A quote from the Agile2016 keynote speech. If you have this culture of fear, whether it’s you’re afraid to change the code because there are no automated tests. There is no safety net. Or you’re afraid of speaking up to your boss. If you have a culture of fear, none of this fancy stuff is…… Continue reading The power of safety
How rows can give your team superpowers
Many product teams use a team board to visualise their work. What if your board had rows as well as columns? There are 3 big wins… 1. Priorities are clearer The row at the top has a higher priority than the second row, etc. It’s easier for the team to visualise priorities. It avoids the…… Continue reading How rows can give your team superpowers
MontageJS naming for BEM
This is taken from Nicholas Gallagher’s awesome article “About HTML Semantics and CSS Architecture”. The conventions are taken from MontageJS but Nicholas’ examples make it really clear. /* Utility */ .u-utilityName {} /* Component */ .ComponentName {} /* Component modifier */ .ComponentName–modifierName {} /* Component descendant */ .ComponentName-descendant {} /* Component descendant modifier */ .ComponentName-descendant–modifierName…… Continue reading MontageJS naming for BEM
CSS Utility Classes with BEM
CSS utility classes are a way of making big projects more maintainable. There are many benefits but also downsides, you can end up with code like this… <div class=”bg-blue text-white font-bold uppercase px-2 py-1 mx-auto mb-1 border-1 w-200″> Not great. There are workarounds for this but they add other overheads (as discussed in this article).…… Continue reading CSS Utility Classes with BEM
Bootstrap BEM
It’s important for CSS to be modular. Without modularity, selectors are fragile and it’s hard to be confident that changing one style won’t inadvertently break a different style somewhere else. How does BEM help? BEM solves modularity by encapsulating styles within a “Block”. Here’s an example from BEM.info. <form class=”search-form__button”> The __ separates the Block…… Continue reading Bootstrap BEM
Better Estimates
Estimating stories in days has always been notoriously inaccurate. So agile invented estimating stories in “points” and everyone gave a sigh of relief. Except there were two big problems… Problem #1: Urgency In an ideal world, no work is urgent. In the real world, plenty of work is urgent. On our team, for example, Coronavirus…… Continue reading Better Estimates
Prioritising stories, but not as you know it
Agile places great importance on the “early and continuous delivery of valuable software”. But somehow, when it comes to estimating stories, teams estimate effort instead of value. Estimating can be a time consuming process. What if we flipped estimating stories? What if… instead of developers estimating the effort, the product owner estimated the value (instead…… Continue reading Prioritising stories, but not as you know it
Why documentation is over-rated
The Agile Manifesto says “we value working software over comprehensive documentation”. People often over-rate the value of documentation. Why? There are five common assumptions: People will look for the documentation People will find and read the documentation The documentation is up-to-date People will understand the documentation People will act on and not dismiss it Documentation…… Continue reading Why documentation is over-rated
Estimates: Fibonacci vs exponential scale
Many teams estimate story points using the Fibonacci scale (1, 2, 3, 5, 8). What if we used an exponential scale? I prefer days to points so it could look like: 1 day, 2-3 days, 1 week, 2-3 weeks, 1-2 months.
Better standups
The classic daily standup has everyone answer three questions: What did you do yesterday? What will you do today? What is blocking you? This format often falls flat. A developer talks about what they worked on yesterday while half the team glaze over. A developer talks about what they did yesterday even though it has…… Continue reading Better standups
The inventor of story points apologises for it
Ron Jeffries, the inventor of story points, says “I like to say that I may have invented story points, and if I did, I’m sorry now”. What’s so bad about estimating with story points? The problem is that it’s very difficult to know if your estimate is accurate or not. And it’s very difficult to…… Continue reading The inventor of story points apologises for it