Welcome

Welcome to my “Post of the week”. In these posts I share thought, ideas or fact that I have experienced during my last working week. If this is the first post of this kind, I suggest you to go and check out my latest posts too:

These small posts are aimed at new developers and people that want to learn what I believe to be important events that happened during my week.

I really hope you enjoy it, and as with every of my post, I look forward to see feedback and comments.

Code Review – Business Value / Coding Standards

This week I had the pleasure to work to Bristol, around 2 hours drive from my hometown. This journey help me in catching up on my podcast backlog.

During one of this podcast there was a brief definition of two main types of code review that I have never heard before, but made sense straight away.

The Business Value Review and the Coding Standards Review.

The business value review

This review is usually carried by developer that are aware of the “business value” and are very knowledgeable of the source code. This review focuses less on the actual line by line code, and more on the consistency of the code with the rest of the solution and its architecture/structure decisions.

The business value review are carried by people that usually “outside” the team. These are the review that I get asked the most being a technical lead. I was not aware of this specific distinction, but I was providing “business” insight and suggestion.

The coding standards review

The next type of review are called “coding standards” review. This is usually carried within the team and are more focused on the actual adherence of the coding standards and specific project implementation. This review goes in more details, and at times can actually even point out simple breaking space and class name.

Unfortunately, make these reviews is quite a rarity for me, as I am not part of a team anymore. This review seem to take place within the team, because they require a level of “trust” and “openness” to actually be accepted without feeling confronted or attacked.

Visual studio code – Github Pull request

As part of my unstoppable need to learn, I have found a very cool extension for Visual Studio Code that will allow you to handle pull request without having to leave our favourite IDE. I think this extension, is going to support all those Open Source project administrator that try to support free project to help the community, while overwhelmed by the amount of time necessary to keep it stable and updated.

A small introduction to the extension can be found in this video from Channel 9.

I have started to use Visual Studio Code for my small side project, but in time, I have started to use it more and more, until I feel it irreplaceable. The Visual Studio Code Team is open to listed, quick to change and Microsoft made it simple to extend. No matter what language you write ( I have used it for full c# projects, js, node and PHP) I greatly suggest you to use it.

Agile Values – Commitment

We have been using agile methodology in our company for quite a few years now. I have never actually had a formal training on scrum, but I always enjoy a nice conversation on its principles. It usually turns out that many people “follow” all principles without even knowing it, because at the end of the day, I see agile as a manual for good team management ( i live this as a discussion for another day).

This week I had the opportunity to discuss “agile” with a very knowledgeable person, that has highlighted me with the value of “commitment”.

For people that are now aware, some Agile methodology are build on top of 5 values that are: Commitment, Focus, openness, respect and courage.

I am of the idea that Commitment is probably the most important and the hardest value to actually follow. The value of commitment is not only about “estimating” tasks and filling the sprint up.

Commitment does not stop at the start of the sprint, it is shown throughout the sprint and I share below what I believe to be strong example of commitment:

  • Estimation – Committing to a time estimation for the ticket.
  • Ticket ownership – commitment to own a ticket and to see it DONE
  • UAT/PO demo – Committing to show any progress as soon as they are ready
  • Daily Standup – Committing what you are going to achieve during your work day.
  • Retrospective – Commit on taking action from previous mistake
  • Sprint Goal – Commit to achieve a specific goal at the end of the sprint

Unfortunately most of the above points are not easy to achieve. It is easy to say your part during the daily standup, but it is completely different to really commit to it and working toward achieving the defined goal. The commitment goal is actually a frame of mind, that when achieved it brings the greatest results.

Summary

This week I have learned so much. I listened to numerous podcast, watched different videos and had the chance to discuss great topics with great colleagues.

I am always amazed to how much I still have to lean. Our industry is so fast, it never stop and learning should be our primary focus.

I really hope the above points will support you in learning something new and please feel free to comment or contact me if you want to discuss anything further.

 

 

 

 

 

🤞 Don’t miss these tips!

No spam emails.. Pinky promise!