Wednesday 13 November 2013

What Software Developers can learn from Sachin Tendulkar's marathon career?

A great career is about to end.  One filled with many many runs that even the best can only dream of.  Yes, we are talking about the one and only Sachin Tendulkar.  As he is retiring, I just thought of how much I learned by just watching him.  That's when I realized why not pass that learning to others as well or at least highlight what we can learn from him. 
 
This post is specifically dedicated to software developers.  But this can be applied for anyone in any field.
 
So what are the things that software developers can learn from this great guy?  Here we go with the list.
 
 
 
 
Passion for the game


One thing that is pretty to hard to beat this guy at a young age or even now is his passion for the game of cricket.  He used to bat, bat and bat without getting tired at the nets day in and day out.  He loved the game so much that he lived it. 

Similarly developers should be passionate about developing great software.  It is the passion that keeps a man going and work never looks like work if you are passionate about it.

 

Natural Talent

Tuesday 5 November 2013

14 Code Refactoring smells you can easily sense and What you can do about it?

This post is specifically intended to Project Managers although developers and testers can also get reasonable inputs from this post.  Generally projects tend to accumulate a lot of technical debt over time if refactoring is not applied and if good coding practices are not followed.  It is imperative that as a Project Manager you should understand this and deal with it effectively.  This is especially true in an Agile Project, where there is constant delivery of features and you would be surprised how quickly code quality can take a beating in if proper measures are not taken.  So what are the signs you can observe that your project’s code needs refactoring and what you can do about it?

·         Team is taking more time than expected to deliver features
o    This is probably the number one smell that a Project Manager can look out for in a project.  As a Project Manager you sense that a certain feature should not take so much time, yet it takes that time.  You talk to the team and they often give you a detailed explanation of how much change the feature needs to undergo and how it affects other features.  That is one of the sure smell that indicates that the code needs refactoring
·         Plenty of bug fixes after delivery
o    On one end, the code delivery is being delayed and at another end, there will be a lot of bugs too after delivery.  If you have observed this, then it is a sure sign that your project’s code needs refactoring.
·         Build Quality is on a decreasing trend
o    This is one of the excellent smells that surely indicate the need for refactoring.  If we try to build on bad code, the code quality will get reduced and this trend continues till we attempt to put a stop to it.  If you observe this as a Project Manager, then you need to put a stop to it.