I’m not against Manual Testing, esp. Exploratory Testing. However one needs to consider the following issues with manual testing (checking) as listed below: Manual Tests are more expensive and time consuming Manual Testing becomes mundane and boring Manual Tests are not reusable Manual Tests provide limited visibility and have to be repeated by all Stakeholders Automated Tests (Checks) can have varying scopes and may require less complex setup and teardown Automated Testing ensures repeatability (missing out) Automated Testing drives cleaner design Automated Tests provide a safety net…
Agile
-
Most Topular Stories
-
Manual Testing vs. Automated Testing (Checking)
Managed Chaos16 Apr 2012 | 6:18 am -
Annual planning (not) by a cookbook, Part 2: “Guess Who’s Coming to Planning?”
Agile Development Blog: Scaling Software Agility27 Apr 2012 | 10:16 amWelcome back to my series on Rally’s process for annual planning. In the first post of this 4-part series about our planning, I offered you a glimpse into how we conducted some of the initial planning Iteration approach: from executive visioning through departmental ORIDs into deep preparation for the Iteration 3: the planning meeting. We chose to act as chefs in our approach versus follow a recipe. Our annual planning has iterations To reset the stage a bit, let me give a high-level view of our overall planning approach. Think about 5 iterations (not levels, iterations) of planning. We… -
Specialized Roles make you Dumb
Managed Chaos3 May 2012 | 3:18 pmSpecialized roles suck the distributed knowledge and skill from different practicing heads and tries to stuff it in one central place. The people who are freed of the additional skill (burden), slowly reduce practicing the skill and day-by-day they become weaker at that skill. Gradually, they are completely out of touch and stop caring about the skill. Ultimately, they start feeling that they are not qualified enough and also someone else with the specialized role is now really responsible for that skill. The person with the specialized role, is exposed to more situation & starts… -
Product Backlog and Taskboard Evaluation – JIRA
bor!sgloger15 May 2012 | 11:32 pmJIRA is everywhere. Everyone talks about it, everybody wants it, but not everybody can have it – why is that? In my first article, I announced that a series of articles will follow in which Scrum tools will be reviewed. This blog entry is the first of many in which I will evaluate currently available Scrum tools that are able to represent a taskboard. JIRA is a well-known issue tracking software developed and maintained by a company called Atlassian, that has a rich product portfolio in the field of software development, tracking and collaboration. Next to JIRA, Atlassian is also famous… -
Build Less, Start Sooner
All About Agile | Agile Development Made Easy!9 May 2012 | 2:30 amJeff Patton recently reminded me of two simple strategies for software development that I’ve talked about from time to time—Build Less Software and Start Sooner. I thought I’d follow up on Jeff’s blog and revisit these simple, but powerful strategies. First, managers and executives complain a lot... Visit my blog for the full story, links and lots more content on agile development and agile project management...
-
Agile Development Blog: Scaling Software Agility
-
Annual planning (not) by a cookbook, Part 2: “Guess Who’s Coming to Planning?”
27 Apr 2012 | 10:16 amWelcome back to my series on Rally’s process for annual planning. In the first post of this 4-part series about our planning, I offered you a glimpse into how we conducted some of the initial planning Iteration approach: from executive visioning through departmental ORIDs into deep preparation for the Iteration 3: the planning meeting. We chose to act as chefs in our approach versus follow a recipe. Our annual planning has iterations To reset the stage a bit, let me give a high-level view of our overall planning approach. Think about 5 iterations (not levels, iterations) of planning. We… -
5 Ways to Cheat Brooks’s Law and Speed Development Time
17 Apr 2012 | 2:03 pm“Can’t we just add more people to this project and ship sooner?” Many of us in the industry know this doesn’t tend to work very well. Back in the ’70s, in “The Mythical Man Month,” Fred Brooks coined a law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later. At Rally, I think we’ve figured out how to cheat this law. Back in October, we had a market event looming. Rally was planning to launch our new Portfolio Management solution in December, and our marketing group was lining up speakers like Geoffrey Moore to help launch the product in… -
Rally Is Denver Post’s “Top Workplaces 2012” Winner
