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Rethinking Software

rethinkingsoftware.substack.com

Calling it a "Best Practice" does not make it so. Click to read Rethinking Software, by Adam Ard, a Substack publication with hundreds of subscribers.

Software / engineering practiceEngineering management / careersEssays / personal

’20’21’22’23’24’25’26
Posts
58 from 11 Oct 2020 to 15 Feb 2026
Posting
now and then (1 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
Feed
https://rethinkingsoftware.substack.com/feed

2026 1

  1. Future Scrum Resistance

2025 11

  1. People Over Process
  2. Good Docs Describe, Bad Docs Prescribe
  3. Literate Testing
  4. Pair Programmers Unite
  5. SOC 2 — We Do It to Ourselves
  6. In retrospect, DevOps was a bad idea.
  7. Don't Shoot the Android
  8. Memorandum: Tips for Ensuring Scrum Compliance
  9. Hours ∝ Story Points
  10. Coming in Through the Back Door
  11. Navigating the Shadows

2024 41

  1. Fighting over Crumbs
  2. Extra DRY with Literate Programming
  3. Lessons from Christmas Puzzles
  4. Strong Code Ownership
  5. Operation Liberate Programmer
  6. I Was Wrong About Scrum, Again
  7. Definition of Dumb
  8. Worker Autonomy: A Natural Law of Labor
  9. Participatory Capitalism
  10. Scrum’s Definition of Done Is Polishing Plates in a Burning Kitchen
  11. Bi-Weekly Notes
  12. Penny-Wise and Pound-Stupid
  13. The Libertarian Coder
  14. Bi-Weekly Notes
  15. Programmer Collaboration Styles
  16. Code Reviews, Not Code Approvals
  17. The Capitalist and the Engineer
  18. Why Code Authors Should Have the Final Say on Code Reviews
  19. Weekly Notes
  20. Founder Mode: Elevating Individual Contributors
  21. The Parable of the Startup
  22. How Agile Are You Really?
  23. Maggie’s Farm
  24. Weekly Notes
  25. Scrum's "Product Owner" Problem
  26. The MANY Alternatives to Scrum
  27. The First Scrum...
  28. Weekly Notes
  29. The Daily Scrum
  30. Weekly Notes
  31. The Scrum Survival Guide: How to Make Scrum Work (Maybe)
  32. How to Measure Progress in a Software Project
  33. Weekly Notes
  34. Why Scrum is Stressing You Out
  35. Revisiting: Why Scrum is the Wrong Way to Build Software Pt.1
  36. The “Bus Test” Considered Harmful
  37. The Joy of Literate Programming
  38. Proposed Addendum to the Manifesto for Agile Software Development
  39. "Organic Markdown" Intro
  40. Can You Hear the Pain?
  41. Scrum is the Symptom, not the Problem

2023 4

  1. The Software Uncertainty Principle
  2. The Lost Art of Delegation
  3. What Agile is Not
  4. Let the games begin...

2020 1

  1. Little Tasks, Little Trust