Applied Software Project Management

Chapter 7. Design and Programming

There's a famous quote attributed to Kent Beck, a widely respected software engineer who's responsible for many advances in the field: "I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits." This chapter is about introducing some of those great habits. A good programmer who adopts these habits will build better software.

Programmers spend their time designing and building software, and all of their project work revolves around the source code. But many programming teams find that they lose control of their own code. Sometimes they lose track of the changes that they make; new additions might occasionally disappear, and old bugs routinely pop up. They might lose control of the design of the code, finding that no matter how much care they put into designing the software well, they still end up with messy code that's difficult to maintain. Some programmers have never known any other way, and don't realize that these problems can be eased. A project manager can improve the code by helping the team adopt good programming practices.

While many development problems originate outside of the programming team, there are some basic changes that the programmers can make that will improve the quality of the code they produce. Most teams, even ones with skilled and talented programmers, are vulnerable to the same design and programming problems. These problems can be addressed with a few basic tools and techniques—which can often be put in place ...