I’ve just spent more than a year working in a development group. We sit around a big oval table and work. We meet there, write code there, prepare presentations there, eat lunch there. There’s no “head” of the table; no “kids table”. It’s an island, and everyone’s on it. We’re all equals, peers and have [...]
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Django has wonderful unit testing functionality built into the framework. It is often ignored because Django gives so much functionality “out of the box”, but this doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t do “their part” when extending the framework to build your own applications. Tests are a great way to “figure out” what needs to be [...]
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Test Driven Development is mystical to any engineer that doesn’t have it as part of their development culture. ?Many shops don’t have the peer pressure and leadership that requires TDD in day-to-day operations. ?Others don’t see the need when working with Legacy Codebases. ?Some engineers have never written a unit test in their professional careers. [...]
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Posted in Best Practices on May 17th, 2007
eCommerce and Revenue-Generating Site stakeholders often worry about traffic; they think that if they don’t get enough they aren’t going to make any money. There is a little truth to that, but more important is getting good quality traffic before you go after lots of users. If you get 10,000 hits per week with a [...]
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Posted in Best Practices on May 6th, 2007
The Role of Technology in eCommerce ECommerce enterprises are not “technology” or “software” companies. While more modern technologies can and do offer massive benefits to them, the business as a whole does not exist for any specific technology, good or mediocre, as long as it can further its mission and goals. The technology departments in [...]
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Posted in Best Practices on Apr 23rd, 2007
Alignment is everything. For many years managers in the software industry submitted budgets that were unrealistic to Business Unit managers that had no clue as to what to question, what to approve or where to cut. As business has grown up and increased its expectations of IT departments, Development and Infrastructure has also been forced [...]
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Posted in Best Practices on Apr 21st, 2007
eCommerce and Revenue-Generating applications often worry about traffic; they think that if they don’t get enough they aren’t going to make any money. While there is truth to this statement, it is important to get good quality traffic first and foremost. If your application receives 10,000 hits per week with a conversion rate of 5%, [...]
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