…which was, and is, a hugely important part of our software development, and something that took a long time to learn to do well. Pair programming is when two developers sit at one machine and one keyboard to write the software. It’s very difficult to do: the driver has the pressure of someone watching their … Continue reading
…which is a word that we came to understand only slowly, particularly as a counterpart to the word “challenge”. As we worked we inevitably came across problems; Nigel, our indefatigable programme manager, would insist on calling them “challenges”, and casting possible actions as “opportunities”, to the point that it became a running joke. But problems … Continue reading
…which was one of the two highest priority launches of project. Yet it happened around 12 months after we planned it, and between the planning and the launch we also launched the guardian.co.uk home page, video integration, and sections for Media, Technology, Business, Science, Society, Money and Environment. If it was so important, why did … Continue reading
…which are important even on an Agile project. Many people who read just a little about Agile development think there are no fixed commitments. It’s true that there is constant reprioritisation of work, but that generally operates at the task level, and there is still a need to set goals and stick to them. After … Continue reading
…which needed to be removed if we were to be productive. Just adding shiny new things would only add to our workload if we didn’t also get rid of the old ones. In fact the most significant legacy systems needed to be removed (or at least isolated) before we could even start R2. These included … Continue reading
…which was the first visible feature we released as part of the R2 project. That was way back in May 2006, and it appeared on articles in the Travel section. The keyword component was simply a box listing keywords associated with the article, but to get even to that modest point was a long journey. … Continue reading
…which stands for “just do it”, and was the unofficial name of one of the development teams which sat alongside the R2 teams. One key principle we had from the start of the project was that other development work couldn’t stop for the sake of the site rebuild. There might be less of it, but … Continue reading
…which lasted two weeks and culminated in a full new release of our software. I’ve written elsewhere about what happened in one week of a particular iteration in June 2008. However, our R2 iterations didn’t just involve implementing software. At the same time each team was also working with a business analyst and end-users to … Continue reading
…which was launched in May 2007 and incorporated a huge amount of flexibility to tell the day’s news in different ways. There are two major aspects to the home page’s flexibility. The first, and most obviously, is a variety of templates. In our previous system the home page had almost no flexibility at all, which … Continue reading
…which was not part of the project scope when we started R2. It’s fair to say that when we began implementing in February 2006, the idea of a Guardian America launch was not on the radar. Yet by the middle of 2007 it was being talked about very seriously, and increasingly so. How did we … Continue reading