16 Apr 2012 | 11:26 amIn Sunday’s Denver Post, Rally is celebrated as the Top Midsize Employer in Colorado. And, as if this exciting news weren’t enough, our CEO and my business partner for the last 20 years, Tim Miller, is also honored as a Top Leader in the state. He is one of only three executives selected from almost 200 local companies considered. Of course, this is not much news for me:) The results of The Denver Post’s 2012 Top Workplaces are based on surveys completed by over 25,000 local employees, highlighting local organizations that strive for excellence in their workplaces. The… -
Adventures at Agile India, with Craig Langenfeld
13 Apr 2012 | 1:11 pmCraig Langenfeld, Rally international technical account manager, traveled from Australia to India to attend the inaugural Agile India event. He shares his experience. Agile India! Rally has enjoyed partnering with many Indian teams throughout the years, so I was thrilled to be a part of the first Agile India conference. After spending time with my Indian counterparts, it’s clear that Agile is critical to changing the way software teams work together in India. It was impressive to see that this inaugural conference was sold out with over 700 attendees from 21 countries present. It… -
Rally’s London Agile Portfolio Management Forum
10 Apr 2012 | 4:58 pmAs part of the ongoing Agile Portfolio Management Series, Rally held an event in London on Friday, 30 March. Minutes from the Liverpool Street tube station, about 100 business, product and project managers met at the Andaz Hotel to discuss how to bridge the gap between development execution and business strategy. We not only had an impressive line-up of speakers, including Gartner Research Director David Norton, it was obvious that the attendees were passionate about enabling an iterative, flexible and pragmatic approach to aligning their organization’s development teams and their portfolio…
-
Managed Chaos
-
Specialized Roles make you Dumb
3 May 2012 | 3:18 pmSpecialized roles suck the distributed knowledge and skill from different practicing heads and tries to stuff it in one central place. The people who are freed of the additional skill (burden), slowly reduce practicing the skill and day-by-day they become weaker at that skill. Gradually, they are completely out of touch and stop caring about the skill. Ultimately, they start feeling that they are not qualified enough and also someone else with the specialized role is now really responsible for that skill. The person with the specialized role, is exposed to more situation & starts… -
Ways to Deal with Technical Debt
30 Apr 2012 | 3:40 pmAt the SDTConf, we had an interesting discussion on how to deal with technical debt. The group agreed on the following suggestions: C3: Coverage, Complexity & Churn – Instead of looking at each of these parameters in isolation, we generate C3 graph using a TreeMap and use the cumulative graph to see red spots in the product. Esp. helpful to quickly raise awareness. Slack: Every team members gets a 10-20% time every iteration to invest on things that hurt them. Scratch your Personal Itch day: Every iteration each team members gets 1 day to fix unplanned issues on the project… -
Manual Testing vs. Automated Testing (Checking)
16 Apr 2012 | 6:18 amI’m not against Manual Testing, esp. Exploratory Testing. However one needs to consider the following issues with manual testing (checking) as listed below: Manual Tests are more expensive and time consuming Manual Testing becomes mundane and boring Manual Tests are not reusable Manual Tests provide limited visibility and have to be repeated by all Stakeholders Automated Tests (Checks) can have varying scopes and may require less complex setup and teardown Automated Testing ensures repeatability (missing out) Automated Testing drives cleaner design Automated Tests provide a safety net… -
My Upcoming US Trip
7 Apr 2012 | 4:57 amNo. Cities Reaching Departing 1 New York 8-April 7:55 AM 9-April afternoon drive to Malvern 2 Philadelphia 9-April 6:00 PM 11-April 12:13 am – Amtrack Philadelphia (PHL) to Boston (BOS) 3 Boston 11-April 8:00 AM 12-April morning drive to Vermont 4 Vermont 12-April 8:00 AM 12-April evening drive back to Boston 5 Boston 12-April Late night 13-April morning drive to Niagara falls 6 Niagara Falls 13-April 11:00 AM 14-April evening drive back to Boston 7 Boston 15-April 10:00 PM SouthWest 621 Depart BOS at 16th April 04:25 PM 8 Salt Lake City 16-April 9:10 PM SouthWest 1174 Depart SLC at… -
The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors
29 Mar 2012 | 9:38 pmFound this SEO Raking Factors represented in a periodic table refreshing. Thanks to Search Engine Land for creating this.
