Beyond Legacy Code

Shorten Feedback Cycles

I prefer smaller batches when I look at feedback cycles—and I mean all software development feedback cycles—and there should be many ot them.

Talking to the customer is an example of a feedback cycle; demoing at the end of an iteration or feature that you’re building is another. One of the feedback cycles we get as developers is from our compiler. We write some code and then compile it, and the compiler tells us we have some syntax issues, or whatever—and this is a fundamental form of feedback for developers. The next step is the feedback from an automated test suite that immediately notifies us if code is broken, and so on.

But it’s not enough to break tasks down and get more feedback. Developers need constructive