Agile

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    Agile Blog

  • How do you Celebrate?

    Ryan Martens
    30 Oct 2009 | 2:42 pm
    I was raised in the land of big software releases. I spent over a decade celebrating the release of software to gold master at five different companies.  These events included plaques and various levels of behavior based on the amount of flesh that was lost in the release.  A few of them were great, but many of them left a bad taste in your mouth based on what was shipped or not shipped. Early on at Rally, it was the same way.  We celebrated releases.  In our case, the numbered releases come about every 6 to 8 weeks.  I can recount having some over-the-top release parties, but mostly…

  • Forming, Storming, Norming, and Swarming – The Tuckman Model for Scrum

    Alan Atlas
    29 Oct 2009 | 4:28 am
    I was teaching a CSM course a few months back when a question came up, as one often does, that needed an answer built around the concept of swarming. An extremely creative example of the swarming concept Swarming is something that is strangely alien to many folks in software development, so I’ll explain it here. Also, if I don’t explain it here then I won’t have enough to make a good blog post, and we can’t have that, can we? The idea of swarming is to get the whole scrum team, or as much of the team as possible, to all jump onto a Product Backlog item (PBI) together and get it done…

  • Agile Rollout Planning – 5 Must Haves

    Ryan Martens
    26 Oct 2009 | 3:29 pm
    Just published in Dr. Dobb’s is my article on Agile Social Contracts;  It covers the process of Agile rollout planning and the burning need for a clear commitment to your teams and organization.  What is not as well covered are the other four components. I make the argument in the article that Agile enterprise adoption is easy, if you are prepared and crisp with the right structure and discipline. Here are the five items you need to be successful at Agile release planning or Agile Enterprise Rollout planning: Release Planning Structure Agile Enterprise Rollout Structure Team –…

  • Benefits of attaining the “Flow” state in Agile software development

    Ryan Martens
    22 Oct 2009 | 4:20 am
    Sarah: “Walter, I just want to check in with you following the team demonstration and see how you are doing with the new Agile approach” Walter: “Sarah the results were thrilling for the customer and the team.  Everyone seemed engaged and the dialogue was very healthy. I see it, but it does not make sense.  We are moving features through the team faster, but I had to do this with dedicated resources.  I am sure this is costing me more.” Sarah: “Walter, this is totally normal.  You are seeing the difference between single tasking and multi-tasking as well as optimizing the whole…

  • Agile Transition Plans – an example

    Ryan Martens
    20 Oct 2009 | 4:30 am
    I do not believe there is a recipe for Agile enterprise transition plans because good ones must take the context and setting of the organization into account. I do believe that starting step-by-step is the only way to get the snow ball of incremental improvement rolling down hill.  Our model, Flow-Pull-Innovate, is based on a strategy of creating a self-funding sustainable approach to adopting Agile; where some of the savings/profits from each step are reinvested in the next improvement step. (See my post An Alternative to Agile Adoption Cookbooks – Flow, Pull, Innovate for details on…
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    Managed Chaos

  • Want to Pair Program and Concerned about Productivity?

    Naresh Jain
    26 Oct 2009 | 12:54 am
    Often I find developers and managers who claim they understand the advantages of Pair Programming and are bought into the concept, but they are really concerned about loss of productivity. This morning when I watched the following video, I thought, we could use this as an excellent example of what pairing can help you achieve. My premise: We are in the business of building software and the process requires craft and skill rather than a series of manual steps. Programming is a lot of thinking, creating abstractions, figuring out the logic and so on. Its a collaborative process and its not…

  • Goodbye Simplicity; I’m Object Obsessed

    Naresh Jain
    26 Oct 2009 | 12:12 am
    In retrospect, I think Object Orientation has tremendously helped me become a better programmer. But at the same time, its also made me vulnerable to including extra complexity (or at least thinking in terms of more complex solutions) in my code. One of the important lessons I learned a few years ago was, not to try and model my software on real world (my perception of reality). This leads to my software solution ending up as complex and easy to misunderstood as the real world. Soon I started embracing “There is no Spoon” philosophy and really focusing on abstractions. Last year,…

  • Freeset’s Deployment Script

    Naresh Jain
    25 Oct 2009 | 11:50 am
    At Freeset, we have two CMS Made Simple instances set up. One for development and another one for live environment. We do all our stuff on dev and then run the following shell script to deploy the latest changes from dev to live. This is a great example of “Do the Simplest Thing that could Possibly Work“. #!/bin/bash mysqldump --no-create-db --add-drop-table --skip-add-locks --skip-disable-keys --quick -u{db.user.name} -p{db.password} {live.db.name} --tables cms_module_blogs_commentprops cms_module_blogs_comments cms_module_blogs_comments_seq mysql…

  • Ultra-light Development and Deployment Example

    Naresh Jain
    25 Oct 2009 | 11:38 am
    Over the last year, I’ve been helping (part-time) Freeset build their ecommerce website. David Hussman introduced me to folks from Freeset. Following is a list of random topics (most of them are Agile/XP practices) about this project: Project Inception: We started off with a couple of meetings with folks from Freeset to understand their needs. David quickly created an initial vision document with User Personas and their use cases (about 2 page long on Google Docs). Naomi and John from Freeset, quickly created some screen mock-ups in Photoshop to show user interaction. I don’t…

  • Stop Sprinting, Start Minting

    Naresh Jain
    22 Oct 2009 | 12:28 pm
    These days, its not uncommon to see teams, who are doing all their Product Backlog Management to Sprint Planning t0 Daily Scrums to Reviews to Retrospectives perfectly fine, as described in the book (or the 2 days Certified Scrum Master course). But somehow along the way, we seemed to have lost the point. We are doing all the process stuff correctly, except that we don’t seem to be”actually” making money (minting). The problem I see is, teams are doing as they are told, except that post demo, they don’t actually release the software (deploy it into production). Most…
 
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    Scrum 4 You

  • Scrum and its success - 60000 CSMs

    Boris Gloger
    5 Nov 2009 | 7:16 am
    Last week the Scrum Alliance published the number [1]. We are now more than 60000 Certified ScrumMasters. This year around 22000 ScrumMasters have been to classes and got the certification (of attendance). That is a bit more than last year, but not a jump like the years before. So the market starts to consolidate! Bad news [...]

  • CSPO Class in Oslo

    Boris Gloger
    5 Nov 2009 | 7:08 am
    Besides the fact that everything was against me, when I was in Oslo, the class was great! We discussed all relevant issues of being a Product Owner. Oslo has now 8 newly certified ScrumMasters. Congratulations!

