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[ #177 ] Meetings are Toxic Permalink

Agile, Best-Practice, Rant Added less than a year ago

[ #99 ] Not Being Involved in Estimates == Insanity Permalink

Best-Practice Added a year and a bit ago

When you go to accept a contract and the client has already estimated the time that the feature addition will take, and expects you to sign off on it, do not sign.

It is very important that you are involved in the estimation of the project. You need to sit down with the client for a day and break the features down into small, manageable chunks. Only then can you provide an estimate - being careful to stress it is an estimate only.

Why? Because clients do not know how impenetrable their code is. They don't understand that their proprietary storage engine will set you back three weeks trying to learn it. They don't understand that their codebase doesn't contain enough documentation to set up their product in your environment. They don't understand that their spec sheets do not contain information that is easily interpreted by a programmer with no domain knowledge of their business.

I have unfortunately made this mistake once before and I will never make it again. Realise that it could be difficult to recognise this issue if you are under financial pressure and want to sign something quickly, but it is so important to avoid getting involved with clients in this way. Explain to them the correct way of doing things and when you're sorted out with proper estimates and spec sheets only then should you sign the contract.

[ #85 ] Modern Software Development Permalink

Subversion, Best-Practice, Agile, Testing, Git Added a year and a bit ago and last edited less than a year ago

Modern Software Development is an article I wrote with a concise list of technical points for a software house to implement. It has a basis in Agile methodologies but doesn't preach a certain one. It is aimed at the small software house or the beginner.

Modern is being proactive and efficient. It is being prepared, having backups, examining information, deploying with minimal mistakes and being able to recover and review when mistakes are made. Modern is being well-tested and writing maintainable code. Modern is being able to release regularly and easily.

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