In more than one project retrospective, I’ve heard things like “We need to slow down so we can refactor more and write better code” and “We need to be more disciplined about writing good unit tests.”

Over the years I’ve had to revisit or work on software projects created by other developers. Outside of an effective test suite, there four things that I really appreciate when work in a codebase that I am not familiar with: Good Build Documentation Extensive Logging Support for Localization Configurability

Code reviews are a valuable practice for a larger team of developers. Not all tasks are optimum for pairing, and code review can be a way to get that second set of eyes that you would normally get if you had a pair sitting next to you. The fundamental problem with code reviews — it’s […]

During my most recent project, we made extensive use of formal code reviews. This process drastically increased the quality of code in the project, reduced the ramp-up time of new devs on the project, and facilitated knowledge sharing across the entire team. I also found that it didn’t cause an excessive hit on developer productivity […]