  • Last minute | CSM Trainings next week + Student seats

    Katrin Dietze
    5 Nov 2009 | 3:43 am
    There are 2 CSM Trainings next week: Monday+Tuesday 9.+10.11. Vienna a german CSM class with ScrumCooking Thursday+Friday 12.+13.11. Frankfurt an english CSM class What we do regularly: Giving some seats to students. SO ALL STUDENTS LISTEN RIGHT NOW: I offer a FREE seat in Vienna and a FREE seat in Frankfurt in my CSM Training for a student. Be very well educated! First [...]

  • Some Gathering Links

    Boris Gloger
    2 Nov 2009 | 11:31 am
    Some interesting comments about the Scrum Gathering. - Andy Brandt, Talks about some talks he attended [1] - Armer Kater, [2] [1] http://www.andybrandt.net/506/scrum-gathering-2009-day-three-and-final-comments/comment-page-1#comment-58182 [2] http://www.armerkater.de/2009/10/scrum-gathering-mnchen/

  • Der klassische Projektmanager in Scrum

    Boris Gloger
    1 Nov 2009 | 11:37 am
    … oder wie sich der klassische Projektmanager in Scrum auf die drei Rollen verteilt. Uwe Friedrichsen hat wunderschön und viel besser als ich es kann aufgeschrieben, wie sich die Rolle des Projektmanagers auf die drei Rollen PO, SM und Team verteilt. Sehr lesenswert. [1] http://blog.codecentric.de/2009/10/der-klassische-projektmanager-in-scrum/
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    Agile Software Development Made Easy!

  • eBook - Agile Software Development Made Easy!

    30 Oct 2009 | 6:00 am
    Many thanks to everyone who has bought my ebook - Agile Software Development Made Easy! so far. It's gone fairly well and that gives me all the extra encouragement I need to finish my paper book! It probably won't be ready until next year some time, but my intention is to produce a product that allows you to take away all the best content from this blog and read at your convenience.Thanks again to all those who've bought the ebook in the meantime. That really is much appreciated!Kelly.

  • Lean and Scrum - Chicken and Egg

    29 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am
    Here is a really interesting post from John Scumniotales, one of the inventors of Scrum. Here he sets the record straight about whether or not Scrum was based on the concepts of Lean manufacturing, as pioneered by the likes of Toyota and Honda...Lean and Scrum - Chicken and EggWhilst this is clearly admirable for the inventors of Scrum, they clearly share some similar principles and philosophies. But in some ways I was disappointed to hear this. The idea that Scrum was based on the widely celebrated principles of Lean manufacturing really added some credibility to Scrum and other agile/lean…

  • Which Agile Methodology: Scrum, XP, Either, Both or Neither?

    28 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am
    Here is an interesting article on InfoQ about the debate over agile methodologies, and which is best: Scrum, XP, either, both or neither?Personally I think they are entirely complimentary as they cover different aspects of software development. I find it useful to think of Scrum as an agile management methodology, whilst eXtreme Programming (XP) focuses more on agile engineering.In an earlier post, I explain my views on this in a bit more detail; see here...eXtreme Programming versus Scrum.What do *you* think?Kelly.Photo by Mike Cogh

  • 55 Page eBook - Agile Software Development Made Easy!

    28 Oct 2009 | 1:18 am
    Over the last couple of years, I've had quite a few requests to turn this blog into a book. Finally I've made the commitment to do it, and hopefully you'll see it for sale on Amazon in a few months time...In the meantime, I've decided to release the first couple of sections as a 55 page eBook called 'Agile Software Development Made Easy!'I've updated all my posts in the series' 10 Key Principles of Agile Software Development, and How To Implement Scrum in 10 Easy Steps. I've brought the text up-to-date with my current thinking, and in a few cases I've expanded on the points on my blog. I've…

  • Agile Software Development Made Easy!

    27 Oct 2009 | 1:46 pm
    Hi all. I'm very grateful that so many blogs and web sites link to this blog. Many, of course, still link with the old name, 'All About Agile', as the link text. If that's you, would you mind updating the link text to 'Agile Software Development Made Easy!' so it reflects the new name?Many thanks in advance!Kelly.
 
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    Agile Software Development

  • Product Owner vs Product Manager

    jackMilunsky
    5 Nov 2009 | 10:00 pm
    Introduction Based on a recent post on yahoo forums, seems like there may still be confusion out there as to what the differences are between these two roles. Questions like, is there overlap? can the Product Manager take on the responsibilities of the Product Owner? what are the specific requirements for either role? pop up all the time. There was a really good discussion on the Scrum Development Yahoo group on this topic and some really good points were made. So I'll try to distill this for you here and of course put my own twist on this. I think that the founders of Scrum purposely chose a…

  • Switching stories mid sprint

    jackMilunsky
    23 Oct 2009 | 11:08 pm
    Introduction I blogged about this some time ago and then posted the blog on various agile forums to judge peoples responses. Most of the responses were well reasoned, however, one of the responses I received shocked me somewhat and so I feel that it's worth blogging about this particular situation once more. The response I received was "You're not serious you're going to ignore the PO" and "You can't be a slave to the process" In all fairness, there are many situations under which the need to switch stories arise. And the specifics were not really provided. For example: How long are the…

  • State of Agile

    jackMilunsky
    8 Oct 2009 | 11:00 pm
    Introduction Seems like there's lots going on in the agile world right now. Lots of talk about Lean and it's impact on Agile. Lots of attacks going on at the CSM certification. Kanban is all over the news these days. And just last week, I read about a new Agile methodology called Stride. So how do we make sense of this all? My opinion is that there is value in each of the methodologies (for the purposes of this blog I'll refer to them all as methodologies even though some of you might not think of them as such). It's real important to read about them all so that you are armed with enough…

  • Poka Yoke, error handling for your process

    Mendelt
    6 Oct 2009 | 11:00 pm
    Software engineering is still a very human endeavor. Its a complex process that requires our ability to create non-standard solutions for non-standard problems. But with this ability to creatively solve problems comes a tendency to introduce defects, one of the seven wastes lean production and lean programming try to eliminate. Jack Milunsky describes several ways to reduce the amount of defects in his article. I want to look at another idea from lean manufacturing for reducing the number of defects called Poka Yoke in Japanese and have a look at how we can apply this idea to software…

  • The 7 Software Development Wastes - Lean series Part 7 - Defects

    jackMilunsky
    25 Sep 2009 | 11:11 pm
    Introduction When one looks at all the wastes, defects has to be the most obvious one. The cost and repercussions of finding defects varies depending on where in the cycle they're found. Defects found early on in the development life-cycle are way less costly to resolve than defects found later on in the cycle; the most expensive being when applications are already in-production. Additionally, depending on when the defects are found, defects can and do trigger other wastes like task switching, relearning etc. Defects can be very costly for an organization. So the trick with defects is that…
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    Agile Thinkers: Members Blog Posts

  • Agile Organizations

    Henrik Sternberg
    Principles over practices The agile methods and practices are built on a common philosophy and common principles for good system development. These principles are described in the agile manifesto. When agile methods and practices are implemented, it’s often from the wish of a more efficient development process, but equally often without knowing if the organizational conditions for such a renewal are present or wanted. Often we see that agile attempts, typically in larger organizations resulting in resistance against, isolation of or even expulsion of the attempt. Agile methods have…

  • How Agile Practices address the Five Dysfunctions of a Team ?