-
bor!sgloger
-
Product Backlog and Taskboard Evaluation – JIRA
15 May 2012 | 11:32 pmJIRA is everywhere. Everyone talks about it, everybody wants it, but not everybody can have it – why is that? In my first article, I announced that a series of articles will follow in which Scrum tools will be reviewed. This blog entry is the first of many in which I will evaluate currently available Scrum tools that are able to represent a taskboard. JIRA is a well-known issue tracking software developed and maintained by a company called Atlassian, that has a rich product portfolio in the field of software development, tracking and collaboration. Next to JIRA, Atlassian is also famous… -
Communities are Communication Bridges
14 May 2012 | 1:08 amIn my last post I made my case for describing organizations in terms of communication structures. Persons that are interacting much with each other should be in one cluster within the organization. Bridges between clusters are needed and are created by communication paths between at least one member of each cluster. By crossing multiple bridges everyone will be connected to most other people in the organization. Let’s imagine in the situation above the organization is distributed across different locations and the teams each develop software based on a shared data base but with different… -
Was der Berliner Flughafen mit agilen Werten zu tun hat
9 May 2012 | 6:46 amDie Schlagzeile des heutigen Tages, die Deutschland, Airlines und Passagiere weltweit nervös macht: Die Eröffnung des neuen Berliner Flughafens wird auf unbestimmte Zeit verschoben. Der 3. Juni als Eröffnungstermin ist Geschichte. Niemand kann sagen, wann der Willy Brandt-Flughafen bereit sein wird, sich den Reisenden zu stellen. Man hört von sechs Wochen Verschiebung. Der Prestige- und Vorzeigebau wird nicht fertig. Deutschland ist (mehr oder weniger) schockiert. Und eine der Fragen, die sich die Medien stellen, lautet: „Warum hat niemand früher gesagt, dass es länger dauert?“… -
Agile and Organizational Structures
8 May 2012 | 4:39 amPutting up a Kanban board or holding daily Scrum meetings does not make an agile organization. Neither does the adherence to all the Scrum or Kanban – or whatever else – rules. You may even succeed in becoming really agile on a micro basis in your organization: The teams get a beautifully groomed backlog from their Product Owner, they deliver software at the end of each iteration and they inspect and adapt to get better in their own processes. And, I am sure, it already helps a lot with their productivity and motivation. But then comes along the boss And it is usually not a… -
Spielerisch für Veränderungen sorgen
2 May 2012 | 3:10 pmUm einen Tisch sitzen sechs Product Owner und ein ScrumMaster. Die POs sind mit Post-its und Stiften bewaffnet. In der Mitte des Tisches liegt eine Spielkarte. Sie ist verdeckt. Der ScrumMaster dreht die verdeckte Karte um. Darauf ist eine Kreidetafel mit folgendem Inhalt zu sehen: „Wegen Zu geschlossen! Neueröffnung März 2007“. Der ScrumMaster gibt die kurze Anweisung: „2 Minuten Zeit. An die Stifte, fertig, los!“ – und die Product Owner beginnen mit dem Schreiben. Ihr fragt euch, was hier gerade passiert? Hier spielt ein Product Owner Team „Happy Aua“. Das ursprünglich…
-
All About Agile | Agile Development Made Easy!
-
Build Less, Start Sooner
9 May 2012 | 2:30 amJeff Patton recently reminded me of two simple strategies for software development that I’ve talked about from time to time—Build Less Software and Start Sooner. I thought I’d follow up on Jeff’s blog and revisit these simple, but powerful strategies. First, managers and executives complain a lot... Visit my blog for the full story, links and lots more content on agile development and agile project management... -
Alternatives to bureaucratic hierarchy
7 May 2012 | 10:59 amI don’t doubt that its possible to have an organization with out traditional managers. I’ve read about Semco and Morningstar Farms. I’ve talked to people who work at Gore. My husband works for a less well know firm that doesn’t have traditional managers. But those companies... Visit my blog for the full story, links and lots more content on agile development and agile project management... -
An Agile Game – Management by Walking Around
7 May 2012 | 2:30 amImage: Stuart MilesIt’s time for another Agile game that you coaches, trainers and ScrumMasters out there can use to educate your teams. This is a fast, easy and physically engaging one that illustrates how simple rules and time boxes can create a s... Visit my blog for the full story, links and lots more content on agile development and agile project management... -
Self-Awareness Matters: Finding Your Filters
3 May 2012 | 12:41 pmI remember sitting in a project meeting back when I worked for a Big Company. The project manager, Ted, announced the top three priorities. When I offered a different view point, Ted declared, “You’re wrong. We decided on these priorities yesterday.” He didn’t notice six... Visit my blog for the full story, links and lots more content on agile development and agile project management... -
No Bull!
