Articles

Last Updated: 30 Nov, 2007

These are my best essays and articles. I've marked my very best, based on their popularity, with a star (**). For a complete list of all of my essays, see the index.

Lead
It's the Software, Stupid! - 21 Oct, 2007

We keep forgetting that we're here to develop software.

** Change Your Organization: A Diary - 10 Mar, 2006

Six months of changing an organization from within.

** The Productivity Metric - 10 Feb, 2006

Avoid common productivity measurement mistakes.

Hustle - 21 Oct, 2005

Generate goodwill for your agile team.

An Extreme Stake in the Ground - 21 Aug, 2005

A fresh look at XP, sans humility, maturity, and wisdom.

It's Not Too Late to Learn - 17 Aug, 2005

Classic lessons from a hundred-million dollar loss.

An Interesting Retrospective Idea - 11 Mar, 2005

Painlessly gather retrospective information.

Crunch Mode - 24 Feb, 2005

The overtime trap.

Beyond Defects - 1 Sep, 2004

Use defect lists to troubleshoot organizational problems.

Task Switching - 1 Jun, 2004

Improve productivity by reducing task switching.

Research Time - 1 Apr, 2004

A simple, valuable technique you can start using immediately.

Trust - 1 Mar, 2004

Produce more valuable software by replacing process with collaboration.

** Design Debt - 1 Feb, 2004

Why we trash seven-figure software investments.

Produce
Does It Work? Are We Done? Is It Right? (Keep It Light!) - 18 Nov, 2007

Exploring the alternatives to functional testing.

Five Ways to Misuse Fit - 8 Oct, 2007

Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do this!

Do We Need Projects? - 19 Aug, 2007

Projects... or products?

HTML and the Innovator's Dilemma - 30 Jul, 2007

The inevitable rise of HTML+Javascript.

Product Managers Are Critical to Success - 14 Feb, 2006

Without the vision of a good product manager, the team is likely to flounder.

"Ideas," not "Requirements" - 30 Jun, 2005

By the time an idea is a requirement, the most interesting part of its life is over.

Up-Front Requirements - 15 Jun, 2005

What really happens when users read requirements documents.

How I Use Fit - 30 Nov, 2005

How to construct a single Fit document.

A Vision for Fit - 25 Oct, 2005

A story of Fit workflow in practice.

** Beyond Story Cards: Agile Requirements Collaboration - 21 Mar, 2005

Agile requirements, in-depth. Consistently the most popular essay on this site.

Fit Workflow - 1 Mar, 2005

Use Fit to collaborate on requirements during an iteration.
Plan
Two Kinds of Documentation - 29 Jan, 2006

What you didn't know about agile documentation.

Cards, Table, and Whiteboard: The Ultimate Planning Tool - 22 Dec, 2005

Discover planning problems early by planning as a group.

A Tale of Two Vacations - 20 Sep, 2005

Vacation planning instructs us about agile planning.

Pair Hours Vs. Points - 7 Apr, 2005

Reduce confusion by estimating in calendar time.

** Beyond Story Cards: Agile Requirements Collaboration - 21 Mar, 2005

Plan at the latest responsible moment.

Slack and Scheduling in XP - 18 Mar, 2005

How to use slack in XP's planning game.

Code
A Simple, Effective Design Question - 13 Jul, 2007

When I decide to change this design decision, how hard will it be?

Quality With a Name - 5 Apr, 2006

What does it mean to have good design?

** Dependency Injection Demystified - 22 Mar, 2006

A 25-dollar term for a 5-cent concept.

Continuous Integration on a Dollar a Day - 27 Feb, 2006

An easier, cheaper (and better) way to do continuous integration.

How to Survive a Software Rewrite - 16 Feb, 2006

It's only funny if you're not living it.

That Damned Construction Analogy - 17 Dec, 2005

An instructive building is built outside my window.

Microsoft Gets TDD Completely Wrong - 19 Nov, 2005

Boy, do they ever.

The Other Side of Design - 14 Oct, 2005

A taxonomy of design.

Five Design Skills Every Programmer Should Have - 6 Sep, 2005

Fundamental design skills.

** Continuous Integration is an Attitude, Not a Tool - 18 Aug, 2005

CI tools make it easy to do the wrong thing.

Primitive Obsession - 4 Jun, 2005

Don't get seduced by the Dark Side.

Drawing the Line on Continuous Design - 5 May, 2005

Use risk-based assessments to guide agile architecture.

Design Mindsets - 8 Mar, 2005

Skills needed for continuous design.

Fail Fast - 1 Sep, 2004

Fail immediately and visibly when an error occurs.

Continuous Design - 1 Jan, 2004

Experiences with hard problems in agile design.

Rubik the Refactorer - 23 Dec, 2002

A bedtime story.