Software development is a unique endeavor there has to be a balance between "out of the box," creative thinking and realistic, grounded design the problem is how to keep the balance across all team and company sizes. A small team will focus more on getting results which can cause issues of proper documentation and even bad design; also on the creative side of things the smaller the team the fewer the chances to see things in alternative ways which means testing may suffer and solutions may be inefficient. On the other hand anyone who has experienced development in a large scale organization will testify that to control the chaos of writing code bureaucracy in the form of documentation, meetings, processes can become overwhelming and crush good ideas, spirits, productivity and in the end lead to more chaos.
Agile practices have been hailed as the messiah that will save us all from both the oppression of bureaucracy and the trap of coding madness. But the messiah asks for full obedience if not to all practices at least to the philosophy and as every messiah it is met with fierce resistance from the status quo. Going agile means more than getting a few post-it notes and a filling the timetables with rituals it means that the entire organization needs to relinquish control. The customer loses the well defined contract, the managers lose direct control over their employees, the designers are no longer in control of their own work and the one thing that gains all control is "The Team."
But I am no longer a member of a team, I have no manager, no scum master, no product owner, I don't know my customer by name. I am in the world of cowboy coding and I have very little in terms of methodology and practices. In the following weeks and months I will attempt, besides learning how to write good apps for the android platform, to lay out a method or perhaps a collection of practices that will keep me motivated, focused and productive while working alone. I will post updates, tips and lessons learned and hopefully in the end I will have a solid collection of practices to assist those who also walk this lonesome path. Queue the music I'm a cowboy, on a steel horse I ride...
Till next time Stratos out.
Agile practices have been hailed as the messiah that will save us all from both the oppression of bureaucracy and the trap of coding madness. But the messiah asks for full obedience if not to all practices at least to the philosophy and as every messiah it is met with fierce resistance from the status quo. Going agile means more than getting a few post-it notes and a filling the timetables with rituals it means that the entire organization needs to relinquish control. The customer loses the well defined contract, the managers lose direct control over their employees, the designers are no longer in control of their own work and the one thing that gains all control is "The Team."
But I am no longer a member of a team, I have no manager, no scum master, no product owner, I don't know my customer by name. I am in the world of cowboy coding and I have very little in terms of methodology and practices. In the following weeks and months I will attempt, besides learning how to write good apps for the android platform, to lay out a method or perhaps a collection of practices that will keep me motivated, focused and productive while working alone. I will post updates, tips and lessons learned and hopefully in the end I will have a solid collection of practices to assist those who also walk this lonesome path. Queue the music I'm a cowboy, on a steel horse I ride...
Till next time Stratos out.
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