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Carpenters make tables and chairs, not hammers and saws
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Carpenters make tables and chairs, not hammers and saws

Ok, yes, I know it's actually furniture makers who make tables and chairs but the title is long enough as it is. Just consider the point for a second though. Imagine the carpenter who has a problem with a broken saw or possibly a hammer that could have a better design for the type of nails they're using. Do you think they crack open the welding torch or start on a new hammer mould? Of course not, they are carpenters - skilled at creating objects with wood. That is their business, what they have trained long and hard to be...

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Addenda for Adopting Agile Development
essays

Addenda for Adopting Agile Development

Software Development is a strange profession. Coders are often promoted out of development in their thirties at the same time as new recruits are coming in who know different languages, tools and practices from those who graduated five years earlier. As a consequence, every aspect of the development environment is constantly up for reappraisal. Moving from one refactoring plug-in to another, say, is a pretty harmless change. Migrating source code versioning systems might be a little troublesome but will eventually quieten down. Changing the processes and methods of how software projects are planned, managed and developed though - that's scary....

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Developing in the Brown Field
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Developing in the Brown Field

A friend and former colleague of mine told me after leaving the company we had both worked at, "I never want to work for a big company again." I couldn't understand the need for a blanket ban on all big companies from future employment opportunities. The reason apparently came down to the distinction between Greenfield and Brownfield development. In simple terms Greenfield development means writing software from scratch whereas Brownfield generally entails bugfixing or enhancements to existing code projects. Brownfield development is not specifically a bad thing or something to be avoided; there will be many impressive software projects that...

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