InfoQ Homepage Quality Content on InfoQ

Articles

RSS Feed

Newer Older

Culture & Methods

Avoiding Technical Bankruptcy: a Whole-Organization Perspective on Technical Debt

Technical debt is not primarily caused by clumsy programming, and hence we cannot hope to fix it by more skilled programming alone. Rather, technical debt is a third-order effect of poor communication. What we observe and label “technical debt” is the by-product of a dysfunctional process. To fix the problem of accumulating technical debt, we need to fix this broken process.

Einar Høst
on Dec 24, 2021
Culture & Methods

Growing an Experiment-Driven Quality Culture in Software Development

Have you ever faced a challenge at work that you weren’t sure how to tackle? Experiments to the rescue! In a complex environment like software development, no one can tell what might work, so we have to try things out. Read this article to learn about key challenges, insights and lessons, and get inspired for your own path to experimentation.

Lisi Hocke
on Dec 15, 2021
Culture & Methods

Solutions for Testing Blockchain: Private Blockchains, Permutations, and Shifting Left

Blockchain is an emerging software architecture that has the potential to be a big disruptor in the industry. With change however, comes the added risk of quality issues. As developers and test engineers, we need to be prepared for those changes to better adapt to the new technology and allow for the continued development of software and products through it, without compromising on quality.

Craig Risi
on Nov 17, 2021
Culture & Methods

Technical Debt Isn't Technical: What Companies Can Do to Reduce Technical Debt

In this article, three experts discuss some of the key findings of the “State of Technical Debt 2021” report including the impact of technical debt on engineering teams, the pros and cons of dealing with maintenance work continuously, the future of technical debt and what each engineering teams can do to communicate the importance of dealing with technical debt to companies’ leadership.

Alex Omeyer Nicolas Carlo Maarten Dalmijn
on Sep 08, 2021
Culture & Methods

Improving Testability: Removing Anti-Patterns through Joint Conversations

Code is always testable, but the cost may be high, and the effort exhausting. We can change code to be highly testable by identifying anti-patterns and fixing them. And developers can make the code fit the test requirements, by having discussions with the testers who actually test it.

Gil Zilberfeld
on Aug 10, 2021
Culture & Methods

Easy Guide to Remote Pair Programming

Remote pair programming can be an extremely powerful tool, it's a form of social programming. When pairing remote, you need a lot more setup and more tooling in place, so that the two team members can work together effectively. With remote pair programming quality communication is essential because we lack the physical presence that gives us so much non-verbal communication.

Adrian Bolboacă
on Jul 05, 2021
Culture & Methods

Validation of Autonomous Systems

This article introduces validation and certification as well as the general approval of autonomous systems and their components, such as those used in automation technology and robotics. It gives an overview of methods for verification and validation of autonomous systems, sketches current tools and show the evolution towards AI-based techniques for influence analysis of continuous changes.

Christof Ebert Michael Weyrich
on Jun 23, 2021
Culture & Methods

Signs You’re in a Death Spiral (and How to Turn It around before It’s Too Late)

Don’t let feature work blind you. Enterprises are ramping up their software delivery to compete in the digital-first world. But more features and faster time-to-market can lead your business into a death spiral if you neglect technical debt and risk work. Learn how to use value stream metrics to identify whether your business is in danger and how to reverse the trajectory before it’s too late.

Lee Reid Patrick Anderson
on Apr 13, 2021
Culture & Methods

The Flow System: Getting Fast Customer Feedback and Managing Flow

The Flow System elevates Lean Thinking in an age of complexity by combining complexity thinking, distributed leadership, and team science into the Triple Helix of Flow, which organizations can use to become more innovative, adaptive, and resilient. This first article explores the importance of quality, getting fast feedback from customers, the concept of flow, and The Flow System.

Ben Linders John Turner Nigel Thurlow Brian Rivera
on Mar 30, 2021
Culture & Methods

Applying Stoicism in Testing

Agility stands for being aware of your environment. There is a specific set of values for a tester that you should stick to; they set limits to what you can deliver as a tester, and within those limits, you can keep your agility. But your values can cause a “collision” with agile people around you, because they don’t have to be perfectly in line with how people apply the agile principles.

Ard Kramer
on Mar 23, 2021
Culture & Methods

The Toyota Way: Learn to Improve Continuously

The book The Toyota Way, 2nd Edition by Jeffrey Liker provides a view of the Toyota Production System with fourteen management principles for continuous improvement and developing people. The book, including the 4P model (Philosophy, Processes, People, Problem solving) and principles, has been updated to reflect new insights in systems thinking.

Ben Linders Jeffrey Liker
on Feb 16, 2021
Culture & Methods

Kick-off Your Transformation by Imagining It Had Failed

Large scale change initiatives have a worryingly high failure rate, the chief reason for which is that serious risks are not identified early. One way to create the safety needed for everyone to speak openly about the risks they see is by running a pre-mortem. In a pre-mortem, we assume that the transformation had already failed and walk backward from there to investigate what led to the failure.

Ayman Idris
on Nov 27, 2020