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For those who believe there has to be one right way to do something, especially in software development - there can be. But that one way isn't likely to come from a single individual. Through collaboration and teamwork, some of the greatest single ideas have evolved.

A common problem in component frameworks, class libraries, foundation services, and other infrastructure code is that many are designed to be general purpose without reference to concrete applications. This leads to a dizzying array of options and possibilities that are often unused, misused, or just not useful. Most developers work on specific systems: the quest for unbounded generality rarely serves them well (if at all). The best route to generality is through understanding known, specific examples and focusing on their essence to find an essential common solution.

Testing is such an integral part of our software projects that we often don't stop to think about why we do it. We must do it. What else is there to know? It is obvious that software that has not been tested is unready for deployment. As painful experience has taught us, testing does not guarantee that the software is fit to deploy. Even rigorously tested software may still have hidden fatal flaws.

Writing great software requires a lot of communication, and not just the client-to-server variety; person-to-person communication is crucial in a well-performing team. While it's easy to focus exclusively on improving our ability to communicate through the code we write, it's important to remember that building software is a communal experience: developers work with customers, testers, product owners, and other developers.

Here are some techniques and articles I use to reflect upon and improve my own communication skills:

A working definition of “practice” is: A practice is a common and adaptive approach for doing something with a specific purpose in mind. When “being” agile and applying a practice we are focused on value-added not the means.

Designing and developing software, it's usually cheaper to prevent problems from ever occurring (by making a decision at design-time) rather than patching them as they happen. But detecting problems in real-time is a useful skill in many professions, including one as different as recording audio books.

Through the power of the Internet, people around the world are working together to solve problems in a faster, more cost-effective way than ever before. Crowdsourcing is a term that has been used to describe the process of requesting a crowd to perform a task rather than hiring consultants or contractors. There have been various models used to harness the collective brainpower of the masses, and this article delves into three examples. Thanks to the power of Web 2.0, publicity is easily spread world-wide to recruit participants who will take part in competitions or collaborative events aimed at solving a problem or completing a task.