    TV
    Since times immemorial, ideas, objects and experiences of grand stature and lasting economic, social and emotional value have been created by men and women working together in teams. Granted that some extraordinary work in the fields of arts, philosophy and sciences was done by truly exceptional individuals, apparently working alone, I suspect that they too were ably supported by other selfless and unsung individuals (in the backoffice, perhaps) who all worked together as a team. Right from the great wars, social upheavals, political resistance, empire building, freedom struggles and forming…

  • Scrummy?

    Peter Ellis
    I came across this website completely by accident via stumbleupon: scrumy.com hell if the video doesn't convince you I don't know what will ;-) lol

  • Survey: What are your thoughts on this recession?

    Rachel Pagdan
    Hello Agile Thinkers! Currently, Neuron Global is creating a Special Report on the Current Economic downturn. I am writing you today because we are still in the process of finding out what issues and fears are at the forefront of people’s minds and we very much need help in collecting this research. We aim to develop a timely white paper, available online, that answers critical questions like: 1. What lessons from economic downturns in the past can be applied to today? 2. What information do I need to know to survive & thrive in a prolonged recession? 3. What are things that I can do to…

  • Self managing/organising teams: Hey Scrummaster, let the team decide!

    Peter Janssens
    A self-organizing team is a powerful concept. But what if the team collectively decides to go into a direction that you as a Scrum Master know for sure that they will hit problems. (or at least you think) F.i. they decide to abandon retrospectives. Will you respect their decision or will you try to change it? Would you go for option 1) respect the team or 2) try to convince the team away from their decision. May I ask you, intelligent agilist, to provide examples of similar conflicts you encountered in real life. If you solved the situation, please let us know how. If not, just post the…
 
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    Agile Alliance: All

  • Programs

    29 Oct 2009 | 10:53 am
    The Agile Alliance conducts much of its work via programs proposed by members. Some examples of past programs are topic-focused workshops, local Agile conferences, and academic research projects. Our current programs are listed below. The primary requirement for any program is that it supports the values, goals, and purpose of the Agile Alliance: a) To provide an unbiased forum within which the community can freely work to discuss, promote, and improve agile development processes; b) To encourage scientific research in current and potential uses of agile processes; c) To share information…

  • Agile Alliance Home

    4 Sep 2009 | 3:11 am
    Wondering what agile software development is, start here. Agile practitioners can login to this site to find articles and keep track of agile events and news. Join the over 4000 supporters of agile development become a member Join now! Interested in learning more about participating in future Agile conferences, click here Agile 2010—Nashville, USA Previous Conference Sites

  • Agile Development

    13 Aug 2009 | 7:07 am
    Download Agile Magazine The old Agile Times Download Sample AgileDevelopment Magazine was published by Agile Alliance on a quarterly basis from Spring 2006 until 2007 Summer. Its authors share successes and challenges with Agile projects, explain various methods and tools, and provide insights into new research. What is agile software development? AgileDevelopment was delivered quarterly as a downloadable PDF file. It doesn’t need to be printed out; you can read it easily on your computer screen. And you want to use it on your computer screen, because it is highly interactive. That…

  • Public Resources

    17 Feb 2009 | 12:32 am
    Agile Times Newsletter The Agile Times newsletter was our member newsletter written by and for members from 2003 to 2005. Past issues are available for download here. The newer e-magazine Agile Development for members only was produced through Summer 2007. Agile User Groups This page contain an index of independent agile user groups worldwide. Application forms for support for user groups can be found here. Carnival of the Agilists Agile happenings in the blogosphere. Agile Journal The Agile Journal publishes original content articles on a wide variety of Agile topics and is directed by Liz…

  • Next To Map

    19 May 2008 | 12:37 pm
    Join the Agile Community With more than 4261 members located around the globe, the Agile Alliance is driven by the values and principles of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development We support those who explore and apply Agile principles and practices to make the software industry productive, humane, and sustainable.
 
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    WordPress Tag: Agile

  • "Eat your own dog food" ou use TDD.

    robsonvf
    6 Nov 2009 | 8:21 pm
    como já diria Joel Spolsky… este blog já está fedendo a cupim (não, Joel não disse isso, na verdade do que se trata dele terminou nas reticências e tinha a ver com o titulo do post) mas tudo bem, esta é uma rapidinha que, se eu tivesse um numero consideravel de seguidores no twitter, seria um twitt… mas, como eu não gosto do twitter e nem quero que você me siga, vai pra cá mesmo. Tudo que você faz, o faz como se você mesmo fosse usar? Pense nisso antes de construir a próxima linha de código lá no seu trabalho, esqueça seu chefe chato (não que o meu seja, caso o…

  • The other essential Agile ingredient

    Mark W. Schumann
    6 Nov 2009 | 3:21 pm
    I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. –the “litany against fear” from the science fiction novel Dune Yesterday I got a call from a prospective client whose Project Does Not Yet Suck, but it’s starting to make little slurping noises. The situation calls for someone who is “aggressive without being arrogant” and “can handle pressure” while “getting stuff done.” And I thought hey, maybe this project isn’t necessarily right for me for some other reasons… but she did…

  • Κατάργηση των εργοστασίων, εγκαθίδρυση της Ατομικής Παραγωγής (Mass Customization & Open Innovation)

    Chris Chatzopoulos
    6 Nov 2009 | 12:06 pm
    Κάτι που μπορεί να φανεί χρήσιμο για τη σκέψη σας, αυτή τη στιγμή βρίσκεται σε εξέλιξη μια προσπάθεια δικτύωσης, άμεσης επικοινωνίας και μεταφοράς ιδεών και σχεδίων από Makers / Designers σε Fabers / Producers, δηλαδή σε μικρές παραγωγικές μονάδες που μπορεί να βρίσκονται ακόμη και σε ένα σπίτι, DIY (Do It Yourself) φιλοσοφία, χρησιμοποιώντας την…

