Agile 101: Refactoring Code

Tom Mochal, PgMP, PMP, TSPM is the president of TenStep, Inc., a methodology development, consulting and training company. Tom won the Distinguished Contribution Award from the Project Management Institute for his work spreading knowledge of project management around the world. He is a speaker, lecturer, instructor and consultant to companies and organizations around the world.

  Agile   ProjectsAtWork  

Agile projects maintain a collective ownership of code, so it is likely that the person responsible for creating an original component may not be the same person that updates the code to support a later requirement. This mindset extends beyond the code and promotes flexibility and efficiency throughout your project.

In a traditional development project there is a tendency for one person to write entire programs to implement certain functionality. This one person designs, codes and tests the module. It is likely that once a program or component has been written and tested, it will not be updated again during the project. If errors are found later, the original developer usually troubleshoots the problem and makes the updates. After the project is over, the next person to see the code will probably be someone in the support group if the module has a problem or if an enhancement is requested. 

This is not the case with an Agile project. Agile projects build incremental solutions over time. It is very possible, and perhaps likely, that a component that was written to support a specific piece of functionality may need to be updated later with the introduction of some other use case with related functionality. It is also very likely that the person responsible for creating and coding the original component may not be the same person that updates the code to support a …

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