Engineering Excellence: Declan Whelan on Technical Health, Agile Practices, and Team Culture
14 Sep 2024 (4 days ago)
Technical Debt and Technical Health
- Ward Cunningham invented the term "technical debt" in the late 1990s to describe the trade-off between short-term benefits and long-term consequences of taking shortcuts in software development.
- The term "technical health" is presented as an alternative to "technical debt" to promote a more positive perspective and emphasize the ongoing nature of maintaining software systems.
Measuring Technical Health
- Measuring the effectiveness of technical practices should be customer-focused, with metrics like those used in the DevOps movement, which emphasize delivery to customers.
- Four key metrics that can be used to measure technical health are deployment frequency, lead time for change, change failure rate, and meantime to recovery.
- Value streams and overall flow metrics, such as the six flow metrics used in SAFe, can provide a broader view of technical health than DORA metrics alone.
Organizational Barriers to Collaboration
- Organizational barriers, such as separate reporting structures and repositories for QA and development teams, can hinder the shift-left movement towards collaborative development practices.
Evolution of Software Development Methodologies
- Extreme Programming (XP), developed by Kent Beck around 1999-2000, initially gained popularity as the definitive method for software development but later declined.
- While Scrum doesn't address technical practices, frameworks like SAFe, often incorporating XP, frequently prioritize other aspects over technical practices.
Core Technical Practices of XP
- Four core technical practices of XP include pair programming (now potentially encompassing ensemble or mob programming), test-driven development, refactoring, and simple design.
Architectural Shifts and Service-Oriented Approaches
- Architectural shifts often swing between large monoliths and microservices, with many companies adopting service-oriented approaches.
- A common issue with service-oriented architectures is the early design of service boundaries, which can create friction when changes are needed.
- Architectures that allow deferring or encapsulating service boundaries within a monolith are seen as beneficial.
- Technologies like Elixir and Erlang facilitate easier changes across multiple system parts due to their design of cooperating services.
- Monorepos, where multiple services are managed within a single repository, are becoming a trend to simplify changes and deployments.
Effective Team Culture
- Effective team culture involves collective ownership and stewardship of code, emphasizing high-quality work and future maintenance.
- Continuous learning and collaboration are crucial, with practices like pair programming and ensemble programming promoting shared knowledge and skills.
- True collaboration, rather than mere coordination or cooperation, is essential for solving problems effectively within teams.
Pair Programming and Mob Programming
- Pair programming is shown to produce higher quality work with fewer defects, although it may not significantly increase productivity.
- To determine if pair programming is beneficial, experimentation is recommended. If it proves successful, it should be continued; if not, alternative approaches should be explored.
- Mob programming presents a greater challenge as it necessitates the participation of an entire team. A suggestion for implementation is to dedicate an hour every Friday to collaborative coding exercises, potentially using a "toy" problem, to enhance skills.
Contact Information
- Dean Wheelen can be found on LinkedIn.