  • Software Reuse Quick Tip #22

    vijaynarayanan
    6 Nov 2009 | 9:58 am
    Tip #22 – Ensure Service Capabilities Stay Effectively Decoupled The rationale for contract-first services (as opposed to code-first) is to effectively decouple service capabilities from needless implementation-specific, vendor-specific, and data-source specific realizations. You put the initial service capability out and ensured that the contract is decoupled – no legacy system specific details, no database-vendor or technology platform-specific attributes are present and your consumers are happy.  So, are you done? Well, no…because we all know that the technology…

  • In The Brain of Niels Malotaux

    skillsmatterblog
    6 Nov 2009 | 9:44 am
    Tonight, exclusively at Skills Matter: In The Brain of Niels Malotaux; Evolutionary Project Planning – How to get and keep your project on time. In this free event, Niels Malotaux will explain how Evolutionary Project Planning helps you to get and keep the timing of the project under control while improving the results. For more info, visit: In The Brain of Niels Malotaux, and why not check the calendar for other events coming up?
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    Atlassian Developer Blog

  • Automated performance testing using JMeter and Maven

    George Barnett
    2 Nov 2009 | 5:39 pm
    When I think of Agile, I tend to think of the awesomeness it can bring me as a performance engineer. I see short cycles where the code is usually always stable and features are delivered incrementally. I get to watch the performance of the system evolve over time. Unfortunately, this means I'm testing software all the time. Thats fine though - none of this is by hand - this kind of repetitive task is perfect for automation. It's clear that automating testing is important - automated tests mean you have more time to do investigation while you make your build system do the repetitive tasks, and…

  • Great new tutorial on REST plugins

    Jonathan Nolen
    30 Oct 2009 | 10:14 pm
    Jonathan Doklovic, creator of the JIRA Workflow Designer, just published a great tutorial about developing and testing REST plugins in Atlassian applications. If this is something you're working on, go check it out -- it might save you some time!

  • And the winners of Codegeist IV are...

    Jens Schumacher
    26 Oct 2009 | 10:59 am
    We have announced the winners of our 4th annual Codegeist competition live on stage at a fantastic Atlascamp yesterday. And now it is time to reveal the results to the rest of the world. But before we announce the winners, let's take a quick look at what the contestants were coding for. This years competition had prizes valued at over $54,000 USD up for grabs including $5,000 in cash, a MacBook Pro, an Amazon Kindle, free conference passes and a whole bunch of software from Atlassian and our generous sponsors. This year, in addition to the Grand Prize, we've divided Codegeist into four…

  • Dragon Slayer Supplement: Action Issues with Commit Commands

    James Roper
    11 Oct 2009 | 4:13 pm
    So, you've slayed the Atlassian integration dragon. But you're still edgy, it was too easy! You want something harder. Well I have just the task for you. Actioning JIRA issues from Subversion commit messages. Before I go on, let me say, this task is not part of the official Atlassian Dragon Quest. You will not get another free tshirt if you complete this task. But, you will get one cool integration feature from Atlassian's products. Actioning issues from commit messages is a feature that has been available in JIRA Studio for around a year. The documentation on how to use it (once it's set up)…

  • We're extending Codegeist by a week!

    Jonathan Nolen
    6 Oct 2009 | 8:23 pm
    So I was looking at the calendar this morning, and I realized that Codegeist is scheduled to close *this Friday, October 9th*. And I asked myself, "Self, why in the world did you plan to end the contest on a Friday?!" Ending on a Friday eliminates a whole weekend of great hacking time, which something we would normally try to maximize. So, we've decided to extend the deadline for Codegeist until Sunday night, October 18th. That's just a few days before AtlasCamp, where were are going to announce the winners. (If you haven't booked your ticket to AtlasCamp, now is the time!) Ending on October…
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    Agile Software Development

  • ThoughtWorks Studios Announces Mingle 3.0

    6 Nov 2009 | 2:18 am
    SAN FRANCISCO, Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Nov. 4, 2009 ­ ThoughtWorks Studios, a global leader in Agile ALM tools and training, today unveiled a major new release of its Mingle® project management tool. Features of Mingle 3.0 focus on new levels of collaborative communication and extending r ...

  • TrueSight Load Test Adapter Automates and Simplifies HP LoadRunner Performance Validation

    3 Nov 2009 | 6:06 am
    SAN DIEGO, CA, October 28, 2009 – Coradiant Inc., a leader in Web Application Performance Management, today announced the release of TrueSight® Load Test Adapter, a turnkey software product addition to the Coradiant TrueSight Web Application Performance Management family that makes load te ...

  • Aldon Fully Compatible with Zend Studio 7.0

    3 Nov 2009 | 6:03 am
    Emeryville, CA—November-03-2009—Aldon, the ALM company for IT compliance, today announced it is fully compatible with Zend Studio 7.0, via the just released Aldon Lifecycle Manager plug-in supporting both Eclipse 3.4 and 3.5. By using Aldon's sophisticated change management solution ...

  • GreenHopper 4.1 Now Available!

    3 Nov 2009 | 5:44 am
    Only a month after GreenHopper 4.0 we're getting 4.1 out the door with some great new features. Following up our longer than usual GreenHopper 4.0 development cycle we have returned to shorter release cycles - "our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery ...

  • JetBrains Releases YouTrack 1.0 — Brand New Bug'n' Issue Tracker

    3 Nov 2009 | 5:40 am
    Prague, Czech Republic, October 29, 2009 — JetBrains®, creators of intelligent, productivity-enhancing development tools, today announced the release of YouTrack 1.0, the company's brand new bug and issue tracking system. Following the success of TeamCity continuous integration and bui ...
 
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    ScrumPlant.com

  • Agile Projects and Portfolios - Jochen Krebs: Certified Scrum Master Online Examination

    5 Nov 2009 | 11:46 am
    Certification discussions inside and outside the agile community are not new.  Back in 2007 for example I participated in a panel discussion at the Agile conference in Washington D.C. with Mike Cohn, Ron Jeffries and Mike Feathers.  At the point of the panel, Mike and I supported the idea of certification, although Scrum did not have a certification test in place. Everything an individual had to do was to participate in a 2-day Certified Scrum Training.read more

  • Scrum User Group of South Africa: Post ‘lunch&learn’ retro

    5 Nov 2009 | 8:14 am
    We had a great ‘lunch and learn’ session today. Many thanks to BB&D for hosting the event and providing fantastic snacks. Topics covered in the Open Spaces format included: ‘What is the role of the analyst on an agile team?’, ‘Is TDD a design activity?’, ‘How self-organising should a scrum team be?’ and many others. We ran a total of three sessions of fifteen minutes with between two and three topics being discussed.read more

  • Scrum 4 You: Scrum and its success - 60000 CSMs

    5 Nov 2009 | 7:16 am
    Last week the Scrum Alliance published the number [1]. We are now more than 60000 Certified ScrumMasters. This year around 22000 ScrumMasters have been to classes and got the certification (of attendance). That is a bit more than last year, but not a jump like the years before. So the market starts to consolidate! Bad news [...]

