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Articles

For Project Managers, Agile Is About Asking a Different Question

Daryl Kulak explains that if we don't ask the right question at the beginning of the project, then no matter how well we answer, it won't be helpful. Perhaps the biggest difference between agile and waterfall is the question being asked. The scope of the project and any judgments of progress are related to this very fundamental question.

Daryl  Kulak's picture Daryl Kulak
whiteboard Experimenting: The Way Forward for Agile Development Teams

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.

Lisa Crispin's picture Lisa Crispin
From Red Tape to No Tape: Maximizing Agile in Your Organization

Companies using agile development must recognize that they won’t reap the benefits of agile without the correct organizational philosophy. Companies often don’t even realize that they are following a path that can limit agile adoption. Here, Charles Suscheck describes two organizational philosophies—one that is adverse to successful agile adoption and one that facilitates the agile processes.

Charles Suscheck's picture Charles Suscheck
Mission Possible: ScrumMaster and Technical Contributor

Teams trying out Scrum might not be able to justify a full-time ScrumMaster to the organization, so the role is filled by a contributor on the team. This can be a challenge and, if done incorrectly, a problem. Learn some potential issues to be aware of and how to make the hybrid role work.

Steve Berczuk's picture Steve Berczuk
Are You Leading a Tribe?

In today's organizations, everyone is expected to lead. If you've been waiting for a leadership role to come to you, it might be time to step up and seek out your opportunity to be a leader. Look around you: Self-proclaimed leaders are receiving interesting projects, building enviable careers, and being promoted. In this article, we'll take a look at how Seth Godin's book Tribes can provide a useful framework for leading from the ground up.

Laura Brandenburg's picture Laura Brandenburg
No Group Is a Team on Day One

Assembling a group of people and declaring them a team doesn’t make them one. Do you have the conditions necessary for the team to form? What activities have they completed to help them find an identity, their purpose, and how they’ll interact with each other?

Don Gray's picture Don Gray
How to Make People Feel (Un)Welcome

The age-old expression "you never get a second chance to make a first impression" is still true to this day. So often the way we greet people, or fail to greet them, sets an irreversible path of leaving others feel completely unwelcome, even if that wasn't the intention.

Naomi Karten's picture Naomi Karten
Test-Driven Design for the Project Manager

Many developers and testers are familiar with test-driven design (TDD), but how can managers use it to drive project implementation? In this article, John Goodpasture offers a guide to TDD design from the project manager’s perspective.

John C. Goodpasture's picture John C. Goodpasture
Mixing Roles in Scrum

We put a lot of emphasis on being Renaissance workers, able to step comfortably from one job role to the next. But, as Mitch Lacey describes here, not all roles play nicely with each other, and trying to combine them may lead to disaster.

Mitch Lacey's picture Mitch Lacey
Building a Competitive Software Capability: Creative Destruction

In this excerpt from Leadership, Teamwork, and Trust: Building a Competitive Software Capability, Watts Humphrey and James Over explain why these changes must be a high priority for software companies and other organizations for whom knowledge is a valuable asset.

Watts S. Humphrey James W. Over

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