Articles

The Space Shuttle Challenger launch Prevent Disaster by Righting Cultural Dysfunction on Your Team

The space shuttles Challenger and Columbia were two of NASA's biggest disasters. Investigations into these accidents discovered the engineering issues responsible, but management practices and cultural barriers also were found to be contributing factors. Does your organization have a healthy culture that lets you safely voice concerns? It could help you prevent tragedy.

Payson Hall's picture Payson Hall
caution sign Proactively Planning for Risks to Your Agile Project

Being aware of risk is good project management common sense. But to address risk quickly and effectively when you encounter it, the best method is to establish clear, agreed-upon, communicated responses to risk before it even happens. Dave Browett suggests some tactics to mitigate and confront risk you can use with your team.

Dave Browett's picture Dave Browett
Agile Can Help With Risk Management How Using Agile Can Help with Risk Management

Agile methods are one way to use iterations and frequent feedback to manage risk. Getting feedback early so that you can make corrections or change expectations isn’t a new idea, but implementing a process that can give you both this feedback and the tools you need to make corrections is difficult for a number of reasons.

Steve Berczuk's picture Steve Berczuk
Building a Backlog for Legacy System Changes

Kent McDonald writes that teams often assume that they cannot split their changes into small stories because the resulting stories would not provide value. What they fail to realize is that they can split these bigger changes into smaller changes and gain value by showing their stakeholders, getting feedback, and incorporating that feedback in their continued development.

Kent J. McDonald's picture Kent J. McDonald
Secrets About IT Projects Dear Customer: The Truth about IT Projects

In this personal and direct letter to customers, Allan Kelly pulls no punches and explains why IT projects don't always pan out for all of the parties involved.

Allan Kelly's picture Allan Kelly
I’ve Got Your Back

Having similar motivations and processes may help to establish a team, but you and your coworkers won’t be the best teammates you can be until you also have each other’s back. Here, Johanna Rothman and Gil Broza describe valuable approaches to whole-team support, including banking trust and building shared responsibility.

Johanna Rothman's picture Johanna Rothman Gil Broza
Thoughts from Mid-Project

My team is in the middle of one of the hardest projects—we call them "themes"—we’ve ever tackled. We’re a high-functioning agile team that has helped our company grow and succeed over several years now—we “went agile” in 2003. Here’s one thing I know for sure: No matter how many problems you solve, new challenges will pop up.

Lisa Crispin's picture Lisa Crispin
Is Your Agile Audit and Compliance Process Really Agile?

In a previous column, George Schlitz proposed that process improvements, such as agile, require organizations to change process rules. Now George continues his review of agile in regards to compliance and auditing practices. What he's found is that changes to compliance and auditing rules may appear compatible, but the implementation process usually remains unchanged and conflicts with agile practices.

George Schlitz's picture George Schlitz
Fixing the Quick Fix

Demands on businesses these days tend to make speed a priority—often at the expense of other areas. When it comes to correcting a problem in your organization, you should make sure you are, in fact, fixing the problem and not just a symptom. In this article, Esther Derby takes a look at the issue of the quick fix and offers some tips on how to get to the heart of the problem.

Esther Derby's picture Esther Derby
How Agile Practices Reduce Requirements Risks

Requirements risks are among the most insidious risks threatening software projects. Whether it is having unclear requirements, lack of customer involvement in requirements development, or defective requirements, these troubles are a major culprit in projects that go awry. As requirements expert and agile coach Ellen Gottesdiener explains, agile practice can go a long way in mitigating those risks.

Ellen Gottesdiener's picture Ellen Gottesdiener

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