The portions of projects that are not yet complete occur in the future. Since the future is an uncertain place, there will always be surprises. Some surprises are so obvious that they should hardly be called surprises at all. This is the kind of surprise that project management helps to avoid.

We all know writing test cases is an integral part of the testing activity. In order to write good test cases, we must first understand what a test case is and why we need to write test cases. Can’t we live without writing test cases?

Having similar motivations and processes may help to establish a team, but you and your coworkers won’t be the best teammates you can be until you also have each other’s back. Here, Johanna Rothman and Gil Broza describe valuable approaches to whole-team support, including banking trust and building shared responsibility.

Welcome to the second article in this two part series. Last month we looked at some of the problems that are commonly associated with Agile Methods when they are viewed in the context of process rigor. We saw that a reconciliation between emergent and prescriptive disciplines can be achieved via a model of orthogonal standards and frameworks. We contrasted that model with the more commonly assumed “continuum” hypothesis, which locates predictive and emergent processes at opposite ends of a methodological spectrum.

This month we will explore in more detail the remedial, standards-based approach adopted by Codeworks DEV. We’ll show how a specialised, tool-supported, configurable toolset can be used to leverage Agile Methods across multiple PRINCE2 projects at both delivery and programme levels.