I like to think about patterns and anti-patterns in software development process, too. These are human patterns and human anti-patterns.
Examples of human anti-patterns are:
- Manually comparing large datasets. This looks fine, but humans are fallible and easily bored, and they will miss something doing this kind of tedious comparison by hand.
- Allowing an infrastructure problem to persist. See my post from yesterday for an example. Today I went in and we traced the problems and fixed them; not having a reliable build is not something you want hanging around!
- Testing only right before release. Not testing as you build seems okay, even good. Hey, it doesn't waste developer time testing partially implemented features. But it will extend your release cycle because it leaves a lot of changing code that all has to come together perfectly - not likely.
So when you think about processes, think about your patterns - the repeatable solutions to common problems that you want. Also think about your anti-patterns - repeatable things that you don't want.
Just like designs, humans have anti-patterns, too!
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