Summary Motley: Developers should just throw the completed code "over the wall" to the test team when they are done. There is nothing different with testing in an agile world vs. a waterfall world. ...

Summary Motley: A successful development iteration does not need a goal. Just deliver some features and call it good. Maven: A goal provides clarification on what the team is building during a development...

Summary Motley: Wideband Delphi is overkill for smaller tasks. I would never invite a bunch of people to an estimation session to estimate a 20 hour task. Maven: Planning Poker is a lighter variant...

Summary   Motley: Story points provide no value over using plain units of time for estimates. Who would want to use an abstract unitless measurement for estimates anyway? Makes no sense.   Maven: Story points are a unitless measure for the relative...

Motley: Man, I have not seen that James guy around in months. I think he must have left us. Maven: No, don’t give up hope. It’s true he hasn’t been too active here, but he’s got a side gig. Motley: Side gig? Eavesdropping...

Summary [This entry is a follow-up to " To prepare for an interview, just make sure you can code on a whiteboard ". A few of the important messages are repeated and clarifications are provided to make a complete package.] ...

Summary Motley: An effective modification to Scrum is to do a requirements sprint, followed by a design sprint, implementation sprint, test sprint, and stabilization sprint. It has the benefits of Scrum and has commonality with...

Motley: Where has that lazy piece of work, James, been hiding? Maven: I was just wondering that myself. I have not seen him in a few weeks. Let me check his Facebook page - that should clue us in. Motley: It figures that he would update Facebook...

Summary Motley: There is no harm shortcutting a few steps of development to meet a deadline. Some up-front check-in steps just take too much time. Maven: Slow down to go fast. Obey check-in checklists or you will...

Summary Motley: Build an application according to architectural layers, from the bottom-up. Maven: Build an application using vertical slices. Build just enough UI coupled with underlying layers such as an object and data...

Summary Motley: Branches are too complicated. The last thing we need is a copy of the code that has to be maintained in two or more places! Maven: Branches are source code copies with a tie back to a mainline...

Thanks to the brilliant work of a coworker and friend, Fred Chao, Maven and Motley now have faces! You can see them in the title bar of the blog and in the about page. Thanks, Fred! Motley: Maven:

Summary Motley: Tell like it is. We have a business to run and getting straight to the point is most efficient. Maven: Interpersonal skills help you ascend the career ladder. Don't be a jerk. Some tips include avoid interruption, ask questions...

Summary Motley: To be a lead developer, technical skills are absolutely the most important. Everything else is secondary, tertiary, and whatever word comes next. Maven: A lead developer must lead from several different perspectives, including...

Summary Motley: I admit it - Wideband Delphi works! It helped us generate fairly accurate estimates for longer-term planning and the documentation of our assumptions kept everyone on the same page and provided rationale for our numbers. Maven...