agile

Test-driven Development (TDD) is more of a skill that requires repeated practice than a book-learning technique-more like learning a foreign language than implementing a precise process. TDD developers must gain fluency in taking a feature requirement, breaking it into microrequirements, turning it into an assertion with a test scenario, translating that scenario into code, and writing the code that will make that test pass. Rather than a lack of knowledge about this practice, it is a lack of fluency that prevents many smart and well-intentioned programmers from practicing TDD in their work. Llewellyn Falco discusses ways you or your developers can build those skills and gain proficiency with TDD. Learn how TDD improves code design and the specifications needed to write good code. Experience the speed improvement that constant feedback creates while enjoying the safety and confidence you get from automated regression testing.

Many large software development organizations, which have discovered that they must become more agile to compete, frequently ask Dan Rawsthorne, "What does 'big' scrum look like?" Because no two organizations are alike, this simple question does not have a simple answer. There are, however, some common patterns that emerge in organizations that have implemented "big" scrum. Dan Rawsthorne presents the Product Owner Team pattern that allows the organization to handle agility up and down its hierarchy. Dan discusses cross-cutting teams that handle issues the formal hierarchy can’t properly address-for example, architecture and usability teams. He recommends creating an Integration and Evaluation (I&E) team to provide a natural home for test specialists to perform usability testing, pre-release validation, and performance testing.

For story estimating and tracking, Ken Pugh finds the same issues seem to crop up on many teams-whether a story is too big, too small, or just right; how best to track stories; the definition of “done” for a story; and what should be represented as stories, as tasks, or as issues. Using real-world examples, Ken shows you how to estimate story size and how to use acceptance tests to divide stories into right-sized chunks that benefit both customers and developers. He demonstrates approaches for tracking progress-internally for the team and externally for customers and management. Learn how to capture actual effort, and when and why you need to compare it to estimates. He also describes how to use acceptance tests to define the doneness of a story. Finally, learn how to estimate the return-on-investment for stories using a combination of business value and effort estimates.

Nationwide Insurance, one of the largest insurance companies in the United States, is the home of a next generation application development lifecycle fusing a lean software development framework with agile principles and techniques within a CMMI®-compliant methodology. Dustin Potts shares how Nationwide has leveraged the scalability of lean, the flexibility of agile, and the discipline of CMMI® to create a powerful enterprise solution for software development. He describes their Scrum and XP practices along with lean tools they employ such as kaizen, A3 thinking, and value stream mapping. Nationwide’s framework supports scalability, leading to problem solving and continuous improvement across dozens of teams. With its lean-agile practices, teams can confidently promise to deliver on-time every time, within budget, and with few defects.