When I was at the NDC, I had also the possibility to visit with colleagues the city of Oslo. During a stop in front of a little shop, a colleague discovered a post card about Viking laws. When I read it, I was really surprised how well the laws fit to today’s software practices.

The Viking laws are grouped in four paragraphs. I pick the most interesting laws for each paragraph and try to make some relations to the software engineering.

Be brave and aggressive

Here you can read laws like "Be versatile and agile", "Attack one target at a time" or "Don’t plan everything in detail". Those laws are valid for agile software projects too. But one of the more interesting laws is "Use top quality weapons" – just replace the word "weapons" with the word "tools".

Be prepared

In this paragraph you can read laws like "Keep weapons in good conditions", which means in software development to keep your code and tools in good conditions. Another laws is "Keep in shape", which means to do continuous learning and improve your skills. Also the law "find good battle comrades" is interesting, because learning from other programmers or engineers in our industry is very important (by practicing pair programming for example).

Be a good merchant

This paragraph is maybe about business orientation and business value for the customers in the software industry.

Keep the camp in order

When I read this paragraph I thought about the "Boy scout rule", which fits quite well. Also team work is an important point here.

Conclusion

So there are so many well fitted laws here – why don’t we do Viking Driven Development ;-)?