Category Archives: Effective Practices

A Few Thoughts on Feature Flags

Posted on April 9, 2018 by davef

I confess that “Feature Flags” make me a bit nervous. Despite this I think them a useful and important tool in our ability to achieve Continuous Integration. So why do they make me nervous? Well, they are a form of … Continue reading →

Posted in Agile Development, Continuous Integration, Effective Practices | 8 Comments

Continuous Integration and Feature Branching

Posted on March 30, 2018 by davef

Recently I spoke at the Pipeline Conference in London. I gave a talk on “Optimising Continuous Delivery” to a bunch of people who were self-selected as interested in Continuous Delivery, most of them would already consider themselves CD practitioners, Pipeline … Continue reading →

Posted in Agile Development, Continuous Delivery, Continuous Integration, Effective Practices, Feature Branching | 81 Comments

Mob Rule?

Posted on October 7, 2016 by davef

I was at a conference last year where I saw Woody Zuill talking about “Mob Programming”. You can see that talk here A very simple description of Mob programming, for those of you who don’t have time to watch Woody’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Agile Development, Culture, Effective Practices | Leave a comment

Test *Driven* Development

Posted on June 29, 2016 by davef

Before Test Driven Development (TDD) the only thing that applied a pressure for high-quality in software development was the knowledge, experience and commitment of an individual software developer. After TDD there was something else. High quality in software is widely … Continue reading →

Posted in Agile Development, Continuous Delivery, Effective Practices, Software Design, TDD | 4 Comments

Cycle-Time

Posted on June 29, 2016 by davef

Motivation is a slippery thing. My favourite example is described by the writer Dan Pink. He tells the true story of a Nursery who, like many Nurseries, had a problem with parents turning up late to collect their children. This … Continue reading →

Posted in Agile Development, Continuous Delivery, Culture, Effective Practices | 2 Comments

RedGate Webinar Q&A

Posted on May 11, 2016 by davef

I recently took part in a Webinar for Database tools vendor Redgate. At the end of the Webinar we ran out of time for some of the questions that people had submitted, so this blog post provides my answers to those … Continue reading →

Posted in Agile Development, Continuous Delivery, Effective Practices, External Post | Leave a comment

Pair Programming – The Most Extreme XP Practice?

Posted on April 4, 2016 by davef

I was an early adopter of Extreme Programming (XP). I read Kent’s book when it was first released in 1999 and, though skeptical of some of the ideas, others resonated very strongly with me. I had been using something like … Continue reading →

Posted in Agile Development, Culture, Effective Practices, Pair Programming | 2 Comments

Testing Times

Posted on August 7, 2014 by davef

I came across a test breakage recently. I had committed some code and a test had failed. The test was unrelated to my changes, but I took a look anyway because maybe I was wrong. As it turned out the … Continue reading →

Posted in Effective Practices, Software Design, TDD | Leave a comment