Binarymist

How and Why Many Software Development Shops Fail

What I see a lot of, is organisations hiring code monkeys rather than professionals. Either they hire:

• the cheapest talent they can get their hands on. Now they want the best, but how much they have to pay the developer is the most important factor to them.

or

• the person that completes feature implementations as fast as possible (sometimes known or thought of as rock stars). Often young developers without a large amount of experience which causes the more Professional Developers to slow down a bit and think tasks through a little more.

Now, both approaches are short sighted. They hire code monkeys rather than professionals. Code monkeys write code fast and incur technical debt that is hidden at first, but over time slows the Development Team down until it can barely move.

The scenario

Code Monkey finishes his task much faster than Professional Developer.

Code Monkey is solely focused on completing his task as fast as possible. He cuts some code and declares the task done. Professional Developer thinks the problem through, does a little research to satisfy himself that his proposed approach  is in fact the most appropriate approach for the problem. He organises a test condition workshop which solidifies requirements and drives out design defects via active stake holder participation. He drives his low level design with TDD. Makes sure he follows the coding standards, thus making future maintenance to his code easier, as it’s much easier to read. Asks for a pair to review his code or perhaps requests a fellow team member to sit with him and pair programme for a bit on some complex areas of the code base. Makes sure his code is being run in the continuous integration suite, that his acceptance tests (which have been driving his feature) are passing and the (security) regression tests are not regressing. Checks that his work complies with the Definition of Done. You do have a Definition of Done right?

Now what the Product Owner or software development manager often fails to understand is that it’s the slow (Professional) developer that is creating code that can be maintained and extended at a sustainable pace. Professional Developer is investing time and effort into creating a better quality of code than the developer (Code Monkey) that appears to be producing code faster. The Product Owner and/or manager don’t necessarily see this, in which case Code Monkey clearly looks to be the superior developer right (the rock star)? What also often happens is that Code Monkey rides on Professional Developers quality and adds his spaghetti code on top, thus making Code Monkey look like a god.

The Product Owner sees output immediately by Code Monkey that “appears” to be working very fast. He doesn’t see the quality being created by Professional Developer that “appears” to be working slower.

Time goes by. Sprint Review roles around. The stake holders love the new features that have been implemented and now want some additions and refinements. They ask the Product Owner to add some more User Stories into the Product Backlog. The Development Team pull these stories into a Sprint and start work. New functionality is added on top of the code that Professional Developer wrote previously. New functionality is added on top of the code that Code Monkey wrote previously.

Sprint Review roles around again and the stake holders are happy with the new features that have been added on top of Professional Developers code. Of course they have no idea that the underlying code was crated by Professional Developer. Now the stake holders have been using the software that had the new features added on top of Code Monkeys spaghetti code and they are starting to notice other areas of the application that are no longer behaving the way they are supposed to. This continues to happen and the stake holders are oblivious to the fact that it’s due to the code that Code Monkey is writing. They still think he’s a rock star because he appears to pump out code so fast.

So… while Professional Developer seems to be slowing The Team down and clearly Code Monkey is simply amazing because he delivers his features so much faster. The actual truth is exactly the opposite. Professional Developer is creating SOLID code and running at a pace that’s sustainable (a key principle of the agile manifesto).

The code that Professional Developer wrote is easier to modify and extend as it’s design is superior, due to being well thought out and driven by tests. His code satisfies the acceptance tests, so everyone knows it meets the living specification. It’s faster to add changes to his code because it’s easier to read and there are less surprises. If any other team member changes Professional Developers code which makes it no longer conform to the specification, the Accpetance Tests around his code fail, thus providing instant feedback to the developer making the change.

It’s the practices of Professional Developer that:

1. provide the entire Development Team assurity that the software satisfies the requirements of the specification at all times.
2. allow The Development Team to run at a sustainable pace.
3. provide confidence in ongoing future estimations due to less surprises.
4. produce code that everyone wants to work with.
5. produce less error prone software that does what it says it will do on the box.