2 May 2012 | 8:57 pmSimon Baker from Energized Work has written a great paper about whether or not twelve years of agile has really changed anything in the world of software development? In the paper, Simon writes about the industry as a whole and his own personal experience, in what I think is a really interesting... Visit my blog for the full story, links and lots more content on agile development and agile project management...
-
Agile Software Development
-
Test-Driving QML. Helsinki version
16 May 2012 | 9:00 amOn May 16, 2011 I was taking part in the Helsinki Qt meetup . I was talking there about how you can test-drive your QML projects using a semi-official qtest-qml library. Here are the slides and the example code. Test driving-qml View more presentations from AgileArtem. This presentation has only minor changes from a year old Tampere version. -
Daily wallpaper 1.1 for Nokia N9. Knows how to cut and rotate
18 Jan 2012 | 3:23 amDirect Nokia Store link - http://store.ovi.com/content/214273 I've released the free Daily Wallpaper for Nokia N9 a couple of months ago. Since that time it enjoyed nearly nine thousands of downloads (quite a number for this platform) and was keeping me personally entertained. Once an hour (or once a day or once a month) it is downloading the fresh cool wallpaper from flickr and every time I unlock the phone I can enjoy a new interesting photo. Since the moment of release, the most popular request (sometimes even causing the low rating in the Nokia Store) was not to rotate the too wide… -
Winter holidays: 50% discount on Easy Discount Calculator for Nokia N9 and Symbian phones
28 Dec 2011 | 6:47 amFor those too busy to read the whole post: from now and until the end of winter you can get Easy Discount Calculator for Symbian and Nokia N9 for 50% cheaper (1 euro in most of the countries) from Nokia Store at http://store.ovi.com/content/186742 I am a big fan of small utilities tuned for the very concrete purpose. And I don't enjoy messing with the lots of discount calculations. You know, when one headset for my phone was 49 euro and now it it is 33% cheaper, but then there is the other one that used to be 69 euro and now it is 40% cheaper. How much do they actually cost? Simple, elegant,… -
Daily Wallpaper - a top photo & video download for Nokia N9. Free until Christmas 2011
18 Dec 2011 | 1:48 pm -
How to make your QML applications scale to and look nice on Symbian, MeeGo/Harmattan and android
9 Oct 2011 | 7:35 amYesterday I was talking at the 2nd Tampere barcamp about how you can make your application automatically scale to different devices, yet allow for pixel perfect fine-tuning when needed. We used this approach for Easy Discount Calculator that is to my understanding the first real app available simultaneously for Symbian, MeeGo/Harmattan and Android (on some Android devices it runs smoothly, on som it has problems due to bugs in not yet mature the porting technology). Unfortunately the presentation may not make much sense to you if you haven’t been to the barcamp as well, but you may like to…
-
ScrumAlliance
-
Seven Things I Wish I'd Known When I Started out as a ScrumMaster
14 May 2012 | 10:45 amTypically, when an organization starts using Scrum, the person chosen to play the role of ScrumMaster comes from some sort of managerial background. The organization expects that the manager, the so-called Master, will get the Scrum project deli... -
PM 101: Dealing with Team and Customer
14 May 2012 | 10:38 amAgile processes are gaining in popularity, which means many project managers are following them for the first time. Based on my own experience, I've developed a sort of primer for PMs starting out on Agile projects. The key points are as follows: ... -
Fira Palace Guest Room Request
7 May 2012 | 4:38 pm -
Empowerment: The Missing Ingredient for Scrum Teams
7 May 2012 | 4:28 pmWe all understand that Scrum teams should be self-managed and self-organized. Empowered is the commonly used term, because without empowerment it's difficult for self-management and self-organization to happen. I've worked with many teams that ar... -
Scrum Alliance Newsletter: May, 2012
2 May 2012 | 10:13 am
-
Alliance News
-
Agile2012 Program Announced
7 May 2012 | 2:21 pmThe Agile Alliance today announced its full conference program for Agile2012. The finalized schedule is available for review at (http://agile2012.agilealliance.org/program/schedule/). Agile2012, the world’s largest conference for Agile teams, developers, managers and executives, will take place Aug. 13-17 in Grapevine (Dallas area), Texas (www.agile2012.com).... -
Agile2013 Chairperson Announced
3 May 2012 | 11:33 amKent McDonald has been named chair of the Agile2013 conference, to be held in Nashville, Tennessee, August 5 - 9, 2013..... -
Agile2012 Super Earlybird Registrations Sold Out!