  • Scrum 4 You: CSPO Class in Oslo

    5 Nov 2009 | 7:08 am
    Besides the fact that everything was against me, when I was in Oslo, the class was great! We discussed all relevant issues of being a Product Owner. Oslo has now 8 newly certified ScrumMasters. Congratulations!

  • Scrum 4 You: Last minute | CSM Trainings next week + Student seats

    5 Nov 2009 | 3:43 am
    There are 2 CSM Trainings next week: Monday+Tuesday 9.+10.11. Vienna a german CSM class with ScrumCooking Thursday+Friday 12.+13.11. Frankfurt an english CSM class What we do regularly: Giving some seats to students. SO ALL STUDENTS LISTEN RIGHT NOW: I offer a FREE seat in Vienna and a FREE seat in Frankfurt in my CSM Training for a student. Be very well educated! First [...]
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    From the Editor of Methods & Tools

  • Report on the Agile Tour in Geneva

    The Editor
    4 Nov 2009 | 1:41 am
    I participated on October 12 to the Geneva stage of the Agile Tour which was a great success. There were more than 100 participants announced to this free event. Here is a small feedback for three interesting presentations that I attended. Yves Hanoulle presented about the tips for creating a self-organizing team. In the part that I followed, Yves explained how to build trust, giving examples from his business and family experience. Here are the main points of his presentation: - be straight: 60% of the people think that their bosses are lying to them - respect: observe how people handle…

  • Domain-Specific Modeling

    The Editor
    28 Oct 2009 | 10:38 am
    Domain-specific modeling (DSM) is an approach articulated around three elements: a specific modeling language, code generation and a domain framework. The book authors work for a company that has been proposing a DSM tool since the last century. This make them first-hand experts on the topic, but you have also to remind which side they are when they talk about DSM compared to other approaches. The authors are conscious of this and discuss it openly, so that the reader can be aware of the situation. This being said, this book is an excellent and convincing presentation of what is…

  • November Software Development Conferences

    The Editor
    26 Oct 2009 | 8:04 am
    Here is a list of software development related conferences that will take place in November and that have media partnerships with Methods & Tools: * ApacheCon US 2009, November 2-6 2009, Oakland, USA * IT Leadership Forum, November 2-4 2009, Phoenix, USA * Agile Development Practices Conference, November 9-13, Orlando, USA * Devoxx, November 16-20 2009, Antwerp, Belgium * ProjectWorld & World Congress for Business Analysts, November 16-18 2009, Anaheim, USA * Handcrafted Bulletproof CSS, November 23 2009, London, UK * Agile Specifications, BDD and Testing eXchange, November 27 2009,…

  • Linkopedia October 2009

    The Editor
    14 Oct 2009 | 10:25 am
    Top 10 reasons why teams fail with Acceptance Testing Software quality metrics and model Comparing Open Source Agile Project Management Tools Icon Search Engine Refractor – Diagrammer for .Net Assemblies, also support for Javascript. KanbanFX – A JavaFX implementation of a Kanban board Article: The Clojure programming language Article: Scrum in old fashioned software environments? Video: The Myth of the Genius Programmer Video: What are the Roles In Scrum Video: Top 10 Things in Ruby that Every .NET Developer Needs to Know Find more interesting links on the software development…

  • 1500 Tools to Assist Software Developers

    The Editor
    12 Oct 2009 | 8:48 am
    Created in 2007, the Software Development Tools Directory has now more than 1500 references. It is one of the rare web sites where you can see on the same location both commercial and open source software development tools. Tools are categorized by programming language, license, operating system or software development function (software testing, project management, database, IDE, user interface,  etc.).  The Open Source category is the most important one with 770 tools. The five most popular open source tools in the directory are: * IceScrum – agile project management * ERmodeller…
 
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    Richard Lawrence

  • WatiN Patterns #3: Don’t Over-specify

    Richard
    30 Oct 2009 | 8:20 am
    After a long hiatus, I’m resuming the WatiN Patterns series. Pattern #1 covered why and how your tests should clean up after themselves. Pattern #2 covered how you should name your tests and why they should only assert one thing. Pattern #3 is about keeping your tests maintainable by specifying just enough in your element selectors. If you’re using WatiN, you’re probably also using ASP.NET Web Forms, which means your controls get IDs like this: ctl1001_Content_Content_txtUsername. Though you gave your username text box the ID “txtUsername”, ASP.NET prepends the…

  • Patterns for Splitting User Stories

    Richard
    28 Oct 2009 | 7:04 am
    Good user stories follow Bill Wake’s INVEST model. They’re Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, and Testable. The small requirement drives us to split large stories. But the stories after splitting still have to follow the model. Many new agile teams attempt to split stories by architectural layer: one story for the UI, another for the database, etc. This may satisfy small, but it fails at independent and valuable. Over my years with agile, I’ve discovered nine patterns for splitting user stories into good, smaller stories. (Note: As with any pattern…

  • Cuke4Nuke: Cucumber for .NET Teams

    Richard
    19 Sep 2009 | 5:16 pm
    If you’ve read this blog for a while or talked with me about functional test tools, you’ve heard me talk about Cucumber. It’s my favorite ATDD tool because it’s so good at mapping stories and acceptance criteria to automated functional tests. Product Owners and BAs write acceptance criteria in natural language. Developers and testers unobtrusively automate tests for them. Anyone on the team can run the tests and see the current state of the system. Here’s a simple example: Feature: Google search In order to find things on the web As a user I want to search for web pages containing…

  • Resources from our Agile 2009 Presentation

    Richard
    2 Sep 2009 | 10:46 am
    For those who attended my Agile 2009 presentation with Bob Hartman, “The 7 Deadly Sins of Almost Being Agile,” here are the slides and handouts. Slides Evaporating Cloud Cheat Sheet Handout Evaporating Cloud Template Handout Related posts:Slides and links from my CU ACM chapter presentationHow Multitasking Guarantees Low Customer Satisfaction

