Coding Story

Examples

The Team will probably need a coder to be a Swarmer in order to give technical support to the other coders and help others with the non-coding Stories. Since this coder should not be Coordinating a Coding Story at the same time, we say that the Team has kept one coder in reserve to act purely as a Swarmer.

It is generally accepted that coders have a tough time context switching; that is, when they are buried deep in a piece of code and they have to come out to do something else, it then takes them awhile to get back ‘into the code.’ Therefore, one of the patterns of Swarming is the Stay-at-Home Coder pattern. In this pattern each Coding Story gets a coder as its Coordinator (remember that not all Stories are Coding Stories). The non-coders on the Team (analysts, testers, and so on) then become Swarmers that share their expertise across all the Coding Stories as well as work on the non-Coding Stories.