Adrian Howard

• About: Passionate about creating great products. User Experience advocate. Agile fanatic. Testing bigot. Lean Startup convert.

Recent Actions

• Commented on How to be agile without testing
  So I don't dispute what you say about tests, but I will cheerfully dispute whether or not currently recommended best practices in testing are the elusive Holy Grail of performant software. Hmmm.. whose best practices are you reading ;-) I've...
• Commented on When Must You Test Your Code?
  A few random musings. First, alluding back to my comment-that-never-made-it-through-MT-sucky-sign-in - a large chunk of your approach to when to write tests is based on the assumption that most tests are written to detect error (or harm - in your...
• Commented on How to be agile without testing
  I do so love the continual delivery stuff. It makes building a culture of experimentation so much easier. That said - you seem to be assuming that the only reason to write tests is to find bugs / behaviour that...
• Commented on When Must You Test Your Code?
  can i comment?...
• Commented on Random thoughts about agile software development
  Heh. I actually think the "no process" folk are the least of your worries. Generally the people who have the biggest problems are the folk who think they are agile - but aren't really. They've sent a project manager on...
• Commented on Counter-productive over time
  I'm firmly in the pro-dependency camp for the work that I do, but I think that you're a little unfair to the folk that go the no-dependency route. There are definitely those who know how to manage dependencies - but...
• Commented on Andy Lester, brian d foy, Gisle Aas, and Adrian Howard featured in RSA Animate video - The Power of Networks
  Heh. Nice. Thanks for pointing it out. Feels slightly odd to have not-my-words coming out of my caricature though (as if I'd say that about perl :-)...

Comment Threads

• Ovid commented on Random thoughts about agile software development

  Ether, I discovered that the deadline was extended and submitted the talk. However, it turns out that they're already have to turn away some speakers, some of then new. Rather than ask them to kick another speaker, I withdrew the talk.

  And sadly, there's no way it can really be condensed much smaller.

• Buddy Burden commented on Random thoughts about agile software development

  Excellent post, Ovid. I posted something very similar recently ... if you don't mind me pimping my blog:

  My Theory About Agile

  Love to hear your thoughts on it.

• Ovid commented on When Must You Test Your Code?

  Adrian, of course you can comment. What a strange question :)

• Ovid commented on How to be agile without testing

  Adrian,

  I like to make a distinction between customer and non-customer code. For non-customer code (such as for an open source project or a back end reporting system), there's a far different strategy which is applied. However, by "customer" code, I mean customer-facing code where the success of the business depends on customers using the code in the manner that the business needs to stay afloat. Did you buy the mug that's being sold? Did you sign up for the newsletter? Do you become a repeat visitor?

  Most companies I've worked for are desperate to have those answers, but do …

• Ross Attrill commented on When Must You Test Your Code?

  There are several things that I like about this article. I like that the article acknowledges technical debt is sometimes appropriate and provides some suggestions on managing that.

  Your concluding paragraph says it all.