  • How to Give a Great Sprint Demo

    Richard
    24 Apr 2009 | 7:03 pm
    Exciting. Entertaining. Do these words describe your sprint demo meetings? Or are boring and unfocused more accurate? I can’t believe how many times I’ve come in to coach a team and they’ve been surprised when I actually expected to see a software demo in the sprint demo meeting. As the agile principle says, “Working software is the primary measure of progress.” Let’s see some software! Why are so many agile teams so hesitant to do demos? Why are demos so lifeless? Sometimes, the team’s not actually done. That makes a demo awkward. Other times, they…
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    Agile Web Operations

  • Back to the roots: Bridging the Deployment Gap

    Dan Ackerson
    3 Nov 2009 | 11:45 am
    Matthias and I started this blog over a year ago because we had first-hand experiences with the rift between developers and sysadmins. We knew this was a lose-lose situation not only for those directly involved, but the companies they were working for as well. We’ve described many real-life examples of how to overcome this rift, but were never sure how these ideas were resonating out there with our fellow colleagues. How many developers had moved into the operations realm? How many sysadmins knuckled down and wrote end-user code in a pinch? Enter Patrick Debois and devopsdays. What…

  • Simulating a Waterfall Project In The Classroom

    Matthias Marschall
    24 Oct 2009 | 8:10 am
    The first simulation in my course about agile methodologies will be waterfall style. Here’s how I plan to do it. Before we go into the details of the waterfall simulation, I want the whole group (around 20-30 people) to come up with requirements for the product to build: an online office suite (maybe the most boring but also the most well known thing in the world). I plan to gather the requirements upfront because I do not want to burden the first simulation with this additional task – all simulations should start mostly from the same starting point. The team will be free to…

  • Kanban vs. Iterative Development

    Matthias Marschall
    16 Oct 2009 | 11:49 pm
    Agile methodology builds on the concept of iterations – time boxes – in which you create a piece of working software. Each iteration starts with a planning meeting where the team takes stories from the backlog and commits to the sprint goal. If you use a tool like Pivotal Tracker, you even get emergent iterations – the tool automatically cuts your backlog into iterations based on your team’s velocity. In my post Agile on steroids I described how our team slowly dropped most of the agile estimation and planning practices in favor of optimizing cycle time of stories. Now…

  • Waterfall, SCRUM and Lean Software Development simulation as teaching platform

    Matthias Marschall
    7 Oct 2009 | 9:39 pm
    Currently, I’m preparing for teaching my next course on Agile Methodology. Again and again, I wonder what is the single most important thing my students should be able to take with them after four full days. One of my core messages is definitely that agile is more about principles than about practices. If you absorb the principles you have a good chance to get it right no matter which practices you decide to use or not. But, even teaching the underlying principles seems not enough to me. Tacit knowledge is far too important to be completely ignored in any course. So how can I transfer…

  • Giving up – or not?

    Matthias Marschall
    2 Oct 2009 | 11:21 pm
    “Never give up” is an advice we hear far too often. We’re taught that giving up is a failure. But nothing could be further from the truth if we’re caught in a dead end. If there is nothing left to reach, why should we bother to go on? It’s a waste of time and energy trying to move mountains. Better give up and go for something worthwhile. It’s the only reasonable thing to do. Not giving up is a problem. Wasting your energy where nothing can be gained is a bad decision. Giving up and focusing your power to reach worthwhile goals is the smarter strategy. But…
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    The Agilebuddy Blog

  • Remote contract workers

    Jack Milunsky
    4 Nov 2009 | 1:26 pm
    A question posted this morning on one of the Yahoo groups .. " We have a Scrum team in the Silicon Valley and two contractors who work with us remotely. Although they are proficient at what they do, it has been a challenge to get them (understandably so as contractors) to be apart of the team. We have two main issues: 1) They are contractors and don't see Scrum as more than just something to do to keep a contract. 2) Daily meetings and full conversation required for communication saturation are next to impossible over the phone (and really poor...

  • State of Agile

    Jack Milunsky
    16 Oct 2009 | 7:47 am
    IntroductionSeems like there's lots going on in the agile world right now. Lots of talk about Lean and it's impact on Agile. Lots of attacks going on at the CSM certification. Kanban is all over the news these days. And just last week, I read about a new Agile methodology called Stride. So how do we make sense of this all? My opinion is that there is value in each of the methodologies (for the purposes of this blog I'll refer to them all as methodologies even though some of you might not think of them as such). It's real...

  • Stories - how small is too small

    Jack Milunsky
    6 Oct 2009 | 10:40 am
    Today over on the Scrum Development forum a question was posted by a member. They have a situation where they have mixed some small stories with some larger ones. And the larger one is LATE - Really late. It's now been pushed into the 3rd Sprint and according to her it's still tight. So now they're faced with a situation where the smaller stories that are done can't be deployed as they never branched the code. I find it alarming that folks can't break user stories down further. So many folks say you can't do it when over on the...

  • The 7 Software Development Wastes - Lean series Part 7 - Defects

    Jack Milunsky
    2 Oct 2009 | 6:45 am
    Introduction When one looks at all the wastes, defects has to be the most obvious one. The cost and repercussions of finding defects varies depending on where in the cycle they're found. Defects found early on in the development life-cycle are way less costly to resolve than defects found later on in the cycle; the most expensive being when applications are already in-production. Additionally, depending on when the defects are found, defects can and do trigger other wastes like task switching, relearning etc. Defects can be very costly for an organization. So the trick with defects is that…

  • The 7 Software Development Wastes - Lean series Part 6 - Delays

    Jack Milunsky
    23 Sep 2009 | 8:02 am
    Introduction Interestingly, this weeks blog covers the 6th waste - Delays - as identified in Lean. How appropriate after the long delay since my last blog post on Task Switching. Herein lies an example of what Delays in software development can cause. Delays introduce discontinuity and trigger additional wastes already covered like Relearning. It's important in any process, including software, to have continuity. This reduces cycle time and minimizes other wastes like Relearning, Task Switching etc. The rest of this series can be found here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5. Focus on…
 
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    Leading Agile

  • Organizational Myopia?

