Looks Do Matter In a previous article published on this site, "Testing the Bold and the Beautiful" (May 2001), the author received many thoughtful comments and questions about the importance of aesthetics in software. This paper was inspired in part from those questions. It clarifies the difference between aesthetic testing and usability testing. The paper makes the business case for "beauty testing" and argues that an ugly UI can undermine the bottom line. It offers methods and a survey-template for successful aesthetic testing. The paper concludes with a list of "Facts and Myths, Dos and Don'ts." |
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The Three C's of Distributed Scrum Teams: Communications, Communications, Communications The 3C's of a great Scrum meeting comes down to communication, communication, and communication. This becomes more pronounced as a team becomes distributed. Distribution can be on the other side of the floor or the other side of the globe. Balance in communications methods is the key |
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Transitioning to Agile in Onshore-Offshore Distributed Teams Whether you are concerned that your job is going to be shipped to India or feeling safe that the outsourcing craze is calming down, the reality remains that we live in a global economy and more and more companies are beginning to explore ways to creating software in distributed and multicultural environments. The Web and the open source movement have demonstrated that it is not only possible to create quality software in a highly distributed and decentralized manner, but also that it "makes business sense" to do so. This article presents a pragmatic framework for introducing Agile practices and tools to onshore-offshore distributed teams. |
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Case Studies On Bringing Agility to Offshore Software Development In order to stay competitive, IT companies integrate offshoring and outsourcing in their corporate strategies. When these strategies are implemented it is often found that offshoring is full of challenges and much more difficult than expected. This article suggests that the challenges of offshore software development can be met by using agile values, principles, and practices. First the article will present some of the challenges in offshore development, then it will investigate how agile principles and practices have helped offshore development in becoming more competitive by eliminating the challenges usually found in traditional offshore development. However due to the added distance it was found that agile development will run into new challenges. Some challenges, such as time zones, are hard to meet and will impede direct agile communication. |
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Simple Design and Testing Conference 2006 - Ron Jeffries and Chet Hendrickson Ron Jeffries and Chet Hendrickson join Bob Payne in this podcast recorded at the 2006 Simple Design and Testing Conference. We invite you to take a listen to their impression of the conference as a whole, and the current state of software development and testing. |
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Smart Shore In this last installment of Jochen Kreb's three-part series, he lists issues related to most offshore development projects and gives some ideas of how to implement a different shore model, which Jochen calls the smart-shore approach. |
Jochen Krebs
January 23, 2007 |
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Skiing, Heart Attacks, and Software Development When a man suffered a cardiac arrest on a ski slope, a medley of medical personnel from different countries and backgrounds mustered together to take charge of the man's health. Despite language barriers, they were successful in stabilizing the man. While this incident may seem to have little to do with software development, Clarke Ching sees that the makeshift emergency team shared specific characteristics found in all strong software development teams. In this column, he details these characteristics and how applying them can turn your team into a more successful team no matter how dissimilar individual teammates may be. |
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Agile06 - Alistair Cockburn - Crystal Methodlogies and Agility During the Agile 2006 conference, Bob Payne got the chance to sit down with Alistair Cockburn and the two recorded this podcast of their conversation. Listen in as the two discuss Alistair's own transition to an agile methodologist and his passion for writing. |
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Agile EVM: Earned Value Management the Agile Way Agile Earned Value Management (AgileEVM) offers a simple, lightweight method for integrating the benefits of traditional EVM metrics into your agile software development process without causing "drag" on team productivity. AgileEVM metrics can provide added value for project stakeholders, product and project managers, and Agile team members. In particular, AgileEVM adds a cost reporting component to the Agile toolkit that supports project decision making. |
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Blending Agility With Finely-Grained Tracking Agile methodologies enable teams and organizations to support the dynamic nature of business. Short, focused iterations are ideal for accommodating changing requirements and environments. Planning and tracking is low overhead using units like features, stories, or tasks providing high-level visibility into status. While this visibility is better than nothing, there are certainly limits in the depth and breadth of insights this provides. This article will investigate techniques for blending more finely-grained tracking with conventional agile techniques. |
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