Despite its negative sounding name, the positive benefits of AntiPatterns are enormous. This book discusses what AntiPatterns are and then provides practical guidelines on how to detect AntiPatterns and the refactored solutions that correct them. The authors discuss over 40 different AntiPatterns in the areas of software development, architecture, and project management.

Improve Every Retrospective! Real Solutions for Every Team Leader, Facilitator, and Participant “. . . Aino has shared a robust, curated list of antipatterns and how to avoid them. . . . And she has shared so much more than tips and techniques. You will find a gold mine--with precious nuggets, including her personal experiences, effective facilitation resources, and pointers for extracting yourself and your team when you're stuck.” --From the Foreword by Diana Larsen, co-author, Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great Retrospectives are indispensable for continuous learning and improvement in Lean, Agile, DevOps, and other contexts, but most of us have suffered through at least one retrospective that was a waste of time, or worse. Now, leading agile coach Aino Vonge Corry identifies 24 reasons that retrospectives fail and shows how to overcome each of them. Using the familiar “patterns” approach, Retrospectives Antipatterns introduces antipatterns related to structure, planning, people, distributed teams, and more. Corry shares traps she's encountered and mistakes she's made over more than a decade of leading retrospectives and then presents proven solutions. With her insights and guidance, you can run enjoyable retrospectives that deliver concrete improvements and real value--or at the very least recognize when you are making the same mistake as the author! Create a common language, actionable solutions, and proven plans for solving the retrospective problems you'll encounter most often Recognize symptoms, assess tradeoffs, and refactor your current situation into something better Plan more effectively: decide who should attend and facilitate, when to schedule your retrospective, and how much time to set aside Handle “people” problems: deal with negativity, silence, distrust, disillusionment, loudmouths, and cultural differences Facilitate better “virtual” retrospectives, with tips for online retrospectives included in each antipattern Register your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available. See inside book for details.

The Complete Guide to Avoiding and Fixing Common Rails 3 Code and Design Problems As developers worldwide have adopted the powerful Ruby on Rails web framework, many have fallen victim to common mistakes that reduce code quality, performance, reliability, stability, scalability, and maintainability. RailsTM AntiPatterns identifies these widespread Rails code and design problems, explains why they’re bad and why they happen—and shows exactly what to do instead. The book is organized into concise, modular chapters—each outlines a single common AntiPattern and offers detailed, cookbook-style code solutions that were previously difficult or impossible to find. Leading Rails developers Chad Pytel and Tammer Saleh also offer specific guidance for refactoring existing bad code or design to reflect sound object-oriented principles and established Rails best practices. With their help, developers, architects, and testers can dramatically improve new and existing applications, avoid future problems, and establish superior Rails coding standards throughout their organizations. This book will help you understand, avoid, and solve problems with Model layer code, from general object-oriented programming violations to complex SQL and excessive redundancy Domain modeling, including schema and database issues such as normalization and serialization View layer tools and conventions Controller-layer code, including RESTful code Service-related APIs, including timeouts, exceptions, backgrounding, and response codes Third-party code, including plug-ins and gems Testing, from test suites to test-driven development processes Scaling and deployment Database issues, including migrations and validations System design for “graceful degradation” in the real world

Everything you need to anticipate and avoid the major pitfalls of project management-and ensure success! AntiPatterns in Project Management From the authors of the bestselling series on AntiPatterns come twenty new proven and practical solutions for successfully managing your software development project. in their familiar and entertaining style, the authors explore every phase of software development and identify the complex interaction of people, technology, and process issues that can cause a software development project to fail. With their pull-no-punches approach to project management, you'll learn how to balance these issues and ensure software development success. This book arms you with: * 6 People AntiPatterns that provide proven solutions to the people problems that occur within software development projects * 6 Technology AntiPatterns that help you deal with poor architectures and designs, and unstable technologies * 6 Processes AntiPatterns that help you uncover and correct the bad processes that ultimately cause a project to fail * The Standards AntiPattern that covers how to avoid the pitfalls and gain the benefits of adopting software development standards * The Collision AntiPattern that helps you successfully identify and eliminate multiple AntiPatterns that plague software development projects across different life-cycle phases, involving the disciplines of project management, software configuration management, and software development

Software development has been a troubling since it first started. There are seven chronic problems that have plagued it from the beginning: Incomplete and ambiguous user requirements that grow by >2% per month. Major cost and schedule overruns for large applications > 35% higher than planned. Low defect removal efficiency (DRE) Cancelled projects that are not completed: > 30% above 10,000 function points. Poor quality and low reliability after the software is delivered: > 5 bugs per FP. Breach of contract litigation against software outsource vendors. Expensive maintenance and enhancement costs after delivery. These are endemic problems for software executives, software engineers and software customers but they are not insurmountable. In Software Development Patterns and Antipatterns, software engineering and metrics pioneer Capers Jones presents technical solutions for all seven. The solutions involve moving from harmful patterns of software development to effective patterns of software development. The first section of the book examines common software development problems that have been observed in many companies and government agencies. The data on the problems comes from consulting studies, breach of contract lawsuits, and the literature on major software failures. This section considers the factors involved with cost overruns, schedule delays, canceled projects, poor quality, and expensive maintenance after deployment. The second section shows patterns that lead to software success. The data comes from actual companies. The section’s first chapter on Corporate Software Risk Reduction in a Fortune 500 company was based on a major telecom company whose CEO was troubled by repeated software failures. The other chapters in this section deal with methods of achieving excellence, as well as measures that can prove excellence to C-level executives, and with continuing excellence through the maintenance cycle as well as for software development.

"This is one of the most important Agile books since The Phoenix Project." —Charles Betz, Principle Analyst, Forrester Research It's no secret that we are living in the Digital Age. Technology companies make up seven of the world's ten largest firms by market capitalization. And the key to their success is the key to all modern organizations. Jonathan Smart, business agility practitioner, thought leader, and coach, reveals the patterns and antipatterns that will help organizations from every industry deliver better value sooner, safer, and happier through high levels of engagement, inclusion, and empowerment. Through his decades of experience in the technology world, Smart provides business leaders with a blueprint for creating a world-class organization of the future. Through Agile and Lean ways of working, business leaders can empower teams to improve production, grow together, and create better services for their customers. These better ways of working have overflowed from the IT department to every corner of successful organizations, taking root in every industry from aerospace to accounting, insurance to shipping. This book is not about software development. It is not a book about the computer industry. This book is about applying agility across the entire organization. It's a book that will put you at the front of change and ahead of the competition. "A true business-wide perspective on Digital Transformation and the need for whole business agility." —Adam Banks, Non Executive Director and Former CTIO of AP Moller Maersk **Note from the Authors: Purchases will result in the planting of trees and empowerment of women, in countries with the lowest scores on the IUCN's gender and environment index. It's not just carbon neutral, purchases in any format will result in, on average, 10x greater carbon offset.

Emphasizing leadership principles and practices, Antipatterns: Managing Software Organizations and People, Second Edition catalogs 49 business practices that are often precursors to failure. This updated edition of a bestseller not only illustrates bad management approaches, but also covers the bad work environments and cultural traits commonly fou