The Professional Developer's Checklist

Use the following checklist before, during, and at the end of working on a feature.

• Work is well-defined
  • High level user story
  • Gerkin-style behaviors for acceptance criteria
  • Assumptions listed. Unknowns requiring research listed.
  • Wireframes, process or data flow diagrams, sequence diagrams, architecture
• Plan is written
  • List of features, files, infra involved
  • Pseudocode for new/changed behavior
  • Work broken down into ordered, deployable, commit-friendly tasks
• Work block, pair program, focused
  • Checkout a working branch
  • Test written first, fails
  • Make test pass
  • Repeat until ready to commit, code must be deployable
  • Commit with a good commit message (git commit)
  • Merge into main branch for CI/CD
• Communicate work completed
  • 1-sentence headline
  • Details in 1-3 paragraphs. 3-5 words in bold. Why, So What, What’s Next.