January 2017 – Craig Nicol

Jettison sandbags to focus on your goal

January 31, 2017

Whether your deadline is near or far, there will always be things on your team list that you don’t need to do. It’s tempting to take ownership of everything, all the servers, all the code, all the admin. As a team of top developers, you could also write a better timesheet management software than the … More Jettison sandbags to focus on your goal

The Fog

January 27, 2017

Dream in years.Plan in months.Evaluate in weeks.Ship daily.— @dpatil — Michelle Lee (@mishmosh) January 12, 2017 Agile is about the here and the now. The moment, turning on a sixpence as the weather, and the market changes. Adapting to your environment and delivering, delivering, delivering at a consistent high quality. But what if you’re delivering … More The Fog

Naughtonomy

January 24, 2017

If you want a strong team of developers, give them autonomy. But what if they don’t want to take it? The ones in, or from, the big corporations who just won’t take the initiative? The ones who just want to be told what to do? I’ve said before that those are the waterfall people. The … More Naughtonomy

A task/story is not a feature

January 20, 2017

Agile is easy. Take the requirements, break them down into tasks, schedule them, do them, review them, test them, ship them. And then you realise, as many on the agile journey do, that your “spreadsheet import” task is too big. It doesn’t get finished in the same timescale as other tasks, so it sits on … More A task/story is not a feature

Good developers learn

January 17, 2017

When I interview people for a job, I look for their skills, but most of all, I need people on my team who love to learn. I was thinking about this when I listened to Rick Strahl talking on .Net Rocks When I started developing, there was a lot of talk about certifications and becoming … More Good developers learn

! Not the lazy programmer

January 13, 2017

There’s been a popular stereotype about good programmers being productively lazy. Automating tasks to avoid work. It’s an easy thing to share but I don’t think it’s quite true. It’s about reducing inefficiency. It’s not that developers don’t want to work, we want to do interesting work. Not repetitive work, not work that gets binned, … More ! Not the lazy programmer

Non-functional requirements and terrific testers

January 10, 2017

There’s a ongoing debate about non-functional requirements: Non-Functional Requirements Are Not Nonsense and it’s a debate I’ve had within my teams as well. In most consulting projects I’ve seen, non-functional requirements are listed as a nice to have, rather than a must have. It’s not a matter of business logic vs. performance either. In one … More Non-functional requirements and terrific testers

How do you know when it’s time to move job?

January 6, 2017

Around 18 months ago, I decided I needed a new job. It took almost 8 months to find my current job, and I swayed between wanting to leave and wanting to stay. In the end I discovered that I was finding excuses to stay because I’d been there long enough, and made enough friends, to … More How do you know when it’s time to move job?

Craig Nicol

Mainly programming, with a bit of science thrown in

Month: January 2017