The Latest

Conquering the Challenges of Transforming to Agile Tales from the Trenches: Conquering the Challenges of Transforming to Agile[article]

There is a lot of hard work and recalibration needed to adopt an agile approach. Just as one does not simply walk into Mordor, you also cannot simply decide to be agile. In this article, Alison Jacques describes her IT department’s experience transforming to agile and shares some of the lessons learned and tools she’s adopted to ensure continued success.

Alison Jacques's picture Alison Jacques
Implement Agile without Breaking the Bank Ways to Implement Agile without Breaking the Bank [article]

James Sullivan explains popular agile frameworks and outlines their costs and benefits. If you're worried that you are at a place where you cannot make the sort of investments that these agile frameworks require, James is here to discuss foundational agile practices that can provide you key benefits without the costs associated with these kinds of agile brands.

James Sullivan
ScrumMaster: A Role or a Title? ScrumMaster: A Role or a Title?[article]

The ScrumMaster is the most controversial position in agile. Is a ScrumMaster a natural leader within the team or is the role a profession in itself? Here, Mariya Breyter takes a look at what a ScrumMaster actually does and writes that it is a state of mind based on a strong commitment to agile values and a dedication to the team and its success.

Mariya Breyter's picture Mariya Breyter
Positive Psychology Can Help Your Organization How Positive Psychology Can Help Your Organization[article]

Positive psychology is providing a new focus on effective ways to ensure that teams exhibit the right behaviors in a group or organizational setting. Closely related to many agile and lean concepts, these emerging practices are helping teams to improve communication, collaborate, and emerge as highly effective groups. Leslie Sachs explains what positive psychology is all about and how to start using these practices in your organization.

Leslie  Sachs's picture Leslie Sachs
Don’t Be Fooled Into Thinking Agile Means No Documentation Don’t Be Fooled Into Thinking Agile Means No Documentation[article]

This is a common misconception of those inexperienced with agile, who choose this methodology on the basis of thinking that their project can be delivered more quickly and easily by avoiding documentation. But agile is not an excuse for skipping documentation. While some information will always need to be captured in written words, there are techniques that can be used to reduce documentation but will still give the customers what they want.

Leanne Howard's picture Leanne Howard
ADC-BSC EAST 2013 Keynote: Connecting with Customers[presentation]
Slideshow

Even today, to the detriment of agile success, most organizational cultures remain delivery date-driven—resulting in delivery teams that are not focused on creating value for the customer. So how can we redirect stakeholders, the business, and the project team to concentrate on delivering...

Pollyanna Pixton, Accelinnova
ADC-BSC EAST 2013 Keynote: Reading the Tea Leaves: Predicting a Project’s Future[presentation]
Slideshow

Is a project’s fate preordained? Does a project’s past suggest its likely future? Can anything be done to influence that future when the current signs aren’t promising? Payson Hall has participated in and reviewed many projects during his thirty-year career in software development.

Payson Hall, Catalysis Group Inc.
ADC-BSC EAST 2013 Keynote: Worse Is Better—For Better or for Worse[presentation]
Slideshow

More than two decades ago, Richard P. Gabriel proposed the idea that “Worse Is Better” to explain why some things that are designed to be pure and perfect are eclipsed by solutions that are compromised and imperfect. This is not simply an observation that things should be better but are...

Kevlin Henney, Independent Consultant
The Mindset of Managing Uncertainty: The Key to Agile Success[presentation]
Slideshow

The speed of global change and the advancement of technology will continue to increase the uncertainty in our work. Those with an Agile Mindset can manage uncertainty through continuous value-based discovery; those with a Fixed Mindset try to “freeze” things early to decrease uncertainty.

Ahmed Sidky, SCG Inc.
Program Management: Collaborating across the Organization[presentation]
Slideshow

To be most effective when managing a large program, the component projects should limit their batch size, create networks of people, and report status in a way that works for the entire program. For those of you who are not quite ready for agile, Johanna Rothman explains how to use staged...

Johanna Rothman, Rothman Consulting Group Inc.
Better Software Conference East 2013: Data Collection and Analysis for Better Requirements[presentation]
Slideshow

According to studies, 64 percent of features in systems are rarely—or never—used. How does this happen? Today, the work of eliciting the customers' true needs, which often remains elusive, can be enhanced using data-driven requirements techniques. Brandon Carlson describes why traditional...

Brandon Carlson, Lean TECHniques, Inc.
Agile Development Conference East 2013: The Kanban Pizza Game: Maximize Profit by Managing Flow[presentation]
Slideshow

The Kanban Pizza Game is a hands-on simulation designed to teach the core elements of a kanban system—visualize the workflow, limit your work-in-process (WIP), manage flow, make process policies explicit, and improve collaboratively. Join Brad Swanson as the proprietor of your very own...

Brad Swanson, agile42
Transforming the Large Organization[presentation]
Slideshow

Transforming software development across geographic locations in a large company is difficult. But Nationwide Insurance found a way to successfully implement more than forty agile teams in multiple locations around the United States using their internal Application Development Center. 

Sara McClintock, Nationwide
Growing a Learning Organization from the Bottom Up[presentation]
Slideshow

Learning organizations seem like a great idea to just about everyone. But how do you actually create them? In many organizations, attempting to promote learning can seem daunting at best and impossible at worst—especially when you don't feel particularly empowered to do so.

Matt Barcomb, odbox
Implementing DevOps and Making It Stick[presentation]
Slideshow

If you’ve ever been involved in promoting cultural change within an organization, you may have experienced something even more disheartening than flat-out rejection—a full rollback of hard-won cultural change followed by a decade-long resentment of anyone remotely associated with the...

Alex Papadimoulis , Inedo

Pages

AgileConnection is a TechWell community.

Through conferences, training, consulting, and online resources, TechWell helps you develop and deliver great software every day.