17 Apr 2012 | 5:43 pmSuper Earlybird Registrations for Agile2012 are now sold out. Register now to get the Earlybird rate! Not a member? Sign up to receive the Earlybird discount now..... -
Danish translation published
18 Nov 2011 | 1:10 pmThe Danish translation of the Agile Manifesto has now been published!.... -
Agile2011 Review
17 Aug 2011 | 11:12 pmAgile2011 Review....
-
Blog
-
Cursos en línea y presenciales de preparación para el examen de PMI-ACP en Español.
7 May 2012 | 7:36 amEstamos muy complacidos de anunciar que a partir de Mayo estaremos ofreciendo cursos, tanto presenciales como en línea, de preparación para el examen de certificación PMI-ACP. Contamos con un grupo de expertos internacionales para impartirlos. Los cursos están diseñados de tal manera que podemos transmitir los conocimientos muy efectivamente en ambos formatos. Los cursos serán impartidos en horarios que se acomodan a las necesidades de las personas, incluyendo días completos y medios días en turnos matutinos, vespertinos y nocturnos. -
PMI-ACP Instructor Quality- By Stacia Viscardi
10 Apr 2012 | 3:14 pmAs the PMI-ACP certification gains in popularity, there are many emerging choices for instructors or instructing organizations. We feel strongly that you must research your choices in order to ensure that you have a high-quality instructor! “Well, I only care to pass the exam!” you might exclaim. True, yet a certification alone won’t help you do the job. We see this in all aspects of life, whether it’s a professional with a degree being outwitted by someone who is self-taught, a Certified ScrumMaster who doesn’t know sprint from release planning, and we’ll see this soon with the… -
A ScrumMaster's Best Defense: Visibility
10 Apr 2012 | 3:10 pmAs you know, one of the primary roles of the ScrumMaster is to keep the delivery team focused on accomplishing their sprint goal. There are many distractions that can prevent a delivery team from meeting their commitment to the sprint, the ScrumMaster’s best defense? Complete visibility. Something is visible if it is easily observed and visibility provides a clear, unobstructed view. Visibility is one of the three legs of empirical process control used in Scrum (transparency, followed by inspection, and then adaptation). -
Considerations for Transitioning Your PMO
10 Apr 2012 | 3:01 pmEvery PMO needs to manage the transition as their organization adopts Agile development practices and the Scrum framework to manage the work. Here are 4 tips to successfully transition your PMO: Invest in Project Managers- Consider 4 Questions: Are the project managers on your team trained for their role within the new process framework? Project managers need to know the fundamentals of Agile and Scrum: why these methods place value on principles and practices that seem counter-intuitive to what has been done before, how the mechanical processes differs from traditional waterfall, the defined… -
Do I Qualify to Take the PMI ACP Exam?
10 Apr 2012 | 11:02 amA quick search on any job board will tell you that project managers with Agile knowledge and experience are in high demand. Gartner predicts that within two years, 80% of all software projects will be using Agile practices. Combine these two data points and it seems like the demand for those who know how to apply Agile methods to their projects will only increase. Don’t get left behind! Successfully passing the PMI-ACP exam and getting your certification could give you that competitive advantage when you are looking for your next opportunity. If you are now convinced that getting the…
-
agile « WordPress.com Tag Feed
-
Growing Software like a Plant
8 May 2012 | 1:30 pmMaybe it is helpful to view the development of a software in using an Agile approach as being like way that a small tree grows. In contrast, development of software using waterfall is like that of a factory. The difference between a tree and a factory tells us a lot about the difference of these two styles of software management. How Plants Grow The plant spreads the first two leaves, it starts to gather energy from the sun. It starts to collect minerals and water from the soil. It grows by adding to itself incrementally. At every point in time, the leaves have to function. At… -
Architecture and modeling in an agile world
8 May 2012 | 11:29 amFor five years ago, I wrote a paper on modeling. Since then, agile practices have pretty much become mainstream in our industry. So, perhaps it’s time to revisit the topic of architecture and modeling again… Let’s start with architecture itself: as I wrote in an earlier post, my fear and impression is that while agile practices certainly make sense, I’m also noticing a decline of the importance placed upon architecture in general occurring in parallel, that is, organizations now doing agile practices seem to “care” less about the architectural workflows… -
The reuse paradox
