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Four Frequent Feedback-Gathering Flaws

Giving your customers the opportunity to provide feedback is great, but only if you don't fall into one of the four traps that Naomi Karten describes in this article. Let your customers know that not only do you want their feedback, but that you'll actually use the important info they give you.

Naomi Karten's picture Naomi Karten
Large-Scale Distributed Agile Teams – Creating, Sizing, Prioritizing and Grooming the Product Backlog

Teams that work in large-scale, complex agile environments are often distributed. As a result, it is almost impossible to discuss distributed agile development without discussing the implications of working at scale. In this article, we will cover the following topics to help distributed, large-scale teams create their initial product backlog at the start of a project:

TechWell Contributor's picture TechWell Contributor
How to Align Your Team with the Scrum Model

A successful Scrum implementation requires proper understanding of Scrum processes within team and within all project stakeholders. Even after proper training and certification (CSM/CSPO) it’s really tough to achieve the success as intended. There is one common and important problem which has always been overlooked: the alignment of current team with Scrum the model. Because, vanilla-Scrum only describe what the role does in the process.

Vinay Krishna
Agile Adoption Roadmap

There continues to be a lot of debate on whether Agile is mainstream. According to a Forrester report published in early 2010, while widespread “Agile” use of the iterative software development processes is found, " teams are not adopting scrum, extreme programming, or another specific Agile approach, but are embracing agile as an ethos or philosophy and cherry-picking the best bits from many different process models to develop a formula unique to their own situation." However, the largest category in the survey – and the one that is the most telling is that 30.6% of the respondents said they do not use a formal process methodology. Add to this my own experience implementing Agile, reading the latest Agile literature (e.g., articles, research, books, etc.), and discussing Agile (and Agile implementations) with people across numerous companies in North America, Europe, and Asia, and what this indicates to me is that:

Mario  Moreira's picture Mario Moreira
Agile is the Mainstream. So What? The Quest for Quality

We have seen software development evolve from ad hoc to CMMI, to Unified Process, to Agile, to Lean, to what next. Why the evolution? Agile has become the mainstream software development method today. So what? What have we been missing? What are we searching for? In my opinion, it is the quest and delivery of a high quality product. We should strive for quality being non-negotiable. Build something without an emphasis on quality and you are building on a poor foundation that will eventually lead to collapse and result in a final product with little to no commercial or operational value.

TechWell Contributor's picture TechWell Contributor
branching strategies chart End-of-Release Branching Strategies

This two-part article explores branching strategies—development tactics that allow teams to work concurrently on different features and maintain the relationship between them. In part one, Steve Berczuk explains what branches are, common types of them, and the tradeoffs between branching styles.

Steve Berczuk's picture Steve Berczuk
Distributed Multi-Source Development

What are leading development organizations doing to increase innovation, agility and embrace new technologies? The answer: Distributed multi-source development

Large software projects that are late. Missed schedules. Budget over-runs.

These aren’t pleasant challenges to manage, yet they are hallmarks of traditional waterfall software development methodologies. This common approach to creating software is yielding to two powerful approaches to development: distributed development using Agile methodologies, and multi-source development, combining closed source with free and open source components.

TechWell Contributor's picture TechWell Contributor
Warning: No News is Not Always Good News

When your customers aren't complaining about the services you provide, it's easy to assume you have happy customers. But that could be a serious mistake. In this week's column, Naomi Karten describes what happened in two organizations that misinterpreted the absence of customer complaints.

Naomi Karten's picture Naomi Karten
Cloud-Driven Development

Agile methodologies aren't the only way to empower your team; utilizing cloud-driven development is another great way to improve processes throughout the development lifecycle. Testing can be done earlier, and costs can be saved, by turing toward the cloud on your next project.

TechWell Contributor's picture TechWell Contributor
The Beauty of Agile in the Cloud

As compared to other development methods, agile is clear, straightforward, and rewarding for all of those who are involved in the process. Most of you know this already—that’s why you’re here! Clearly, a successful transition to agile requires a strong organizational commitment and a number of management and development changes. With that in mind, the white-hot movement to this trend over the past year continues to amaze me. In striking parallel, the industry has seen this same sort of resonance around the trend to the “cloud”—secure anywhere access by distributed teams to a centralized set of services and compute resources that span the complete lifecycle of the development and deployment process.

Bill Portelli

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