Articles

Here we have collected our thoughts in notes and white papers for you to explore.

A Reading List for People Who Want to Know More About TDD and Legacy Code

Posted on December 12, 2011 by J.Dobson

There are two things we have to consider when considering recommending books on working with legacy code. The first is what type of problems lend themselves to a solution using a best practice. Unfortunately, not many. The second is isomorphism. … Continue reading →

Posted in Articles | Tagged Agile, tdd, unit testing | Leave a comment

The Exponential Point of No Return

Posted on March 9, 2011 by J.Dobson

Last year, Jorrit and I visited a client in the south of Holland. It was a misty day, the sort of November morning that grabs hold of you. The office was a square building, the car park too full, to … Continue reading →

Posted in Articles | Tagged five stages of decline, org, organisational debt, Systems thinking | Comments Off

T-Bar; A Coherent Model for Financial Engineering

Posted on January 28, 2011 by J.Dobson

uGly Duckling’s philosophy combines a bottom up with a top down approach for creating and running cross functional teams. Continue reading →

Posted in Articles | Tagged cross functional teams, financial engineering, Systems thinking | Comments Off

Reducing Operation Risk: The First Baby Step

Posted on January 27, 2011 by J.Dobson

In our experience, each client is different, context is always king. However, because many financial institutions start off with end-user programmers, people who program for themselves, usually in Excel with VBA, the organisations tend to follow similar growth paths. In the end, financial institutions end up with a consolidated engineering team, what is often called the ‘Engineering Hypermarket’. Continue reading →

Posted in Articles | Tagged automated testing, operational risk, smoke test, Square Law of Spreadsheets | Comments Off

Operational risks in code libraries

Posted on December 21, 2010 by J. de Jong

Putting a structure in place for centralising, managing changes of and testing financial software and spreadsheets reduces operation risks. In this note we explain that having one central repository with tested and validated building blocks to build your software and spreadsheets reduces operational risks while decreasing development time. Continue reading →

Posted in Articles | Tagged gatekeeper, Microsoft Excel, operational risk, spreadsheets, testing, VBA | Comments Off

In Defence of Moving Forward

Posted on August 19, 2010 by J.Dobson

An essay about the maturation of financial engineering teams. Continue reading →

Posted in Articles | Tagged Agile, engineering, Hull, peopleware, Solving Tough Problems, Systems thinking | Comments Off