Joel Spolsky giving you the test. Original picture at Stack Overflow user.

Revisiting The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code

Learn about the test that created Trello and Stack Overflow.

Almost 23 years ago, on August 9th, Joel Spolsky, co-founder of Stack Overflow and Trello, wrote a list of 12 questions that each software development team should follow. The list was simple, and judging for his success, effective.

The list of 12 questions was fast to answer —roughly three minutes, and every question has only two possible answers: yes or no. According to him, we should give one point for each yes, and a 12 score was perfect, 11 tolerable, but 10 or lower you had problems.

This list was a counterproposal to other much more complex systems, which also involved much more difficult non-binary measures to act upon. Remember that the most important thing about a metric is making sure that it is actionable. And at the same time, his proposal was very effective and simple.

The list

You can find the list on his original post on his website:

The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code