For questions relating to the process of developing software.

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4
votes
2answers
51 views

Where to put details about the acceptance criteria of a user story?

In this blog post about acceptance criteria the author explains that good acceptance criteria should: State an intent not a solution (e.g. “The user can choose an account” rather than “The user can ...
6
votes
6answers
311 views

What is a good analogy to explain how software development is different than building a bridge? [duplicate]

If you had a manager, a couple of levels above you, tell you that building software is like building a bridge, how would you respond to that? If this manager truly believes that we should be able to ...
7
votes
5answers
1k views

Manufacturing vs Software Development [closed]

It's often said that the software industry is immature compared to manufacturing. Specifically with regard to being process driven. Question: Can we as developers learn from the processes of the ...
1
vote
2answers
167 views

Approach of delivering “Logging API”

I faced a question in a .NET interview. As a client i need a LoggingAPI. How you go the approach of design and development and delivering Logging API to the client? I don't care about WPF or a ...
17
votes
13answers
707 views

How do you overcome your own coding biases when handed legacy code?

As programmers, we often take incredible pride in our skills and hold very strong opinions about what is 'good' code and 'bad' code. At any given point in our careers, we've probably had some legacy ...
40
votes
10answers
2k views

How common is it for a team to write everything in-house?

In a recent interview I asked the interviewers "how do you go about evaluating new technologies and libraries (such as SignalR) and bringing them in to use?". They said they don't, that instead they ...
-2
votes
0answers
47 views

White labelling - what are the key things I need to ask the customer about? [closed]

I am working with a large industry body on white labelling my SaaS app. They'll sell it to their 1200 clients, under their brand. Right now we are still having a general discussion on how it all will ...
4
votes
2answers
75 views

Requirement gathering in an agile methodology

In the great book User Stories Applied the author specified the following process for trawling requirements in the form of user stories: Create user roles (personas) --> brainstorm user goals for ...
366
votes
19answers
68k views

I've inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code — what now?

I hope this isn't too general of a question; I could really use some seasoned advice. I am newly employed as the sole "SW Engineer" in a fairly small shop of scientists who have spent the last 10-20 ...
0
votes
0answers
58 views

What is expected in the documentation of a software project [duplicate]

I have about a month left to work on my final year project for college and between all my assignments and exams, I have to write documentation for it. On our college guidelines it states the ...
-1
votes
0answers
45 views

What is a good resource for finding development project case studies? [duplicate]

I'm looking for a site that I can find out about different types of software development projects, the methodologies used, the time taken to develop and the overall success of the project. I'm asking ...
1
vote
5answers
241 views

Improve Bad testing

We have a large team of developers and testers. The ratio is one tester for every one developer. We have full bug tracking and reporting systems in place. We have test plans in place. Every change ...
-1
votes
0answers
16 views

Create a bucket in riak cluster [migrated]

I have three virtual machines and I try to create a simple cluster with the java application riak. So i add the three Virtual machines to my client without any problem but when i try to create a ...
2
votes
1answer
113 views

Where does the reporting function fit into Enterprise Software development Best Practices

At my company, I develop and maintain all the operational reporting used by management to run the business. There is no reporting position on the application development team. I've taken it upon ...
-4
votes
1answer
79 views

Does a developer really have to know build tools, classpath etc? [duplicate]

When IDEs like eclipse can handle all the maven, ant, classpath etc related tasks, does a developer really need to learn all these things ? If yes, then why ?
4
votes
2answers
263 views

How to effectively put code live

What are the general strategies to employ when attempting to ensure that a module of code will function correctly on the live system? A common problem we have at our software house is that we ...
12
votes
5answers
595 views

How to start a development project when there are too many potential stakeholders

I've just taken on a new job at a college as (the sole) Web application developer. The college has a number of disparate but all pretty badly coded legacy systems. Mostly built in PHP they deal with ...
1
vote
2answers
139 views

Justifying deficiencies in design

I would like some input on how to handle clients and third party vendors that ask me about the deficiencies in my design. For example. It turns out I need a data field in a webservices response. This ...
5
votes
7answers
557 views

How can I become a good project manager? [closed]

I work in mobile development. I've just been promoted to a project manager. The problem is that I just have 4 months of experience in development. This was my first job and I didn't even finished ...
7
votes
1answer
120 views

Maintenance model for external artifacts

When we think about maintaining a software solution holistically, we have to think about things like non-code change control and configuration management, in addition to the actual source code. For ...
0
votes
2answers
99 views

Converting Business Process Maps into Software

I am fairly new to web application development. I have defined my problem domain through talking to various stakeholders and putting a process map together - basically a flow chart showing the ...
64
votes
12answers
3k views

Getting non-programmers to understand the development process

When starting a project for a company that's not primarily a programming company, one of the expectations is that there's a finished product at the end free of all bugs and does everything needed ...
2
votes
2answers
94 views

Strategies for using a code metric evaluation tool

Should code quality metric evaluation tools like Sonar be integrated with IDE for running local analysis or should they be a part of the build process (like integrated with maven) for continuous ...
5
votes
5answers
243 views

What sort of questions drive the decision as to whether similar code is separate or common?

I have come across the following problem many times in various guises in my programming career. As a simple example, consider the following: Let's say there is a method (B) that could differ ...
-2
votes
1answer
48 views

What are general best practices for plugin/extension development? [closed]

I need to correlate requirements for a plugin/extension of an application with development best practices. I thought there might be best practice advice that applies to plugins and extensions ...
3
votes
3answers
113 views

System evolution approach: gradual or cataclysmic?

When working on established systems, I've often found ways to improve a user interface to maximize user efficiency (example: legacy app maintenance screen doesn't allow multi-line operations where ...
2
votes
7answers
330 views

Should developers be worried about automation that make them redundant eventually? [closed]

Should developers be worried about possible automation happening in their projects that might make them redundant ? I never particularly worried about this myself but I have seen many developers ...
3
votes
2answers
150 views

What is Development Environment? e.g. Vagrant

By luck i landed on this website http://www.vagrantup.com/ It is says, that software is for development environment. My question is what exactly definition for development environment (in this case ...
14
votes
5answers
946 views

Is code ownership a code smell?

This is something I've been thinking about ever since I read this answer in the controversial programming opinions thread. And it has been discussed a bit in other threads, such as this one, but I ...
1
vote
6answers
2k views

Anybody use the Team Software Process (TSP) and/or Personal Software Process (PSP)? [closed]

More info on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Software_Process What has your experience been?

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