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 pay for it later in the development cycle. Pre-check...

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 set of code that allow for easy integration between...

Summary Motley: Features sell a product. When in doubt, add more features! Maven: These days, software is less about features and more about reliability, fit 'n finish, performance, and usability. Use the Kano model to help you focus on the right scenarios for the user. ______________________________...

Summary Motley: Bug fix sprints are a Scrum anti-pattern. Quality should be kept high so as not to have to focus on bug fixing. Maven: A clear meaning of done for sprint tasks is important, but even if you follow this best practice, there will always be integration issues, bugs, and changes...

Summary Motley: Checklist? We don't need no stinking checklist! Checklists are for anal people with short memories. Maven: Checklists are very useful for activities like code reviews, where it is difficult to remember everything we need to look for. Good checklists are short, consistent,...

Summary Motley: I'll deal with performance issues when I have something to test. Then I'll run the profiler and just optimize the slow methods. Maven: Think about performance early in the development cycle. Set goals. Design for performance. Measure, measure, measure. Optimize the scenarios...

Summary Motley: I'm not sold on this inspection thing. There were too many problems during our session. Plus, everyone just picks on the author and they hate having their code reviewed. Back to informal peer reviews for me. Maven: Follow inspection best practices: inspect limited amounts...

Summary Motley: Inspections seem a bit heavy. They suck up too much time for little gain. Maven: Inspections are actually a fairly light-weight structured process that find more issues compared to ad-hoc peer reviews and team reviews. ______________________________ [Context: Maven...

Summary Motley: Quick ad-hoc peer reviews are sufficient to nail bugs early in the development cycle. Maven: A more structured team-based code review process can lead to more issues found. ______________________________ [Context: Maven overhears a code review that is happening in...

Summary Motley: Unit testing is the test team's job! I am not paid to write tests. Maven: White box (unit) tests help with code quality and give you confidence to change your code. ______________________________ [Context: During a previous conversation about debugging, Motley stated...