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July 13, 2019July 13, 2019 Become a Better Developer

Success and The Pareto Principle

While everyone desires perfection, there is a cost to creating it. Balance is essential for us to get products out the door that are good without waiting to make them perfect. Thus, the Pareto principle, or 80-20 rule, is worth reviewing. In this presentation, we look at the Pareto principle and how it can help us produce better products at a higher velocity. Improve Velocity With The Pareto Principle We have previously looked at the Agile Process as a way to improve on time-to-market. In that case, we used the idea of regular releases to get new features out the door incrementally. This time, we look at that first release. There is always some level of minimally viable product (MVP)... Read more

July 12, 2019July 5, 2019 Common Anti-Patterns

The Throw It Over The Wall Anti-Pattern

The throw it over the wall anti-pattern is shared across a broad range of disciplines. However, it is particularly damaging to the software development process. We will focus on that discipline as we dig deeper into this communication-related issue. Defining the Throw It Over The Wall Anti-Pattern The Sourcemaking site provides an excellent setup for this anti-pattern. Thus, we will start there instead of our typical definition approach. [Click Here to See The Page] “Rarely is documentation entirely self-explanatory, yet understanding the vision and insight of the authors is an essential part of understanding the documentation. This is especially true of guideline documents, where there is an implicit assumption of independent decision making. This assumption also implies an in-depth knowledge... Read more

July 10, 2019July 3, 2019 Common Anti-Patterns

Analysis Paralysis – An Over-thinking Anti-Pattern

The “Analysis Paralysis” anti-pattern may be the most well known. It has a few other names. However, a search on this one will return a broad range of results. The detrimental effects of thinking over action are not seen only in software development. They make an appearance universally. Defining the Analysis Paralysis Anti-Pattern This time our definition is more of a description. The linked article provides a lot of reasons to avoid this anti-pattern. [Click Here to See The Page] “Delaying action while over-analyzing information clearly doesn’t help when it comes to getting things done. In fact, a 2010 LexisNexis survey showed that, on average, employees spend more than half their workdays receiving and managing information rather than using it to do their jobs!“... Read more

July 8, 2019July 3, 2019 Common Anti-Patterns

Mushroom Management – A Miscommunication Epidemic Anti-Pattern

The mushroom management anti-pattern is one that appears everywhere. While it can be simplified to keeping employees in the dark, there is more to it. The side effects of this anti-pattern can cause long-lasting problems and even prevent a company from success. Let’s look at it from the software development point-of-view. Defining the Mushroom Management Anti-Pattern The simple definition provided by Wikipedia gives us an excellent starting point for discussing this anti-pattern. [Click Here to See The Page] “Mushroom management is a style of management in which the personnel are not familiar with the ideas or the general state of the company, and are given work without knowing the purpose of this work, in contrast with open-book management. “ I love this definition because... Read more

July 5, 2019June 29, 2019 Common Anti-Patterns

The Feature Creep Anti-Pattern

Feature creep is one of the most prevalent anti-patterns in my experience. I personally find it a recurring challenge to avoid. The issue is that we can always find features that are nice to have with our solution. That makes them very attractive to tack on to our release or version. There is also a limit to what can be called feature creep. Let’s look a little deeper into this one. Defining the Feature Creep Anti-Pattern Scope creep is incredibly common as an anti-pattern, and Wikipedia gives a helpful, concise definition. [Click Here to See The Page] “Feature creep is the excessive ongoing expansion or addition of new features in a product,[1] especially in computer software, videogames and consumer and business electronics. These extra features go beyond the... Read more

July 3, 2019June 29, 2019 Common Anti-Patterns

The Magic Strings Anti-Pattern

The magic strings anti-pattern implies a much more entertaining experience than it is. This coding style is not rare. Thus, it is likely you have encountered it or even fallen into this trap. As always, proven design principles and best practices help. However, the reasons this is an anti-pattern are worth reviewing. Defining the Magic Strings Anti-Pattern The DevIQ definition for the magic strings anti-pattern provides an excellent discussion of the cons of this approach. [Click Here to See The Page] “Magic strings are string values that are specified directly within application code that have an impact on the application’s behavior. Frequently, such strings will end up being duplicated within the system, and since they cannot automatically be updated using... Read more