Articles for category: Delivery

The First Step

The first step in anything is yours to take. It’s yours because you know what the first step is and if you don’t take it, you’ll wish you had. No one said it was going to be an easy step to take. But you’ll make it worth it and never look back.

Breaking Code

Code is meant to be broken, reiterated over, broken again and again and again until it cannot function anymore. That is what code is meant to do. It works, it changes, it breaks, it gets fixed, it works again. Welcome to coding! Let the everlasting Frustration and Joy begin.

The Evolution of the Mute Button

When I used to build Contact Centre Software, I marveled at the impressiveness of the MUTE button – it worked 100% of the time without fail – and thank you so so much. Now it’s a joke when it comes to video conferencing – “you’re on mute”, “you’re still on mute”. We took this great, rock-solid implementation and we made it into a meme and a joke. But for years it was the most rock-solid dependable feature that people knew how to use without fail. Now, we forget about it all the time. Perhaps it’s how we built, hidden into

February 24, 2024

Greg Thomas

The Best Durations for Sprints

I’ve done 1 week to 6 week sprints (yes at 6 weeks we called it a sprint) – if you’re not sure what fits best for you, here’s some guidance. 1 Week – It’s all bugs, it’s all known quantities, you have minimal code and your deployment model is code, commit, deploy.  QA happens when you ship to Production, teams of 1 – 2 developers.  The Theme is “MVP”. 2 Weeks – User Stories are in the fray now, the team is growing, and there are other people in the mix (product management, QA) but the goal is continued output. 

February 23, 2024

Greg Thomas

All-In on the Fix?

Can we put everything into this fix to get it right and get it out there? Have you tried putting everything into one fix? I remember when 100 MB was considered too big for a patch and now I’m downloading 20 GB updates. Focus your fixes on the problems they are meant to solve – no one ever complained about a fix that addressed the one issue it was meant to.