Practice over Process

Let's take a look at some sound engineering principles.

Pairing Vs. Code reviews: Try to avoid treating code reviews as post-development “barriers”.

TDD - Tests should be written both by the Developer and QA (It's also not uncommon for others within the team to be involved), preferably in conjunction with each other, throughout the development of functionality - Testing is never an afterthought!

Regular, Incremental Delivery – Start by building the smallest unit of value possible - Release to production as early as possible but with usable functionality - Made possible by automated pipelines - Utilise monitoring and alerting to find any problems - Expect problems; rapid deployment and comprehensive monitoring also allow rapid resolution of issues

Continual Feedback - Our pipelines provided rapid feedback on technical levels, day to day. Still, we can also use agile practices such as stand-ups, Retrospectives, etc., to provide continual feedback to the broader team and adapt working practices.

Culture over Governance – Self-managing teams who act appropriately - Shared learning = shared understanding - If a law is needed, that is a sign of failure of culture - ideally, try to breed an environment where people “do the right thing” - Use feedback mechanisms along with cross-team activities, such as Tech Community sessions, to reinforce the message. - Aim for any formal 'assessments' to be a formality through good practice. – We do understand though that ‘official’ governance may be required for production releases etc.