We’ve started the Hunchworks codejams. That means we’ve got serious about building a distributed team of volunteer coders. Which also means that we have to get really serious about how we describe the code.
I’m talking features and user stories – the things that developers need so they know what needs to be built and why (i.e. the business justification for these things). And as a coding dinosaur™, I’m used to speccing out very large engineering systems (think aircraft or submarine-sized) using detailed requirements and tools like Modaf.
Time to learn, and learn fast methinks. Good places to start looking are:
- Agile101 from VersionOne
- Agilemodelling.com
- Mike Cohn’s book “User Stories Applied: for Agile Software Development”
- The local chemists for a set of large index cards (yes, really – and they sell beer too).
So. We’re on it. The results will be appearing on the Hunchworks Github soon.