Branching can be an effective solution for managing change, enabling parallel development and improved productivity. But, working on a branch is a distraction and can decrease agility, productivity, and code robustness. Learn when the value of working on a branch outweighs the cost.

If you asked anyone on my team what agile practice is most responsible for our success over the past eight years, I bet they'd say retrospectives. But I wonder if it's not so much the retrospectives themselves, as the "small experiments" (to borrow Linda Rising's term) we perform to try to address our problem areas.

It is sensible to want to avoid the head-butting sort of competition—that is, arguing for the sake of arguing. But, differing opinions and styles can be a good thing. Competitive forces have driven markets, innovation, and civilization for millennia. Here, Jurgen Appelo takes a look at some of the various approaches to agile development and what they bring to the table.

Often when we refactor, we look at local areas of code. If we take a wider view, using information from our version control systems, we can get a better sense of the effects of our refactoring efforts.