The Rands Test
It’s hard to pick a single best work by Joel Spolsky, but if I were forced to, I’d pick “The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code.”1 It’s his own, highly irresponsible, sloppy test to rate the quality of software, and when anyone asks me what is wrong with their team, I usually start by pointing the questioner at the test. Start here.
It’s a test with 12 points, and, as Joel says, “A score of 12 is perfect, 11 is tolerable, but a 10 or lower and you’ve got serious problems.” More important than the points, his test clearly documents what I consider to be healthy aspects of an engineering team, but there are other points to be made. ...
Get Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager, Second Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