    Mike Cottmeyer
    5 Nov 2009 | 12:09 am
    Okay... I want to write a quick little post here to point out something that is becoming increasingly obvious to me. I've talked quite a bit over the past year about the ongoing feature team/component team debate. We talk about how agile teams are supposed to deliver an end-to-end cross-functional slice of the application architecture. When applications get big, I've talked about how sometimes we have to organize around large scale system components or services. So here is the deal... I think that in practice... most people actually get this. It seems that the more I talk to people doing…

  • Velocity in the Enterprise, Part 7

    Mike Cottmeyer
    2 Nov 2009 | 12:07 pm
    Okay... we've been going on a while now with this whole Velocity in the Enterprise series. Let's see if we can get things wrapped up with one final post. Last time around we talked about the idea of extending the Kanban metaphor to the enterprise. Just like agile user stories and teams are extended into agile projects and agile project portfolios... Kanban can be extended past the team to drive the flow of value across multiple teams working in concert to deliver multiple projects. Let's explore this a little further... starting with the team... then considering the project... and then…

  • Our Halloween Jack-o-Lantern

    Mike Cottmeyer
    31 Oct 2009 | 4:20 pm
    Every year we head up to Burt's Pumpkin Farm to pick out the biggest pumpkin we can carry. We usually end up with one BIG one... one for each of the boys... and a few that we can bake up and turn into pies. Just for fun... I thought I would show you guys the results of this year's pumpkin carving activities.It's hard to tell size with these dark photo's... but this is our big family pumpkin. I work with the kids on the design and the approach... but the carving duties are mine. We went with a design we have used in the past... pumpkin in flames!The pumpkin on the left was carved by my seven…

  • Interesting Post... 10/26/2009 through 10/31/2009

    Mike Cottmeyer
    31 Oct 2009 | 1:26 pm
    Agilepalooza was a great event this week. It was good to hang out with the crew from VersionOne and all the great folks in Boston. I'm back in Atlanta for a day or so and then off to Oredev in Sweden. Living a bit of the crazy life right now... but all is good.The kids and I got up early and carved our giant Jack-o-Lantern. We spent the next part of the day at a VERY STRANGE event for Pug enthusiasts (Pugfest... my 12 year old son wanted to go) and now the Florida Gators are on the tube. We are beating Georgia 14-1o and I sure hope they keep the lead. They are looking MUCH better than they…

  • Velocity in the Enterprise, Part 6

    Mike Cottmeyer
    28 Oct 2009 | 6:29 pm
    Okay... so the travel marathon starts today. Spent an hour in the Sweetwater Pub in the Atlanta airport earlier this afternoon. Had a nice Sweetwater IPA and a great bowl of 420 Beer Cheese Soup. Very tasty. Got on the plane and the weather was so bad in Boston, they kept us on the ground for extra hour while air traffic control cleared things out for us. So... I did a little writing... took a little nap (the beer made me sleepy)... and then got up and did some more writing. The good news is that Delta bumped me to first class at the last minute... so while I was late getting into Boston...
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    The Agile Executive

  • Open Source Software and Agile Software Development: Parallels and Lessons for Enterprise IT

    israelgat
    5 Nov 2009 | 6:10 pm
    Cutter Consortium has published the Executive Update entitled Open Source Software and Agile Software Development: Parallels and Lessons for Enterprise IT by Sebastian Hassinger (“Seb”) and me. Here is the abstract: The phenomenon of open source software (OSS) is a recognized and mature aspect of the global IT market with profound implications for enterprise IT. A newer trend emerging is the various disciplines and methodologies that fall under the rubric of agile software development, which has a number of interesting parallels with and similarities to OSS. With the adoption en…

  • Teach Your Boss to be Agile with a Social Contract – Guest Post by Alan Atlas

    israelgat
    5 Nov 2009 | 5:46 am
    When I [Israel] joined BMC Software in Fall 2004, I made a promise to each and every one of the hundreds of employees in my business unit: I commit to read and respond within 48 hours to any email you send me. My answer is not likely to be long as I am drinking from a hose right now. But, it will be substantive. Till this very day, various ex-employees of mine tell me that this simple statement was actually the first step toward our adopting Agile – it created mutuality in our relationships. A few months later, when we started discussing the ground rules for Agile team empowerment, I…

  • Technical Debt Goes Generic

    israelgat
    4 Nov 2009 | 12:58 pm
    Rally’s Richard Leavitt mentioned “his” technical debt in a conversation the two of us had last evening. As Richard is the head of marketing for Rally, I was expecting to hear about some deficit in the functionality, design, coding or testing of one of the market and customer facing websites his department deploys. I was dead wrong. Richard was actually using technical debt in a generic sense. Anything in his department that they had to rush through and now plan to go back to and revisit/improve/fix is categorized as technical debt. The term applies to (say) laying the foundations for a…

  • The Success of the Success Tour

    israelgat
    2 Nov 2009 | 4:35 am
    We started the 2009 Rally Agile Success Tour (AST) Series in March in Denver, CO; we just concluded it in London, UK. In between the AST “train” stopped at: Atlanta, GA Boston, MA Chicago, IL Los Angeles, CA New York, NY Santa Clara, CA Seattle, WA Washington, DC All in all we hosted about 1,000 participants in these cities. More than 40 panelists shared Agile experiences with their local colleagues. Some 200 meetings were held with various participants in conjunction with the events. Obviously, I cannot write here about the level of business generated by the success tour, but none of…

  • Software Moulding Methods

    israelgat
    1 Nov 2009 | 1:31 pm
    Christian Sarkar and I started an e-dialog on Agile Business Service Management in BSMReview. Both of us are keenly interested in exploring the broad application of Agile BSM in the context of Gartner’s Top Ten Technologies for 2010. To quote Christian: Israel, where do agile practices fit into this? Just about everywhere as well? The short answer to Christian’s good question is as follows: I consider the principles articulated in the Manifesto For Agile Software Development  http://agilemanifesto.org universal and timeless. They certainly apply just about everywhere. As a…
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    Rod Claar

  • Agile Adoption: The Real Story - Free Event October 20 in Denver

    Rod Claar
    12 Oct 2009 | 11:41 am
    Rod Claar to speak at Agile Adoption: The Real Story.  Rod’s talk will center on the problems of managing the software capiblity portfolio in an Agile organization. “I estimate that 75% of those organizations using Scrum will not succeed in getting the benefits that they hope for from it.” – Ken Schwaber, co-creator of the Scrum framework Ouch! Who wants that? Considering Scrum is the most widely adopted agile process in the world doesn’t this say agile doesn’t work worth a darn? Well, not exactly, and that is what this seminar is about. We want your agile adoption to…

  • What is Agile Coaching?

    Rod Claar
    7 Aug 2009 | 4:17 pm
    I am asked this question quite often.  What is Agile Coaching and what does and Agile Coach actually do?  When I started thinking about how to answer the question, I found it difficult to put the answer into words because there is no real formula for an Agile Coach to help the team be more effective in product development.  However when I started thinking about some of the coaching situations I have encountered a pattern did start to emerge. Agility in software development is about identifying the roadblocks to effectiveness for the team as well as the individuals that are on the team. …

  • Bugs, bugs, BUGS!

