Wednesday, March 10, 2010

agile is not communism

I enjoy a lot articles that mix social and software sciences. And I think they provide much value to the software community cause software is built by people (still, as of 2010), so their psychology and their interactions drive the software development.

This is a lightweight reading for the morning in this respect: Agile is Not Communism. And even if the author does a pretty good job of proving there is not much similarity between Agile and Communism, this phrase stayed with me: Several people in my class are asserting that agile is just like communism and since communism failed, agile is not likely to succeed either.

If you are like me and feel that today's Capitalism is not far from failure too, then take my advice and visit Greece, while it still has its islands ...


But since it's still early morning and we need our optimism for the day, take this quote from John Kenneth Galbraith: Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite. ... uhh, did I say optimism?!

Monday, March 1, 2010

next to binaries

There are not many things you can deliver to make your customers happy: one is definitely the code, and the 2nd are the docs: user-level documentation.

I've been recently asked to review the part of the documentation for the feature we are owning, and it was a surprisingly fun thing to do. I had no different feeling when reviewing it than the one I have when cutting some clever piece of code. It felt like putting the cream on the cake. It was an easy win: improve a deliverable that the client will definitely touch, cause our customers do use the documentation.

This line probably sounds right: good software comes with good documentation. But it's the other direction I am interested in exploring right now, what can documentation do for the code?

When evaluating new software I could use, like a web framework, those that have good docs have a much higher chance of getting in my toolbox. I start by looking for a section that would give me a basic setup fast, like Up and Running in Ten Minutes. Then I am awarding additional points for an introductory video. Then I will scan for How To-s for sensitive problems and references like configuration file and API ones. I admit though that once the tool is in my inbox, a weak online help won't make me drop the tool, as long as the help is not annoying.

For software developers good documentation means marketing. You'd want to grab market share, which for freelancers especially translates into increasing the number of users of the software. My advice is Write docs and keep them up to date, ask for reviews for even better docs.

Disclaimer: this post has not been reviewed before publication, hence it might contain some typos. No excuse though if it contains stupid ideas.