Category Archives: Culture

What is Modern Software Engineering?

I have a new book out. It’s called “Modern Software Engineering” and I have been working on it for the past few years.  The ideas in it grew out of a growing realisation that the way that I approach software … Continue reading

Posted in Continuous Delivery, Continuous Integration, Culture, Effective Practices, Engineering Discipline, Personal News, Software Design, Software Engineering, TDD | Tagged , , , , | 12 Comments

Women in Computing

March 8th is International Women’s Day, which got me thinking again about why we have so few women programmers (well, in Europe and the USA anyway). Things didn’t start out this way. Many of the first programmers and pioneers of computing were … Continue reading

Posted in Culture, Software Engineering | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Is SAFe safe?

I recently made a passing comment in one of my videos about SAFe, it was a bit of a cheap-shot on my part if I am honest and I got picked-up on it, appropriately, by a viewer. It is too … Continue reading

Posted in Agile Development, Culture, Effective Practices | Tagged , , , | 17 Comments

Science and Software Development

I have been talking about Continuous Delivery being, informally, an application of the scientific method to software development for several years now. I have spoken about it, CD, being a candidate for the beginnings of a genuine engineering discipline for … Continue reading

Posted in Culture, Effective Practices, Engineering Discipline, Software Engineering | Tagged | 1 Comment

Hygiene Factors for Software Development

I got into a small debate about software development with someone recently via the comments section to a previous blog-post. During the course of the debate I thought of an analogy to make part of my argument, but I think … Continue reading

Posted in Agile Development, Culture, Effective Practices, Engineering Discipline, Software Engineering | 1 Comment

Perceived Barriers to Trunk Based Development

A friend of mine has recently started work at a new company. She asked me if I’d answer a few questions from their dev team, so here is the second… Q: “Currently at MarketInvoice we use short-lived feature branches that … Continue reading

Posted in Agile Development, Continuous Delivery, Culture, Effective Practices, Feature Branching, Pair Programming, TDD | 5 Comments

Pair Programming for Introverts

A friend of mine has recently started work at a new company. She asked me if I’d answer a few questions from their dev team, so here is the first in a short series of their questions and my answers… … Continue reading

Posted in Agile Development, Culture, Effective Practices, Pair Programming | 1 Comment

Diversity

I inadvertently found myself in the middle of a minor Twitter storm on the topic of diversity. The organisers of a conference that I attended made some, to me, intemperate remarks on the subject. They were asked why there were … Continue reading

Posted in Culture | 1 Comment

Mob Rule?

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

Cycle-Time

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