Author Archives: efarr

Lightweight Context/Specification BDD in C#

Posted on January 19, 2012 by efarr

Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) provides all of the engineering benefits of traditional Test-Driven Development (TDD) while additionally resulting in a specification that non-developers can read and validate. At its heart, BDD transforms the tests of TDD into specifications. Those specifications are … Continue reading →

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Lunch with Uncle Bob

Posted on January 8, 2012 by efarr

Ever since I stumbled across the original C++ Report articles that have become known as the SOLID principles, I have been a disciple of Robert Martin (aka Uncle Bob). He is a leader within the agile and software craftsmanship movements. … Continue reading →

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Outstanding Summary of Domain Driven Design

Posted on November 30, 2011 by efarr

I just came across the best magazine-article-length summary of DDD that I’ve ever seen. If you’ve heard of DDD, but not ready to commit to reading the whole Blue Book, check out Dan Haywood’s An Introduction to Domain Driven Design. … Continue reading →

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The Commoditization of Transactions

Posted on November 30, 2011 by efarr

I’ve written in the past about how the relentless march of progress in software has made yesterday’s innovations today’s commodity. This article from HBR captures the essence of how the software landscape is in the process of making traditional, data-oriented, … Continue reading →

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DDD Anti-Pattern #4: Allowing Implementation Decisions to Drive the Domain Model

Posted on September 24, 2011 by efarr

This is the last (for now) in my series of lessons learned building a complex product from the ground up following the principles of Domain Driven Design. The Field Service domain is all about getting people to Locations to perform … Continue reading →

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11 Reasons You Want Mobility Experience Before Building a Mobile HTML5 Application

Posted on September 22, 2011 by efarr

Two forces have converged: 1) Mobility has gone from an optional differentiator to an expected component of any software offering, and 2) HTML5 has been crowned as the solution that will solve the cross-platform problem that Java, Flash, and Silverlight … Continue reading →

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Sprint Planning and Decision Fatigue

Posted on September 21, 2011 by efarr

This article explores the physiological and psychological effects of fatigue brought on by making decisions. The fatigue that comes from making decision after decision immediately reminded me of my team’s Scrum sprint planning days. The Scrum method breaks software development … Continue reading →

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DDD Anti-Pattern #3: Not Taking Bounded Contexts Seriously

Posted on August 31, 2011 by efarr

My team had the challenge of building a field service automation application that would run on Windows Mobile devices. Availability of the Compact Framework meant that most code that would run on the server would also run on the device. … Continue reading →

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Split the Team or Split the Backlog?

Posted on August 26, 2011 by efarr

Small software companies often find themselves trying to do too much with too little. This was certainly the case at Agentek. At one point earlier this year, we had a problem… We were not finished with the current release (call … Continue reading →

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DDD Anti-Pattern #2: Not Getting the Whole Team Educated on DDD Early Enough

Posted on August 23, 2011 by efarr

The two challenges that drew me to Agentek in late 2008 were interrelated in the same way that the proverbial chicken and egg are. We had to build a complex, composite, occasionally connected, enterprise mobility application to replace the prior … Continue reading →

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