IT Shopkeeping

The first publication in my QuickNotes series is  Agile Development in .NET.  Most Agile methodologies used in .NET shops nationwide are variations of Scrum and Extreme Programming(XP). This booklet covers these tools and techniques: Test-driven Development (TDD), Behavior-driven Development (BDD), Continuous Integration (CI), and Refactoring to Patterns.  The QuickNotes series covers relevant topics in software development to provide the reader with a swift overview of important trends, terms, and concepts.  This book is available at Amazon.com.

A flurry of writing this year leaves me with three little software books to offer you.  One on teamwork, one on communication, and the last on Agile in .NET.
All three will be available on Amazon.com and the Kindle store soon!

I have found these books to be useful for agile coding practices in .NET:

It is a mistake to think that Agile is merely a project management methodology or worse, a buzzword.  

The Agile/XP notions of frequent releases and constant redesign can be worrying.  There was a day, not far in the past, that code changes, any code changes, struck fear into the heart of a developer or project manager.  In many cases this fear was justified.  The majority of code was quite brittle and fragile.  The smallest of changes could bring an application to a grinding halt.   That’s why, when we’re doing things the Agile/XP way, we use Test-driven Development(TDD).   As we destabilize the code with refactoring and destabilize …

Software development is important to many of us, so we strive to find better ways to do it.
In the late 20th century we spent a great deal of time and money developing requirements and specifications, thinking through each case and documenting possible uses and outcomes. We would plan a glorious plan before beginning development.
Wait, that never happened.

The Waterfall model has become the whipping boy of 20th century software development.  The idea that analysis, development, and testing are separate, distinct phases of a development project, where time must be allocated to each, and one must be completed before the next begins, is history.  Although it was seldom actually practiced, with time and budget constraints compressing schedules and steps, it was often an ideal to shoot for.  There was some integrity in it, as I recall.  For a long time, we regarded the model as a sign of …

MVC (Model-View-Controller) is the latest fad in Microsoft .NET development. As Agile and Scrum sweep the industry, a need has grown for continuous integration and deployment, requiring automated unit testing. Conventional ASP.NET architecture makes unit testing of page functionality difficult because form controls are tightly coupled to back end code-behind logic. That is, to simply unit test the selection of a dropdown list along with a Submit button isn’t straightforward. Enter MVC. By clearly delineating front end form functionality, the View, from back end business …