Author Archives: alankent
What I Like about Poker Planning
Poker planning is one scheme often used in Scrum or other Agile methodologies as a way of helping to estimate tasks in a sprint. The way I used it was to get the sprint team together (the people who will do work in the sprint), for them to come up with a proposed list of […]
What is “Good” API Design
What makes a good API design? I don’t think there is a single answer to this – there are different approaches that work better in different circumstances. Here are a few examples. Which is better – a broad or narrow API? One approach is to have a broad API – one where there are lots […]
Charity Site Design Considerations
In this post I describe aspects I like and dislike about different charity / not-for-profit web sites. In follow up posts I will describe how Magento can be used to support such functionality. Apart from my normal disclaimer about working for eBay and Magento and PayPal are a part of eBay, I wanted to add […]
What is a Good Test Case?
I am a strong believer in automated tests. They can take longer to build the first time, but you can run them over and over again with no manual effort after that. In this modern age I don’t think I need to make the case for the importance of tests. But what makes a test […]
Technologies for Nonprofits
I am going to write up a few posts on ways in which Magento (an open source web store written in PHP) can be used as a site to support a not-for-profit site – such as a school in a developing country. I will base these posts on the free Magento Community Edition. This series […]
10 Commandments of Egoless Programming
I was looking for a reference to egoless programming and found the “The Ten Commandments of Egoless Programming”. This comes from Jerry Weinberg’s book The Psychology of Computer Programming, written in 1971. Understand and accept that you will make mistakes. The point is to find them early, before they make it into production. Fortunately, except […]
Answer Questions versus Writing Manuals – Why not do both!
If someone asks you how a product you are developing works, should you answer? They could ask via email, Jira issue, or in person. Is it better to shun such people, write product documentation, and tell people to go Read The Full Manual (and stop bothering you!) My preference is a combination of both. I […]
Documentation Sets
My last technical documentation post on remembering the audience reminded me of the importance of designing the documentation set for the product you are working on. Knowing the audience is a critical part of writing a manual. I like the approach of having a short introduction section where all manuals follow the same structure. Standard […]
Support a Charity with your Magento Store
So you have a Magento web store that you use to sell goods, but you would like to also support a charity or other not-for-profit? Why not allow you customers to donate to the cause from your web store? When selecting a cause or causes to support, think about whether the demographics for your store […]
Technical Documentation Writing
There are whole books written about technical documentation writing. Here are my key take aways. Make sure you know who the audience is before you write a single word. You are writing documentation for others, not yourself. Put yourself in their shoes. Use terminology the reader will understand. Use short simple sentences. Long sentences get […]
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