Definitions

These are some terms myself and friends have coined over the years to describe situations we have been in.

Nuts-Out Development – when a development team makes changes to code intentionally without testing the changes or ensuring that the changes do not impact other developers. For example, a developer may do this to cram something in before a deadline. In this scenario, a developer effectively “hangs his nuts out there” to be stepped on.

Child-King Syndrome – when a manager is elevated too quickly through the ranks. For instance, if a prodigious developer is made a manager too early in their understanding of development process. As a result, they may have a deep sense of responsibility, but fail to know how to act effectively. Furthermore, they are stunted in their decision making abilities because they feel an obligation to their role (i.e. decision maker) more so than the goals of the group. Subsequently, ideas are often fast-racked without exercising full diligence with disastrous results.

Clode – code that strives to be as complex as possible, the goal being to extinguish simplicity in all of its forms.

Black-Ops – organizing a team of developers outside of the main development team, under the radar of management, to try and produce a prototype or rewrite of code that would make the original product inherently better. This is a smell that indicates that the team as a whole is not sufficient.

Complexifilication – the name says it all. Over-complicating things.