Identifying Variables

Until you become accustomed to looking for variables, it can be difficult to spot the subtle and inaccessible variables. The trick is to use common patterns of variables to help you learn to see the things you can vary in your software. This section offers a list of kinds of variables to watch for in your software.

Things You Can Count

Every system has things you can count. It might be a count of user accounts in the system or the number of times an account is logged in. It could be the number of phone numbers associated with a profile or the number of printers configured on a machine. Perhaps it’s the number of files to be processed in a batch run or the number of records in a given file.

Counts are a subtle variable ...

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