PersonalPracticesMap

An XtcStudyGroup topic suggested by JoeWalnes and explained by AndyPols at XtC.

We want your personal practices that you find important. Different people work in different ways, so we thought it would be interesting to discuss this.

1. In your own time, make a list of your 10 most important practices for coding and design. These do not have to be XP related and should be the most important things in your mind. For example: Separate interfaces from implementation, mock objects, follow the Law of Demeter, test driven development. Controversy encouraged - everyone's different.
2. Try to determine any relationships that may exist between these. Specifically, which practices support other practices. For example: unit testing supports refactoring and test driven design.
3. Draw a map of the relationships - like this:http://joe.truemesh.com/sample-structure.gif
4. Come along to Xtc20030729 where we shall discuss why we do things the way we do.

This is an audience participation session, so we require people to have a prepared list of practices. If you don't prepare in advance we'd prefer you didn't participate as you're lazy shites.

The results of this (whatever that may be) may be published somewhere, somehow if we think it's interesting. We'll credit anyone involved.

If you want to take part, please remember to prepare in advance and sign up below:

• JoeWalnes
• AndyPols
• BenHogan
• ChrisStevenson
• SteveF
• AslakHellesoy
• PaulH
• TimM
• GrahamKing
• ThomasRynne
• NatPryce
• StephenSykes?
• DarrenHobbs
• MichaelBrown

The outputs on MapsOfPeoplesPersonalPractices are looking quite interesting. I'm sorry I couldn't attend the session. Have you thought about using repertory grids to elicit the relationships between practices? I've found it very useful for this sort of discussion. --KeithB

What's a RepertoryGrid?

Almost everybody, myself included, only included the practices they use in ideal circumstances. But what about the practices people use when up against tight deadlines, etc? Perhaps we should repeat the session to create a PersonalUnfortunatePracticesMap and see how the good practices can help us avoid and/or alleviate the bad practices. --NatPryce