The Latest
Agile in the Enterprise: How Tools and Processes Enable Interactions[article] Agile development approaches are moving into the mainstream. They are no longer relegated to small co-located teams. Large application development organizations in and outside of IT are betting their businesses on globally distributed teams using agile methods to create and maintain their products. In these organizations, the Agile Manifesto's principal to value individuals and interactions over process and tools is impossible to realize. The complexity created by scale cannot be managed without judicious use of both process and tools. |
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High Performance Agile Teams: An Overview of Collaboration[article] Any team benefits from being highly collaborative. This is especially true in agile development, where the techniques for rapidly building quality software rely on communication and relationships over documentation and process formality. Yet the agile community doesn't have a common definition for what “collaboration” is |
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The Renaissance of Paper for Agile Software Development[article] Fast cars, flat-screen television, high definition gaming consoles, and dual core processor equipped laptops: the amenities of modern technology rule us. Computers are an integral part of our lifestyle and work-life, and many people define themselves by their choice of tools to complete tasks. Those interested in implementing agile frameworks are no exception, often voting to use electronic tools before exploring alternatives. This article is meant for the open-minded, ready-to-explorer surrogate who is not afraid of being a low-tech hippie in times of high-tech espresso machines. |
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Community Developed Builds for the Agile Developer[article] Agile development is a process methodology where, at its core, is the ability for developers to share and test changes in software as rapidly as possible in an efficient but disciplined approach. The Continuous Build process is based on manual scripting and therefore is highly redundant and non-adaptive. Continuous Builds that rely on redundant scripts become road blocks for agile teams when attempting to move quickly from code to deployment. Agile developers must recognize the problems of manual scripting and begin moving toward a non-redundant Community Developed approach to managing the Continuous Build. |
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Fast, Automatic Builds: the Agile Heartbeat[article] I think that the person most affected by the introduction of agile or extreme programming techniques is not the software or quality assurance engineer, but the build manager. Agile techniques are a throwback to the age when developers were able to work on small projects in small teams. Each developer once again concentrates on small building blocks of code and integrates regularly with other developers to ensure that the overall software project is progressing. For developers, agile techniques are a natural fit because they reflect how developers like to work best: on small, manageable pieces of code with regular feedback. However, even though developers are working on small sections of code, their overall projects are now large and continually growing. And it's the large body of code that the build manager is expected to work with, not the manageable chunks. While daunting, this precipitous increase in builds can be managed by carefully implementing continuous integration and making fast, automatic builds the quot;heartbeatquot; of your agile development. |
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Breaking the Major Release Habit: Introduction to the Hyper Agile Methodology[article] Getting Started with Agile Development Damon Poole, AccuRev Founder and CTO, discusses the keys to, and challenges of, Agile development. |
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What's Your Project Vision?[article] Clarify the fuzzy front end of project planning by focusing on the overall vision. In this column, Johanna Rothman says clear project vision helps everyone involved in the project move forward better and more smoothly than a detailed project schedule. She also explains how to write succinct project visions in three simple steps. |
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Agile 2006 - J.B. Rainsberger - XP Day, A Fire Alarm and Buffalo Jerky[article]
Podcast
Joe Rainsberger, the publisher of JUnit Recipes, talks about his work with XP Day around the globe. |
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Rising Above the 7 Percent Rule[magazine] Afraid of what you're missing by testing only 7 percent of your code? Forget your formal code inspections; Jason Cohen enlightens us on the merits of bringing lightweight code inspection to your organization. |
Jason Cohen
March 27, 2007 |
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Evidence for Evolution[magazine] What important lessons can we learn from the evolution of the programming language Lisp? Brian Marick recounts the environment that enabled its creation and recommends we incorporate some of the Lisper practices into our own projects. |
Brian Marick
March 27, 2007 |
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Know What's at Stake[magazine] Everyone knows the importance of well-defined functional requirements. We want our products to work, don't we? But how many of us are paying as much attention to defining our non-functional requirements? In this historically focused feature, we learn from past mistakes the potentially disastrous results of inadequately tested NFRs. |
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PMBOK to Agile[magazine] Extreme Programming has increased in popularity in recent years, but shifting your organization away from the Project Management Body of Knowledge to agile methodologies can be a real challenge. David Christiansen has outlined three common obstacles to incorporating agile and offers ways to overcome them. |
David Christiansen
March 27, 2007 |
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The Right Stuff: Four Small Steps for Testers One Giant Leap for Risk Mitigation[magazine] In the countdown to a product release, leaving load testing for last is a risky maneuver. In this month's cover story, Rex Black and Barton Layne present a case study of a project on which they adhered to a four-step strategy. By following these four steps, they were able to alleviate those nasty, end-of-project performance surprises. |
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Seasons of Software Development[magazine] In this installment of Management Chronicles, Peter Clark introduces us to a programmer who is trying unsuccessfully to complete a project mired in underestimation. Find out what you can do to keep your estimates in the free and clear. |
Peter Clark
March 27, 2007 |
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The Roof Is Going to Go[magazine] As one poor German tourist can attest, idioms don't translate. But Chuck Allison thinks programmers should become "native speakers" of the programming languages they use. This includes using and understanding them, idioms and all. |