Karmængine

Something else I need to write about. Developers who get worse over the years. How do you handle them?
Firstly I should define what I mean by ‘worse’. Well, essentially:

Quality of code decreases
Ability to estimate tasks decreases
Attention to detail decreases
Time distracted increases
Work done fails testing more frequently
Contribution during discussions decreases

I suppose the first step in handling [...]

We are using Trac by Edgewall Software to handle our backlog. It was originally some sort of ticketing help system, but is now one of the most widely used track management softwares.
It is a very powerful tool, and that becomes obvious after a brief play around with it.
But the product backlog we have is growing, [...]

As we become faster, more agile, and better organised thanks to Scrum, one can only try to imagine where we’ll be in another 20 years, in terms of software development.
I think we’ll be seeing more web-based applications, games, and Java developments, and less of the standalone desktop type software being created. This seems to be [...]

Well, we just finished sprint 18. There’s been some good success, but unfortunately I feel this should technically be called a failed sprint, for the simple fact that three tasks were not completed.
The first of these tasks was an ongoing piece of software custom-written for a single user. It has been completed long ago, [...]

After I began maintaining a manual burndown chart for the sprint, I noticed that in reality the burndown chart was not telling us what we needed to know. It was based on completed tasks – and completed means coded and dev-tested.
Towards the end of almost every sprint, we were seeing that our burndown chart suddenly [...]