Software for humans: the trouble with business rules, processes and enforcing them Posted by christiaan.verwijs on April 28, 2013 • Comments (0) Software development projects often fail because they ignore the human factor. Our software attempts to replace human-based decision-making in business processes with (strict) software-based decision-making under the assumption that this will increase quality, reduce costs and prevent mistakes. Although this may work in theory, the reality of work is often very different. Because it is not longer possible to 'bend the rules', users don't feel supported by the software but rather have to 'fight' it. As a result, we shouldn't be surprised about resistance against the software. In this post, I will argue that we're better off learning more about human-based decision-making, and writing software that guides users, rather than forcing them. [More]
Scrumming a website? Write content during a sprint and avoid 'content-writing limbo' Posted by christiaan.verwijs on March 14, 2013 • Comments (0) In Scrum, a basic principle is to deliver working software at the end of the sprint. For a webapplication, it is often obvious what this entails. Other than the functionality to be delivered, it also includes such things as text labels, error message... [More]
Scrum Teams: Don't treat your Sprint Backlog as a specification document Posted by christiaan.verwijs on February 10, 2013 • Comments (0) Some teams treat their Sprint Backlog as a 'Sprint specification document'. When they start a sprint, they begin by exhaustively identifying and estimating all the individual tasks that are necessary to complete a user story. This results in Sprint B... [More]
An honest letter to our customers; sorry about all those lies Posted by christiaan.verwijs on December 20, 2012 • Comments (0) Dear customer of a software development agency, With Christmas upon us, we're writing you this letter to inform you that we've lied to you. In fact, we've been lying to you for a long, long time now. We've often lied to you when you asked us if we c... [More]
Using Scrum to manage complex projects: A cognitive perspective (and why it is better suited for our brains) Posted by christiaan.verwijs on December 11, 2012 • Comments (0) I recently received an interesting scientific article from Gunther Verheyen titled "Getting Things Done: The Science Behind Stress-Free Productivity" (Heylighen & Vidal, 2007). The article discusses possible scientific explanations for the succes... [More]
Daily Scrums in small teams: What we learned and what we improved Posted by christiaan.verwijs on November 27, 2012 • Comments (2) The Daily Scrum, or Stand-up, is an excellent way for a team to quickly synchronize their work during the day. At NowOnline, we've been doing Daily Scrums for more than 2 years now. Most of our teams are fairly small, between 4 and 6 deve... [More]
7 practical tips to keep your version integration Agile, and avoid wasting precious time and money Posted by christiaan.verwijs on November 6, 2012 • Comments (3) What's Sheldon Cooper from the Big Bang Theory doing here? Well, my blog forces me to add pictures and I couldn't find a good one for this post. And apparently, I look a bit like Sheldon, or so my team (and my girlfriend) tell me :) They have assured... [More]
Reflecties op #Kerk2012: De Kerk en de toekomst Posted by christiaan.verwijs on November 5, 2012 • Comments (0) For my English readers: this post is a reflection on #Kerk2012. A conference that I organized with several volunteers that took place on November 3rd, 2012 (www.kerk2012.nl). The conference discussed the relevance of Social Media for church communiti... [More]
How writing Unit Tests forces you to write Good Code: And 7 bad arguments why you shouldn't Posted by christiaan.verwijs on October 17, 2012 • Comments (0) Unit Testing is about writing good, well-designed, decoupled code that, as a result, is automatically testeable. Unit Testing is a well-established practice in our industry. Why then, are so many developers not writing unit tests? Why do some cons... [More]
5 Principles for (Agile) Software Development that improve Agility (and make you a better developer) Posted by christiaan.verwijs on October 4, 2012 • Comments (0) As software developers, we live challenging lives! Especially in an Agile environment, where we have to bring all our skills to bear to finish the sprint on time and deliver business value for the Product Owner. Over the past few months, I've been wo... [More]