An Enterprise Agile Journey As Borland evolved over the last 25 years, acquiring companies and shifting business strategies, the delivery organization had become a collection of teams with different cultures, processes, release cycles and levels of performance. The cost structure of the organization wasn't aligned with the strategic objectives of the company, and the teams were struggling to consistently meet delivery goals. |
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An Evolutionary Path for Agile? While doing some research for an upcoming article, some thoughts gelled about where Agile Software Development lies on its evolutionary path. I was procrastinating somewhat, and while poking around some aviation-related sites I saw an image of a jet engine used on the current crop of regional jets. |
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Software Development Screwtape Letter This is the first of many letters from Screwdisk to his protégé Virus[1]. I make no claims to the authenticity or accuracy of these letters, other than they ring true with what I have seen in the field over the last 10 years. Some of what you will read may sound a bit too familiar. It has me wondering if I have ever unknowingly been on a team with Screwdisk or Virus. I have never been able to find out who Virus and Screwdisk really are, but from what I've seen they could have been at many different organizations around the world - maybe even yours. |
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Group Coherence for Project Teams - Common Purpose In our continuing search for Hyper-Productivity, we have observed that a strong and highly adaptable shared sense of Common Purpose can increase the group's ability to execute on the project vision or enterprise strategy. Agile teams apply several methods that support this. They self-organize around a common goal agreed with the customer. This goal is most often embodied in the set of stories or tasks to be included in the next iteration. A shared definition of "done," a "living" and dynamic backlog and an involved customer all help to remove ambiguity around the goal and keep each iteration adaptable to inevitable changes. |
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A Journey into Agile - Scrum Implementation at a Mature Organization - Part 1 Midway through 2006, members of a small software development group at an engineering center for an oil field services company began having informal conversations about the nature of their work. Among other things, they pondered whether software development is an engineering discipline or a craft; and where to focus improvement efforts. These discussions sparked the interest of many on the team. They searched and came across the Agile Manifesto, which was posted in their work area. The values outlined in the manifesto appealed to the team. |
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Accelerating Agile Development through Software Reuse One of the main attractions of agile methods over traditional heavyweight approaches to software engineering is their ability to accelerate the software development process. By minimizing superfluous activities and artifacts such as models and documentation and focusing developers' efforts on coding, agile methods increase productivity and reduce overall development time. |
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Unsolvable Conflict on Agile Teams Do you ever get the feeling that some conflict just can't be solved? The team members in conflict address the issue, it seems to go away but then it comes back. Maybe all dressed up in a new situation or with a different level of intensity, but the conflict is somehow familiar and you know that it has undoubtedly returned. If the team uses humor as a stress-reliever, you may even hear the conflict turned into a sarcastic half-joke, "OK team, just to put you on notice. Julie hates me again." Sounds almost like a marriage, doesn't it? |
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How Agile Practices Address Five Team Dysfunctions Teamwork, no matter the intentions at the start of any agile project, can be derailed by even the smallest factors. Learn how to identify the five dysfunctions of a team so that your team can address them and avoid letting them grind your production to a halt. |
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A Journey into Agile - Scrum Implementation at a Mature Organization - Part 2 In November 2007, the organization held a global meeting on software practices. The participants were introduced to the lessons learned and best practices from a few projects in the company that had adopted a form of Agile methodology. With that exposure, the technology center in Houston set a goal to pilot one Scrum project in 2008. This article focuses on the Scrum implementation experience and the influence it has on the technology center's strategy for Scrum adoption. It is assumed that the reader is familiar with Scrum. |
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Decisions, Decisions, Decisions If you're working on more than one project at a time or if your managers are asking you to do so, it's time to make some decisions. Not every project should be started or finished, and certainly no one person or team should work on all projects at the same time. The organization needs to make some decisions about whether to commit to a project, kill it so it doesn't interfere with other projects, or transform it so it can succeed in a reasonable time. |
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