agile

Articles

Hopeless Projects The Advantages of Hopeless Projects

Team members involved in hopeless projects become dejected, stressed, and overworked. Are there any silver linings to working on a doomed project? This article argues that there are. When you and your teammates are stretched to your limits, you can learn a lot about each other, your managers, and what it takes to make a successful product.

Maryna Kaliada's picture Maryna Kaliada
Automation is Not God Automation Test Suites Are Not God!

In today’s age of tight deadlines and accelerating delivery cycles of software, test automation is surely favorable for the world of functional testing and critical to the success of big software development companies. But its various benefits have led to unrealistic expectations from managers and organizations. This article highlights the role and use of automation in an agile context and the irreplaceable importance of manual testing.

Nishi Grover's picture Nishi Grover
Effective Prioritizing Prioritizing Effectively as a Team

If you’ve ever worked on a development project, you know you can never be that sure that everything will be completed on deadline. By prioritizing actively, you can change success from something binary—either we make it or we don’t—into something more gradual. By doing this, you increase the chance of succeeding in delivering something. If you prioritize really well, that something may even turn out to be far more valuable than anything you penned down in your initial plan.

Tobias Fors's picture Tobias Fors
Estimate Your Work Need to Learn More about the Work You’re Doing? Spike It!

How do you estimate work you've never done before? One proven method is to spike it: Timebox a little work, do some research—just enough to know how long it will take to finish the rest of the work—and then you can estimate the rest of the work. You don’t waste time, you can explore different avenues of how best to complete the task, and your team learns together.

Johanna Rothman's picture Johanna Rothman
Test Managers Management Myth 29: I Can Concentrate on the Run

Busy managers get used to making decisions on the fly. But, some decisions require more thought and consideration than others. Johanna offers some tips for knowing when you need to slow down, take a seat, and give a problem your undivided attention.

Johanna Rothman's picture Johanna Rothman
Delight Your Customers Excite and Delight Your Customers by Using the Kano Model

Chandra Munagavalasa writes that because the requirements change over time, the product backlog is never complete. As the project progresses and more detailed information becomes available, the product backlog items and their rankings change continually. One of the many techniques available for ranking the product backlog is the Kano model.

Chandra Munagavalasa's picture Chandra Munagavalasa
Developing User Stories The Three Amigos Strategy of Developing User Stories

Developing software correctly is a detail-oriented business. George Dinwiddie writes on how using the Three Amigos strategy can help you develop great user stories. Remember, the goal is to have the work done just in time for planning and development. It should be complete enough to avoid stoppages to build more understanding, but not so far in advance that the details get stale.

George Dinwiddie's picture George Dinwiddie
Business Metrics How Depersonalizing Work and Managing Flow Can Humanize the Workplace

Using metrics such as cumulative flow to monitor throughput and quantitative thinking may not seem very humanistic, but by depersonalizing the work being done, we can focus our energies on solving actual problems instead of conducting a daily witch-hunt and shaming people into high performance.

Adam Yuret's picture Adam Yuret
Development DNA The Evolution of z/OS Development

Kristin Cowhey explains how z/OS development has evolved throughout the years and what that means for developers and tech personnel. With legacy developers leaving the workforce, there’s a dire need to replace the knowledge in order to maintain the mainframe systems and applications that are still in use today. 

Kristin Cowhey's picture Kristin Cowhey
Agile World Typewriter Writing in an Agile World

Sarah Johnson explains the role of writing in an agile world and how to educate your team members. Remember, agile takes into account that each situation is unique, and you need to determine what makes the most sense for your particular Scrum team.

Sarah Johnson's picture Sarah Johnson

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