Matt Fletcher on Atomic Spin

Adding Blockers to Your Backlog? Always Include a Specific Next Step

Do your blockers explain what needs to happen next? Or who's responsible for it? Or when it's due? If you want them to get done reliably, they'd better.

Project & Team Management

Four DOs and DON’Ts for Software Systems Integrations

Systems integrations are hard. Following these do's and don'ts will go a long way in de-risking the project, minimizing surprises, and finding success.

Technical Practices

Code Reviews Are a Mistake – Try Pair Programming

Formal code reviews lead to confusion and wasted time. Pair programming, on the other hand, has regular, effective code reviews built into its framework.

Project & Team Management

What Do Clients Need from Consultants? Options and a Recommendation

A good consultant identifies a problem and helps resolve it. A great consultant listens and identifies options, but ultimately yields decision making power.

Project & Team Management

Writing Agile Stories, Part 4 – Decision-Making Guidelines

Decision making is an art, not a science. Here are some guidelines I apply when deciding how to slice-and-dice stories in a backlog.

Project & Team Management

Writing Agile Stories, Part 3 – Setting Good Story Goals

Describing expected behavior in a story is a baseline. Make your stories even better by writing a story goal that describes the purpose of the feature.

Project & Team Management

Writing Agile Stories, Part 2 – Making Stories Small & Meaningful

Agile stories should focus on outputs, empowering the dev team to implement behaviors as they see fit. Keep them small and free of arbitrary distinctions.

Project & Team Management

Writing Agile Stories, Part 1 – Breaking a UI into a Set of Features/Stories

Ready to build your agile backlog? Start with the user interface. By breaking your UI into features, you end up with a manageable list of bite-sized tasks.

Planning Your Project

There’s No Such Thing as a “Massive MVP.” Build Releases Instead!

The best way to solve an overwhelming problem is to break it into smaller pieces. So let's build software in incremental releases.

Extracurricular Activities

A Docker Pipeline for Mirroring & Archiving a Website

My goal is to have zipped website archives created once a week, with my process built on Docker, and the Synology task scheduler taking care of the work.

Personal Optimization

A Spreadsheet for Breaking Down & Tracking Big Goals

I find it easier to achieve my goals when I define them, break them down, and use simple tools to visualize and measure my progress. Here's a spreadsheet I've been using for goal t

Project & Team Management

Software Exposes People Problems that You Can’t Ignore

People problems present significantly more risk to a software project than the software itself. For example, if a new software system adds more work for users, but doesn't offer th

Matt Fletcher

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