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If Your Build Fails and No One is Around to Hear It, Does It Make a Sound?[article] Continuous Integration build tools are great: they help us ensure our product works after every commit, keep historical data and metrics, build our product for all target environments, and do many more useful things. But there's one key aspect that often gets overlooked: They're fun. |
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Tips and Advice - Retrospectives[article]
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Tips and Advice - Retrospectives |
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Distributed Agile Day to Day[article] "Distributed" isn't a word that always has appeared favorably in works about agile methodology. After all, the proximity of agile team members while working is highly regarded. In this article, an excerpt of which originally appeared in the May 2009 Iterations eNewsletter, Chris McMahon takes a look at how "agile" and "distributed" can work together successfully. |
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Moving into the role of Scrum Master - Jill Tubaugh[article]
Podcast
Moving into the role of Scrum Master - Jill Tubaugh |
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Crash Course in Proficient Presenting[magazine] Ben has to make a presentation at the next all-hands meeting. It'll be his very first presentation, and just thinking about it has sent him into a panic. Fortunately, he has the support of an experienced speaker and coach who offers advice and encouragement to help him become a proficient, panic-free presenter. |
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Issues about Metrics about Bugs[magazine] Managers often use metrics to help make decisions about the state of the product or the quality of the work done by the test group. Yet, measurements derived from bug counts can be highly misleading because a "bug" isn't a tangible, countable thing; it's a label for some aspect of some relationship between some person and some product, and it's influenced by when and how we count ... and who is doing the counting. |
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GUT Instinct[magazine] Whether or not a unit test is considered good is not simply about what it tests: It is also very much about "how" it tests. Is the test readable and maintainable? Does it define the expected behavior or merely assume it? To be sustainable, the style of a unit test is just as important as the style of any other code. Perhaps a little surprisingly, the most commonly favored test partitioning style does not meet these expectations. |
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Three Strategies for Task Allocation[article] Iteration and release planning are keys to successful agile projects, but overall have a relatively small impact on a developer's day-to-day life, compared to the daily planning that takes place each morning. The strategy a team uses to sign up for work has significant implications for what a developer's day will look like, impacts his work style and habits, and ultimately can significantly impact the overall success of the iteration. Unfortunately, the agile community gives relatively little guidance in this area. In this article, I will share my experiences with three strategies for task allocation, drawn from several typical agile projects with two to three week iterations. |
Robert Williams
May 12, 2009 |
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Putting the Kart before the Horse?[magazine] Go-karting is where most of the current Formula One racing drivers first learned the basics of race-craft. Antony Marcano, a former kart racer himself, recounts a father-and-son racing experience that helps him explain what goes wrong for many organizations that adopt Scrum as their first attempt to "go agile." |
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Time to Let Go of Obsolete Jobs[magazine] Town crier, elevator operator, gas lamp lighter, carbon paper distributor, telegraph operator—you probably haven't seen many help wanted ads for these occupations lately. Why? Because these occupations are gone—obsolete, unnecessary, outdated. We just don't need them anymore. When new paradigms are created, new jobs are often created with them. And sometimes, existing jobs are no longer relevant. |
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What to Expect When You're Automating Testing[magazine] After learning the basics of testing frameworks, writing tests for your existing codebase can be a daunting challenge. Where should you start testing, and what kind of tests will be the most effective? Learn how to kick-start your testing and some solutions to problems teams frequently encounter. |
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Virtual Realities: Best Practices and Common Pitfalls of Adopting Virtual Lab Automation[magazine] Virtual Lab Automation (VLA) is a ground-breaking technology that promises quantifiable benefits for application development and test organizations, including faster lab deployment, less manual setup work, greater resource flexibility and utilization, and easier reproduction of defects. In this article, Skytap's Ian Knox discusses the best practices and common pitfalls associated with adopting a VLA solution. In addition, he outlines the steps to evaluate a virtualization solution for your test organization and provides further resources to help you get started. |
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Scrum: Using High-impact Teamwork to Tackle Software Development Projects[magazine] For organizations trying to do more with less in the current economy, knowing where to turn for help can be a big question mark. But as Laszlo Szalvay of Danube explains, Scrum is one possible solution. This agile method of project management is quickly transforming the way software is developed by bringing teams together through frequent communication and high-impact collaboration, resulting in increased productivity and an ability to build a better product faster. |
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The Business Case for Agility[article] Too many technology projects fail to deliver the promised value, and some do not deliver at all. Traditional project management methods when applied to software initiatives continue to frustrate financial professionals and offer poor risk mitigation. In the current economic environment, businesses are forced to reduce their capital budgets and cannot afford to make significant investments without more certainty of appropriate return. |
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Feasibility: is this project viable?[article] (This is a Book Excerpt from "Becoming Agile" by Greg Smith and Ahmed Sidky) Our project backlogs are full of great ideas. In some cases, we get so excited about a great idea that we disregard all the challenges and jump right in to start development. Sometimes we succeed, and sometimes we have to abort. Many companies struggle when trying to validate a project’s value. Some companies initialize a project without knowing if it’s viable; other companies scrutinize the value of a project for months before making a decision. There are issues with both approaches. |
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