Monthly Archives: April 2012

Complex Projects need Agile MORE than Smaller Projects

Posted on April 30, 2012 by keith swenson

I met another Japanese executive last week who said “An Agile approach may be fine for other projects, but our software is big and complex, and because of that we have to use Waterfall approach.”  This is the exact opposite from … Continue reading →

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Don't Fear Rewriting New Code

Posted on April 23, 2012 by keith swenson

The last post #28 Avoid “Test Script” Fever was about simplifying an implementation that was more elaborate than it needed to be.  There was a waterfall-style project in exactly this situation, and leader responded saying “It has already been coded the … Continue reading →

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#28 Avoid "Test Script" Fever

Posted on April 17, 2012 by keith swenson

There is a strange propensity among developers to make tests more complicated than they need to be in the name of flexibility.  Tests don’t need to be flexible, they need to be reliable and maintainable.  I have seen this pattern … Continue reading →

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#27 Don't Declare Variables at the Top

Posted on April 14, 2012 by keith swenson

Somewhere long ago you attended a course that said that all variables should be declared at the top of the method.  Modern languages allow you to declare the variable at the point in the code that it is initialized and … Continue reading →

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Two is Not Better Than One

Posted on April 5, 2012 by keith swenson

In software design you often must choose between two competing approaches.  Which is better?  It is tempting at times to say “Let’s do both, and let the user choose.”   That might be good, but there are many cases where that … Continue reading →

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#26 Don't add Methods and Classes that you don't need.

Posted on April 2, 2012 by keith swenson

This should be obvious, but it is a rule that is violated quite often. This is one corollary to the YAGNI (You Aren’t Gonna Need It) Principle.    This post discusses that there is a proper time to do things, … Continue reading →

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