So… next time you as a Product Owner, Manager, or person responsible for hiring, is looking for talent, be very careful what you’re measuring. Don’t favour speed over excellent attitude. I created some ideas on what to look for in a Professional Developer here.

Scrum Teams can Fail Too

Velocity of the Development Team starts high then declines. Often it’s hard for people (including the Product Owner) to pin-point why this is happening. The Scrum Team may have started out delivering at a consistently high cadence. They appeared to be really on fire.

The code base is small but growing fast. As it starts to get larger, the Development Team starts to feel the weight of a lot of code that’s been hacked together in a rush. This causes the teams ability to release software fast to wane. A Scrum Team can get to this point quite fast, as they are a high performance team. When you get to this point, almost every change to the code base is hard. Make one change and something else fails. Routines are hundreds of lines long. Developers have to understand hundreds of lines of code in order to make a small change. Names are not as meaningful as they should be. Routines have multiple levels of abstraction, so multiple levels of code need to be understood to make a single change. Inheritance is over used, thus creating unnecessarily tight coupling. There are many aspects of the code that have become terrible to work with.

How does this happen?

How does the Product Owner know that the quality of code being created is not good? The Product Owner isn’t generally a developer so doesn’t know and even if he is, he’s not in the code day in, day out. Also it’s not generally the most important concern of the Product Owner, rather getting new functionality out the door is, so this is what the Development Team are rewarded for. When they pass a Sprint, the Product Owner is happy and praises the Development Team. The Product Owner has no idea that the quality of code is not as good as it needs to be to sustain a code base that is easy to extend.

So the Development Team does what ever it needs right now, to make sure they deliver right now (the current Sprint). Quality becomes secondary, because no one is rewarding them for it. This is a lack of professionalism on the Development Teams part. Bear in mind though, that each developer is competing against every other to appear as though they have produced the most. After all, that’s what they get rewarded for. Often what this means is they are working too fast and not thinking enough about what they are doing, thus the quality of the code-base is deteriorating, like in the example above with Code Monkey.

I’ve personally seen this on close to 100% of all non Scrum projects I’ve been involved with. Scrum Teams are sometimes better off because they have other practices in place that ensure quality remains high, but these practices are not prescribed by Scrum.

So… What do we do?

We not only reward the Development Team for delivering features fast but we also reward them for the sort of practices that Professional Developer (from our example above) performs.

How do we do this?

We add the practices that Professional Developer from above performs to our Definition of Done.

The Product Owner runs through the Acceptance Criteria which should be included on every Product Backlog item (preferably during the Sprint) indicating acceptance. Also running through the Definition of Done… querying the Development Team that each point has in fact been done for the Backlog item in question. This of course should be done by the developers themselves first. This provides the Team with confidence that the Sprint Backlog item is actually complete. Essentially, the work is not Done, until all the Acceptance Criteria points and Definition of Done points are checked off. This way the Development Team is being rewarded for delivering fast and also delivering high quality features that do what the stake holders expect them to do. No nasty surprises.

On top of what our solo Professional Developer did above, we should:

1. Measure test speed and reward fast running tests
2. Measure cyclomatic Complexity
3. Run static code analysis and use productivity enhancing tools. This is not cheating, it’s allowing the developers to work faster and create cleaner code. This can even be set-up as pre-commit hooks etc on source control.
4. Code reviews need to be based on the coding standards and guidelines.
5. Encourage developers to commit regularly, thus their code is being run against the entire test suite, providing confidence that their code plays nicely with everyone else’s code. Commit frequency can be measured.
6. The Development team should shame developers when they break the CI build. Report on how long builds stay broken for and shame when the duration is longer than an agreed on time.
7. Most of these practices can be added to the Definition of Done, this way Developers can and should be rewarded for doing these activities. Even better, you can automate most of these practices.