistic. What can I do now?

If you can’t deliver on time, don’t. Simple, isn’t it?

I believe the best strategy is cutting features and start both constantly refining your estimation and doing Deliberate Discovery. In other words, I believe the question was somehow misplaced.

Agile and “Knowledge, Authority and Loving Yearning”

I’m Italian. Big shame on me.
One of the rare reasons why I’m proud to be Italian is a sentence by an anonymous author, back in the 1300’s.

More than 700 years ago. Yet I think it has something to teach us about Agile.

The biggest difference between Waterfall and Agile

I attended Alberto Brandolini‘s speech at DDD Day.
Among all the interesting concepts he exposed, one struck me the most.