Identifying Dependencies for Breaking Cycles

Dependency cycles in software systems have very negative impact on characteristics like testability, understandability and reuse (as explained here). Cycles with only a few nodes (say 5 to 10) might be resolveable quite simply by manually analyzing them. For bigger cycles it is helpful to have an automated analysis at hand based on an algorithm solving the minimum feedback arc set problem. A feedback arc set of a directed graph is a subset of its arcs that upon removal would transform a cyclic into an acyclic directed graph. Such an algorithm combined with user input about the domain (i.e. which dependencies are absolutely necessary and which absolutely violate design decisions) is able to deliver excellent results. Read More

The Importance of Defining “Done” Correctly

The nicest thing you can say to a project manager or your boss is something like “I am done with my task / project“. Everybody loves people who are getting things done. If you do that consistently you will get rewarded and used as an example for those other slackers who are having a bit more trouble with getting things done. On the other hand people who write beautiful, elegant and maintainable code hardly ever get any recognition for that. Nobody really seems to care about the “internals” as long as the software somehow does what it is supposed to do. In a cultural environment like this technical quality, code maintainability and sustainability in general are easily thrown under the bus. Read More