Quality vs Cadence

In Software Development

Common Questions

• Is quality in Software worth the Cost?
• Do we have to choose between priorities and quality?

Don't work more, work smarter!

What Quality means anyways?​

NOT

• Perfect code
• Beautiful (subjective)

IS

• Readable
• Maintainable
• Tmp: Easy to change
• Full-fill requirements
  • a.k.a Customers don't give a 💩

Is quality in Software worth the Cost?

"Good, fast, cheap. Choose two."

TL;DR;

You don't have to choose in LT

Better can make you Faster & Cheaper

Faster can make you Better & Cheaper

Let's have THE "Tech Debt" conversation

Q: I Tech Debt a good or a bad thing?

A: Neither! It's just Debt, use it responsibly

(here comes a boring analogy with Finance)

So: Is High Quality Software Worth the Cost?

https://martinfowler.com/articles/is-quality-worth-cost.html

- High quality software is actually cheaper to produce.

- Better internal quality makes enhancing and adding new features easier, therefore quicker and cheaper

- (we) Software engineers (usually) suck at explaining this to stakeholders

Do we have to choose between priorities and quality?

No, and it's rarely a binary decision

Think strategically!

Tips & Tricks

🏛

Write things down

• Don't jump into the code right away
• Brain dump: Plan accordingly & take notes
• Constantly ask: What's out-of-scope
• Best work is done AFK-first
• RFDs are good tools both for individuals and team discussion

1st Principles Thinking

By Analogy: We do it bc it's something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing

1st principle: Assumption that cannot be deduced from any other assumption

Boil things down to the most fundamental truths … and then reason up from there

Coding time!

• Execute on your plan
  • Atomic & semantic commits
  • Iterate
• Refactoring: First make it work, then make it better
• TDD/BDD
  • Helps you sleep at night
  • Confidence to refactor
• Design patterns
  • Readability & Maintainability for everyone
  • 6 months rule: Own code will look un-recognisable

Teamwork & Peer Review

• Async Code Reviews & Peer Programming
• Dev QA
  • Test your own shit
  • Avoid bias with an extra 👀
  • Look for non-obvious edge cases
  • Proof of tests (GIF, Video, Postman, Specs)
  • Testing team is not a replacement for Dev testing
• Docs
  • APIs
  • Test Specs readability (RSpec, Page-Object)
  • Github PR comments (for later)
  • Extra: Confluence (or alike)

Kaizen

Continuously improvement: Kaizen (改善) means to improve or change for better. In Lean project management, Kaizen philosophy seeks to improve a process through small, continuous, positive changes applied by team members across every level of an organization, over a long period.

Lean & Kanban

- Manage low WIP (work in progress) ⚠️

- Identify bottlenecks & blockers 🚧

- Help focus toward goals

- Better sizing 

- Reduce idleness / context-switching

- Catch bugs earlier

https://www.atlassian.com/agile/kanban/wip-limits