By building small, independent units of behavior we increase our opportunity for feedback, create independently verifiable components, and make progress more visible.
Splitting Stories
A number of Agile methodologies rely on artificial time boxes such as sprints or iterations. The purpose of these time boxes is to get you good at breaking down work so you’re only building a small piece of functionality at a time. One of the critical skills in Agile development is being able to split …
Continue reading “Splitting Stories”
Read MoreSeven Strategies for Building Smaller
Big tasks are hard to work on. When we break a big task down into smaller tasks they become much more manageable. Suddenly, insurmountably large tasks become manageable as a series of smaller tasks, each of which is easily achievable on their own. Building smaller simplifies tasks making them easier to define, create, and verify. …
Continue reading “Seven Strategies for Building Smaller”
Read MoreSeven Strategies for Splitting Stories
The shorter the story the better. Short stories are easier to estimate, understand, and implement. Short stories help create cohesive, uncoupled code. Short stories are easier to test. But how do we turn big stories into shorter ones? Here are seven strategies for splitting stories. 1. Break down compound stories into components If a story …
Continue reading “Seven Strategies for Splitting Stories”
Read MoreSeven Strategies for Writing Better Stories
“As a blogging developer, I want to share a post on writing stories so that readers find value in it.” It helps to focus on what we want to build and for whom. Here are seven strategies for writing better stories. 1. See it as a placeholder Stories alone are not meant to replace requirements. …
Continue reading “Seven Strategies for Writing Better Stories”
Read MoreWhy Short Iterations Work
Software developers are infamous for not being good estimators. They say programmers have three timelines they work with: “done”, “not started” and “nearly finished”. It is easy to get caught up in the implementation details and not know exactly how long it will take to wrap up the task. Time boxing can be very helpful …
Continue reading “Why Short Iterations Work”
Read More