    Rod Claar
    7 Jul 2009 | 10:21 am
    I’m sure that you all know the story of how the term “bug” got associated with a computer failure.  It was a moth in a computer which caused a hardware failure.  However, since then the term bug  has become synonymous with a software error.  There is a bug in the program.  Yes, there is a bug in the program, every program.  Many software development organizations spend a large portion of their time and effort finding and fixing bugs.  However the situation rarely improves. This leads organizations to start tracking bugs and applying all sorts of analysis and pressure…

  • Do you know your team’s “room tone”?

    Rod Claar
    2 Jul 2009 | 4:29 pm
    I recently sat in on my friend David Bernstein’s new patterns course.David and his wife Staci are also filmmakers and Staci was there to record both days and to create a self-paced version of the course.At the beginning of the second day David told us that we needed to sit quietly for 30 seconds or so while Staci captured the “room tone”.They explained that when during the editing process, when they cut to David’s reactions to questions or to students reactions to David, they would need add in the ambient room noise or “room tone” to make it sound more…

  • Professionalism in Software Development

    Rod Claar
    19 Jun 2009 | 8:19 am
    I’m glad that people are really beginning to talk about Professionalism in our industry openly.  My good friend Scott Bain, has been talking about this for several years now and his book “Emergent Design” discusses the topic.  However many of his ideas, and more were recently presented in a great talk by Robert Martin at the RailsConf 09.  I don’t do Ruby, at least not yet, but Uncle Bob’s points are really about how well we do our job and how good our software really is. This talk is an hour, but it is very fun and you will be clamoring for more…
 
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    Agile Dad

  • The Agile Runway

    3 Nov 2009 | 2:56 pm
    Many teams and coaches profess that Agile means very little up front planning. In many cases, I do disagree with this statement. We do need a place to take off and land when we are intending to fly through our sprints. The question is has your organization discovered who might be responsible for making certain this runway was in place and operating properly? Who sets the tone of evaluating the experience as part of the discovery process to help determine if the flight pattern is one you wish to take again? Most importantly, who is part of the ground crew making certain the team and project…

  • Agile in 1948? Agileism?

    26 Oct 2009 | 8:29 am
    I just had a chance to watch a short cartoon about America and how it was back in 1948 and the things they worried and or cared about most. What I found most ironic, is that we are doing the same thing with Agile. When it works, the pieces to be improved become our whipping boy. When it fails, Agile itself is the whipping boy. Yet we allow these snake oil salesman to come into the industry and promote their silver bullet cure all methods of treatment. Take a look at the following video, then leave a comment regarding technical debt, the state of Agile, and the future of making the workplace a…

  • Understanding Technical Debt

    22 Oct 2009 | 7:37 am
    No matter how you look at it, debt is debt! Whether we are talking about improving our on personal credit score, or talking about how to decrease technical debt, the theory behind the madness is one in the same.Just as our creditors judge us based on our ability to earn a living compared to our outstanding judgements, we are judged on Agile projects based on our past delivery cycles and the assurance that we will be able to deliver on time in the future.In these tough economic times, many organizations have been forced to scale back spending and in many cases as a result have scaled back the…

  • The October Agile Mentor Newsletter

    21 Oct 2009 | 8:21 am
    Just so you are all aware, I am having problems with my FTP server so the Agile Mentor Newsletter for October has been delayed as a result. Crews are working around the clock to get the issue resolved. Thanks for your patience and remember to STAY AGILE! Lee ~ AgileDad

  • Taking some MUCH needed time off!

    22 Sep 2009 | 4:08 pm
    A wise person once told me that everyone needs a break sometimes! So do I! After multiple speaking engagements at conferences, some of the most amazing training classes I have ever offered, and a whole lot of time away from the family, I have decided to take a couple of weeks off.Someone asked me at Agile 2009, with all of the achievements you have had this year, now what do you hope to do? My answer, I am going to Disneyworld!I am certain I will be looking for all things Agile while I am there, but I am trying to do this sans computer or cell phone for the enjoyment of my family. Hopefully…
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    About Agility

  • Driving Agile Success - A CIO's Mandate

    Mike Jones
    20 Oct 2009 | 5:49 am
    The challenge we see in many Enterprise IT shops is that it is hard to get everyone across the business who touches application development 'on board' with an agile approach.  In this blog post I want to share how the CIO of one of our customers has set guidelines which help drive agile project delivery across the business.  The customer is a large Portuguese food distribution and consumer goods manufacturing company, with an international presence.  With nearly 25,000 employees they are used to having huge IT projects, involving multiple departments with complex requirements,…

  • Agile Development - A Juggling Act?

    Mike Jones
    13 Oct 2009 | 3:56 am
    We have recently started playing the "Ball Point Game" in some of our informal Agile learning sessions. This is a game played by some scrum trainers. The basic objective of the game is to get as many balls through the team as possible within two minutes. Each ball must be touched at least once by every team member and must end with the same person with whom it began. After two minutes the team is allowed an additional minute to discuss the process and how it could be improved. It is recommended that the game be played a total of five times or sprints. You can learn more about the game in this…

  • Who wants to be an Agilionaire?

    Rodrigo Coutinho
    24 Sep 2009 | 10:08 am
    OutSystems is all about Agile - and the same applies to our internal R&D team which has been using Agile since 2002. Because we've been using Agile for so long all the principles are pretty much entrenched in our culture - but as the company and the department grew, we started to feel the need to share our Agile knowledge with newcomers to the team.We considered several ways of doing this. We pondered doing a traditional PowerPoint presentation; we thought about assembling a mandatory reading list; we entertained the idea of adding support on our tools for some of the Agile tenets; and so…

  • Measuring Agile Success?

    Robert Neri
    21 Sep 2009 | 11:53 pm
    Last month our company announced its new Agility Awards - and the first set of awards were presented for five Agile projects that had been completed by customers and partners using  OutSystems' Agile Platform and employing Agile methodology.  The question I want to pose is what are good criteria for assessing a successful Agile project? This question builds on Mike's recent post about criteria for measuring an Agile project manager's success - and we got lots of great responses and ideas in the comments. The data points being used by the OutSystems team to evaluate whether projects…

  • Nine Useful Agile Resources

    Maysoon A
    16 Sep 2009 | 1:47 am
    New customers and partners often ask our consultants for recommendations of good sources of introductory information on Agile practices and Agile methodology - so we thought it might be useful to list of some of our favorites. Feel free to add your faves! In no particular order:Jutta Eckstein's book - Agile Development in the LargeMitch Lacey & Associates - for their Blog + PDF DecksJuergen Appelo's blog "Noop.nl"James Shore's Blog "The Art of Agile"Google Tech Talks: Elisabeth Hendrickson on Agile TestingCraig Larman's book "Agile & Iterative Development"  Dan North's Blog…
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