It is so told, that there should come a time for every developer, when he be faced with the challenge of coding in the sky. A situation like this happens when a client is faced with a critical problem and needs an immediate solution. The solution provider decides to give it a go, sends out a repair man, for a fast, cowboy style solution, and cashes in the check. When my turn came, I was handed the assignment along with the flight tickets and a brief rundown of the functionality I had to deliver. The functionality took about an hour for him to describe. This kind of positive thinking often reminds me of the ‘Bazooka Joe’ bubblegum fortune, telling me that by the age of 21 I would probably land on the moon. Keeping that same positive thinking in mind, I realized it would be a nice opportunity for setting my agile development skills to the test. I preach agility all the time. I preach it to my colleges and to my developers. I even preach it to my boss. There was no way I was about to turn ‘cowboy’ on all that. The entire time frame for this task was less than a standard agile heart beat, but I stuck with the principles, and used them to guide me. My first task was to deliver functionality. So I set to inquire whatever I could about the requirements. There was the way my boss envisioned it and there were some correspondence with the customer that preceded the request. I swept through the mail exchanges, to find out how the customer wanted it to work and how it ought to be fitted in the surrounding landscape of the other systems. I came out with a detailed feature list, reflecting the functionality requirements, an outline sketch of the interfaces and a high level cubistic design with a short list of would be obstacles (i.e. outstanding issues yet to be resolved). Meeting the bare minimum to enable testability: I wrote a mock up interface invoker (two actually, that know how to talk to each other in a session like manner). Just like in the real world, my module was going to be ‘stuck’ right in between the two mockups, doing so I could have a convenient testing envelope where I can gradually grow my functionality. I felt I was ready for some hard core coding. read more>> EngineerSprint