Notes On Agile Development
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These are some tips that I learned over the years and was able to put into practice while working with the fantastic Ubuntu One team at Canonical.
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Notes On Agile Development
- 1. Notes on... agile development October 2012 Matt Griffin @mattpgriffin
- 2. Above all... Make it as quick as reasonably possible to go from code to production. If it takes weeks, you're in trouble. Focus developers on end-user value as the overarching metric for their success. Deliver quality. Tests. Tests. Tests... Engineers must write tests. Significantly reduces QA and number of issues caught late or at integration. Have fixtures and good tests so people can change code and know quickly if they broke something.
- 3. Do code reviews The approve/reject/feedback gate for merging branches. Require two reviews (from anyone) until the team is all generally similarly competent. Then require one. Reviews should be small. Look at code, APIs, tests, and UX. Try limiting branches to a max of 500 lines. ● land code regularly instead of once a week or more ● forces people to think more about how to split up the work, shipping value more frequently ● will train other engineers across projects as they review
- 4. Open communication Look mom, no email! Be effective and open with simple, low cost, real-time tools. ● bug tracker - everyone should be encouraged to submit bugs. be transparent and honest with status/progress. ● DVCS - transparent, decentralized development ● wiki - empower everyone to document common tasks ● group chat (irc, HipChat) - open company and team/project rooms with browsable logs since the beginning of time ● pastebin/etherpad - quickly share snippets w/ URLs ● Google Hangouts and Apps tools - add secure voice/video chat, screen sharing, document collaboration for a low investment
- 5. Continuous integration For web software, have an automated Jenkins instance run through a series of Selenium tests on a regular basis. If something fails, send alerts and make sure someone stops what they're doing and fixes it. All of the above are to make it easier and faster for people to change things and have a good safety net.
- 6. Environments Staging environment ● use its own copy of the production DB ● update the code automatically very frequently (Ubuntu One is at every 15 minutes atm). An edge environment with the latest code against the actual production DB is also very useful.
- 7. Frameworks not really agile-related but here's some advice... Choose wisely ● fit your current & future needs ● rash decisions or too many frameworks leads to higher costs in training, upgrades/maintenance, and ALL dependent code ● participate in the community and contribute enhancements upstream
- 8. Daily Do daily stand-ups. All the developers have a quick (~15 minutes) meeting letting everyone else know what they did and what they are going to do... and anything interesting in their life :)
- 9. Periodically Continuously look at the whole development process, from starting up a new branch to a user using it and identify anything that isn't directly adding value (this is what is called "waste"). Aggressively and boldly cut down on waste. Initially, you will most likely have to take more drastic changes. Someone needs to be there pushing!
- 10. Releases Have a regular cadence, something short like 1 or 2 weeks. Target each piece of work to these releases.
- 11. Many thanks to... @beuno - supplied almost all of the content :) the entire @ubuntuone team