Expanded Library

Making the Business Case for Best Practices

by Erik Dietrich

You've told your organization that it should adopt software development best practices. Learn how to prove it.

What you'll learn

A lot of developers like to stump for so-called "best practices." We should do TDD. We should be Agile. We should use an IoC container. But what defines a "best practice?" What does this mean? Unless the practice helps the business' bottom line, it's hard to justify. Organizations need to make money; they don't exist to pad developers' resumes. This course will help you evaluate whether or not various practices make sense for your business, and help you justify them if they do by making a bottom-line-based argument to important stakeholders.

Table of contents

What Is a "Best Practice," Anyway?
10mins
And What Is a Business Case?
36mins
Justifying Coding Practices
59mins
Justifying Code Inspection Practices
52mins
Justifying Testing Practices
62mins
Justifying Meta-Coding Practices
33mins
The Politics of Change
28mins

About the author

Erik Dietrich

Erik is a software architect, team leader and technologist that enjoys working with a wide variety of programming languages, frameworks and tools. An active blogger with extensive experience teaching and demonstrating software development techniques, Erik is always up for any conversation about technology. Erik's recent experience has focused on the .NET framework, though over the years he has worked with C++, Java, and a number of other languages. Projects range from low level driver and k... more

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