Chapter 8. Pragmatic Projects

As your project gets under way, we need to move away from issues of individual philosophy and coding to talk about larger, project- sized issues. We aren't going to go into specifics of project management, but we will talk about a handful of critical areas that can make or break any project.

As soon as you have more than one person working on a project, you need to establish some ground rules and delegate parts of the project accordingly . In Pragmatic Teams, we'll show how to do this while honoring the pragmatic philosophy.

The single most important factor in making project-level activities work consistently and reliably is to automate your procedures. We'll explain why, and show some real-life examples in Ubiquitous Automation.

Earlier, we talked about testing as you code. In Ruthless Testing, we go to the next step of project-wide testing philosophy and tools especially if you don't have a large QA staff at your beck and call.

The only thing that developers dislike more than testing is documentation. Whether you have technical writers helping you or are doing it on your own, we'll show you how to make the chore less painful and more productive in It's All Writing.

Success is in the eye of the beholderthe sponsor of the project. The perception of success is what counts, and in Great Expectations we'll show you some tricks to delight every project's sponsor.

The last tip in the book is a direct consequence of all the rest. In Pride and Prejudice, we encourage you to sign your work, and to take pride in what you do.