Muses

MMMSS – The Intrinsic Benefit of Steps

Change Harvesting / / 8 minutes of reading
This entry is part 3 of 5 in the series Many More Much Smaller Steps

We’ve covered the MMMSS idea a couple of times now. This time we want to consider the key element of the case in favor: the remarkable intrinsic value we receive from Many More Much Smaller Steps. It’s not immediately obvious, so let’s take our time. Many More Much Smaller Steps – First Sketch | GeePawHill.org The first plank of my take on fixing the trade is MMMSS: If you want more value faster, take Many More Much Smaller Steps. Today […]

MMMSS – The Intrinsic Benefit of Steps See Full Post

Random Coaching Tips

Coaching, Change Harvesting / / 3 minutes of reading

As a person who has been successfully coaching software development teams for twenty years, let me throw out a few ideas to chew over. With luck, maybe one of them will jiggle the frame enough for you to find a next step. Nothing, absolutely nothing, always works. There are thousands of forces in play in a typical team or organization, and many of them are inherently or ontogenetically anti-change. I vary my game a lot, and I have a lot

Random Coaching Tips See Full Post

MMMSS – A Closer Look at Steps

Modern-Synthesis, Programming, Change Harvesting / / 9 minutes of reading
This entry is part 2 of 5 in the series Many More Much Smaller Steps

Earlier, we sketched out MMMSS, Many More Much Smaller Steps, laying out the bare bones. Cool, cool, but now we need to thicken our sense of the idea. Today, let’s close in a little more on what "step" means to us. Many Much More Smaller Steps – First Sketch | GeePawHill.Org The first plank of my take on fixing the trade is MMMSS: If you want more value faster, take Many More Much Smaller Steps. Today I want to start

MMMSS – A Closer Look at Steps See Full Post

Many More Much Smaller Steps – First Sketch

Modern-Synthesis, Change Harvesting / / 5 minutes of reading
This entry is part 1 of 5 in the series Many More Much Smaller Steps

The first plank of my take on fixing the trade is MMMSS: If you want more value faster, take Many More Much Smaller Steps. Today I want to start laying this out for folks. This isn’t gonna happen in one thread, but let’s get started. Before we dig in a little, let me remind you that I’m aiming here for geek comfort good, respite. I am far more concerned with changing the world right now than I am with changing

Many More Much Smaller Steps – First Sketch See Full Post

Ten I-Statements About Refactoring

TDD, Modern-Synthesis, Refactoring, How I Work / / 6 minutes of reading

HOT TIP: Ted Young’s "Make Your Code More Testable" class is coming up August 23rd. The class is excellent (and covers much of what I talk about below), Ted is a wonderful teacher – and I scored you a discount code. Go to MakeTestable.com and use code GEEPAW when you sign up to get $75 off! In the spirit of my Ten I-Statements about TDD, here’s ten more, this time about refactoring. I’m not covering everything, just hitting some of

Ten I-Statements About Refactoring See Full Post

Ten I-Statements About TDD

TDD, Programming, How I Work / / 5 minutes of reading

HOT TIP: Ted Young’s "Make Your Code More Testable" class is coming up August 23rd. The class is excellent (and covers much of what I talk about below), Ted is a wonderful teacher – and I scored you a discount code. Go to MakeTestable.com and use code GEEPAW when you sign up to get $75 off! Folks, I see a lot of ideas and opinions about TDD fly around, passed off as holy writ. By way of counter, I offer

Ten I-Statements About TDD See Full Post

On (Not) Using Mocking Frameworks

TDD, Programming, Modern-Synthesis / / 5 minutes of reading

I’m long past on record that I think the use of auto-mockers outside of legacy rescue situations is bad policy. First, it’s easy to write "psuedo-tests" using an automocker. Psuedo-tests are tests that appear to prove things about your code that they don’t actually prove. Now, note, I’m not saying auto-mockers force one to write psuedo-tests. They don’t. But they do make it awfully easy. How? The combination of "don’t care" arguments in mocked method specs with hardwired returns makes

On (Not) Using Mocking Frameworks See Full Post

Three Short Coaching Pro-Tips

Coaching, Change Harvesting / / 8 minutes of reading

A respondent asked that I combine these three short Pro-Tip muses into one post, so here goes: Coaching Pro-Tip #1: Everything good about agility is rooted in relationship, so everything good about coaching is, too. As coaches, we usually start from negative trust, and our central priority has to be reversing that position. In the early days of most coaching engagements, one sees lots of issues, of various size and shape. The temptation to start issuing criticism and directives is

Three Short Coaching Pro-Tips See Full Post

Two Mantras, One Theme

Coaching, Modern-Synthesis, Change Harvesting / / 7 minutes of reading

Two recurring phrases in my work are 1) It is like this because we built it to be like this. 2) The code works for you, you don’t work for the code. Two sides of one page, phrased on the front as negative critique, and on the verso as positive encouragement. Before we dig in, I remind you of the relative unimportance of geekery to me just now. This is just respite. Please work for change and support the others

Two Mantras, One Theme See Full Post

Path-Focused Design

Programming, Modern-Synthesis, Change Harvesting / / 8 minutes of reading

"Path-focused design", of stories, architecture, code, is design that understands that we can only reach a distant City on the Hill by taking one stride-limited shipping step at a time. Sunday muse-day, comfort food for the geek in me and in you, but please remember, we don’t really just want to change code, we want to change the world. Stay safe, stay strong, stay angry, stay kind. Black Lives Matter. In the software design theory of the ’80s and ’90s,

Path-Focused Design See Full Post

Scroll to Top