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Timing Matters in Managing Change Implementing change can be a colossal challenge. People tend to prefer what's familiar, safe, and predictable to that which is new, unfamiliar, uncertain, confusing, or potentially risky. But the timing of a change effort can influence how readily people accept the change and adjust to it.
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Rocks into Gold: Part 1 This short book, written by Clarke Ching, is a "biztech" parable for software developers who want to survive—and then thrive—through the credit crunch. We have republished the book in a four-part series. In part one, we meet the main characters who have just found out that their jobs are on the line after discovering their major client's business is failing. Follow the story as our characters fight to keep their jobs by implementing creative business ideas and management skills taken from agile development.
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ScrumBut: Failure to Deliver In this article, Michele Sliger discusses one of the more common "ScrumBut" practices that, while allowing teams to say "We suck less," isn't really in keeping with intended Scrum practices. This ScrumBut practice is the persistent failure of the team to complete the agreed-upon features in the iteration or sprint.
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Distributed Agile Day to Day "Distributed" isn't a word that always has appeared favorably in works about agile methodology. After all, the proximity of agile team members while working is highly regarded. In this article, an excerpt of which originally appeared in the May 2009 Iterations eNewsletter, Chris McMahon takes a look at how "agile" and "distributed" can work together successfully.
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Three Strategies for Task Allocation Iteration and release planning are keys to successful agile projects, but overall have a relatively small impact on a developer's day-to-day life, compared to the daily planning that takes place each morning. The strategy a team uses to sign up for work has significant implications for what a developer's day will look like, impacts his work style and habits, and ultimately can significantly impact the overall success of the iteration. Unfortunately, the agile community gives relatively little guidance in this area. In this article, I will share my experiences with three strategies for task allocation, drawn from several typical agile projects with two to three week iterations.
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A Second Look at "Requirements Come Second" My article, "Requirements Come Second," in a recent issue of Agile Journal caused something of a fuss. The piece was picked up by several more sites and was widely commented on - both on websites and in my inbox. I'm not entirely surprised by this reaction, I've been discussing this research for a year or so now and often find it surprises people. Given this level of interest it is worth looking at how people responded. It is also worth restating the key message: Requirements are an essential part of maximizing business value, but when an organization is struggling with effectiveness it is best to start change by improving delivery.
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Feature Injection: Part One We are leaving the "last responsible moment" for a while. This month we start a discussion of Feature Injection, an analysis process based on real options and Kolb's circle of learning. The first episode ( of five ) introduces the "Information Arrival Processes.
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Agile in the Downturn The current economic downturn is a new test for Agile, until now Agile has been promoted in a growing economy. Proponents of Agile have emphasized how it improve competitive advantage and helps a company out-compete its rivals.
Now companies are concerned with simple survival. Today's managers are concerned with cutting costs, improving cashflow and managing without credit. Organizational change and process improvement are not top of the agenda. Promoting Agile in this environment is something new.
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Agile Development Infrastructure—on Premises or in the Cloud? How do companies face the challenge of setting up their infrastructure when they've just started agile development? One option is to move your infrastructure to the cloud. In this article, we help you decide what's the best fit for your team and project by addressing this issue head on.
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Ending Right Jeff Patton has been building software using the agile approach for a while now. His observations of how others are implementing agile development fall short of complete, but he has noticed is that the adoption breaks down during the evaluation phase. In this column, Jeff goes through the agile development process and offers guidance on the correct way of conducting an agile evaluation during this phase in the software development lifecycle.
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