agile
Articles
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Infrastructure Envisioning I have seen many Agile projects, particularly those focused on brand-new product lines, struggle with getting their infrastructure up and running. Much of the reason is the time and effort that is needed to get infrastructure established far exceeds the time it takes to start development using an Agile method, effectively the first iteration. Typically the approach used to establish infrastructure is ad hoc and often not always aligned with the needs of the project. Therefore, a task must be identified to establish infrastructure. The question then is, how to best approach the establishment of infrastructure for a project using Agile methods? We do not want to build excessive infrastructure that may constrain us in the future yet we want to establish enough to keep us stable and productive.
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Unsolvable Conflict on Agile Teams Do you ever get the feeling that some conflict just can't be solved? The team members in conflict address the issue, it seems to go away but then it comes back. Maybe all dressed up in a new situation or with a different level of intensity, but the conflict is somehow familiar and you know that it has undoubtedly returned. If the team uses humor as a stress-reliever, you may even hear the conflict turned into a sarcastic half-joke, "OK team, just to put you on notice. Julie hates me again." Sounds almost like a marriage, doesn't it? |
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How Agile Practices Address Five Team Dysfunctions Teamwork, no matter the intentions at the start of any agile project, can be derailed by even the smallest factors. Learn how to identify the five dysfunctions of a team so that your team can address them and avoid letting them grind your production to a halt. |
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Accelerating Agile Development through Software Reuse One of the main attractions of agile methods over traditional heavyweight approaches to software engineering is their ability to accelerate the software development process. By minimizing superfluous activities and artifacts such as models and documentation and focusing developers' efforts on coding, agile methods increase productivity and reduce overall development time. |
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Transitioning from Analysis to Design The step between specifying requirements to working on a system design can be tricky. Fortunately, the basis on which the step is made can be calculated. Paul Reed thoroughly explains how the transition should progress and offers some instructions on how to move properly through this phase. |
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Little Scrum Pigs and the Big, Bad Wolf While continuing to grow, the state of agile adoption seems to be plucked straight out of an Ayn Rand novel, where the acceptance of mediocrity has infected the masses like a plague. Half-hearted adoptions have led to half-hearted results (as in "we suck less") that in turn are leaving these organizations straddling a tipping point from which they more often than not slide backwards, rather than making the push over the top to high performance and exponential growth in ROI. |
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Simple Strategies to Keep Quality Visible In most projects, testers are the keepers of quality. Sharing the vision of quality with the entire team helps everyone involved in a project play a more active role in determining the state of quality in a product. In this column, Jeff Patton shares several innovative ideas he's seen in practice lately that have helped an entire team own up to the quality of its software. |
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Getting Started with Agile SCM A prerequisite to any of the Agile SCM practices, such as integration build, private build, unit tests, and the like, is being able to set up a developer’s private workspace with the right code and tools so that you can code, build and test. In this article, we discuss the important, and often overlooked process of creating a development workspace, which is to say, getting started. |
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The Invisible Project Manager An Exercise in Agile Facilitation A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves. Lao Tzu, Chinese philosopher (604 BC - 531 BC). The project manager leads. The project manager directs. The project manager plans. The project manager manages. These are the expectations set upon, and sought out by those that take on the responsibility for delivering software projects to the Business. While unquestionably a critical role in the overall delivery mechanism, a project manager who becomes the central figure in the team can unnecessarily place the team in a position of risk. In fact, the project manager should approach the process with a less intrusive style, facilitating the team towards success from within and figuring out ways to develop systems that will survive any one person, themselves included. |
Mack Adams
November 12, 2008 |
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Multitasking Is Evil Multitasking is often seen as a desirable skill—you can buy books or pay to attend courses that will teach you how to do it—but it is a surprisingly debilitating idea. |
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