8 May 2012 | 9:46 amA few days ago a college was saying that code reuse has never been made to work, I do not agree. I do believe that it can not be done to its full potential with out Design-by-Contract. But it is nether the less done all the time. Her assertion that only a small fraction of code is reused is irrelevant as shown below. Imagine you have some code of 100 lines. Now 50 of those lines are used more that once. So we think we can improve this and refactor the code. Now we have 80 line of code (because of greater reuse) of which 35 are reused. But what does your metric look like it was 50/100=50% now… -
Software Engineer
8 May 2012 | 6:47 amSoftware Engineer Job Description: The Software engineer is responsible for developing high quality, multi-tier, enterprise software products based on a provided software design specification. Key Responsibilities Are As Outlined Below: · Write production-quality code or functionality as directed by manager or project manager · Build and test code to validate functionality against requirements. · Deliver code that is well documented and easily understood by experienced technical resources. · Participate in software code reviews to verify completeness and quality of delivered code ·… -
Demystifying Agile: Rants of a Madman – Getting Started - Planning Poker
7 May 2012 | 7:25 pmSo here is something that I’ve seen work really well with Agile teams: Estimating how long a story will take with a deck of playing cards. Yes, you heard me right…playing cards. Hang tight and I’ll tell you how… I’ve seen just about every type of bottoms up estimating technique known to man fail over the years. I bet you’ve seen them as well. You have the “Manager’s Choice” where he/she just makes stuff up. You also have “Ask the smart guy” where the manager dumps all the estimating on one propeller head who codes better and faster than any other mortal and…
-
scrum « WordPress.com Tag Feed
-
Impediments - Removing the pain factor from estimates
29 Apr 2012 | 5:29 amWhen teams or individuals are asked to estimate it is common for them to include a ‘pain factor’ on a particular piece of work. The thought ‘it’s always difficult to make this change because of this process so I’m going to allow x more to complete this task’ is fine but when this is just embedded into the estimate the opportunity to remove the impediment can be lost. This frequently refers to an impediment that has been in place for so long that it has become embedded and is no longer challenged. The impediment has now become accepted as a part of their… -
Software quality is a Disco Ball
29 Apr 2012 | 5:13 amIn software development, Quality is an overused term that has different meanings, depending on who is using it. Everybody is proud to produce quality deliverables, but what does it really mean? User and Supplier perspectives From a user perspective, a quality product has the right functionalities, and many well-known characteristics as a high availability and reliability or simplicity. It is also a product that is associated to the right services: the provider provides a good level of support and is available to answer to user requests. From the Supplier perspective Quality may means that an… -
Degrees of agility
29 Apr 2012 | 4:20 amGoogle “agile software development” (and by the way, any company that gets their name turned into a universally-used verb has seriously ‘made it’) and you will find literally hundreds of thousands of articles and blogs telling you exactly how to be “truly” agile. Read a bunch of them and it is perfectly possible to get confused by it all. So many different opinions exist (and some are in this blog too) as to the ‘right’ way to run a stand-up or write user stories or improve your team’s velocity…. it is all too easy to conclude that… -
Agile Manifesto Posters
28 Apr 2012 | 1:05 pmOn the hunt I really wanted to find a good Agile Manifesto poster, and failed miserably. I can’t readily print a web page and display it, it’s too ugly. Nor do I care to register (or provide my email details) to download a poster, that’s not a great way to engage visitors. I also encountered overcomplicated low resolution images – no use. I wasn’t alone It looks like I was not alone in my dissatisfaction. Rich Daley blogged about his similar experiences, and I found the same monstrosity he did. Rich was thoughtful enough to provide his own version, which I… -
Cynical Scrum Humor
27 Apr 2012 | 10:43 pmI totally love Scrum, and I love irony, especially when there’s a bit of truth to keep you humble. This is a glossary that turns agile terms on their heads: http://www.yuriy-zubarev.com/blog/2012/04/24/cynical-agile-scrum-dictionary.html One of my favorites – the second definition of Scrum Master: Scrum Master a person who removes stumbling blocks and in so-doing eventually self destructs a person with a stopwatch, a squeaky toy, and a whistle That’s what I need! A squeaky toy! One that I think is particularly poignant: Agile Manifesto a document that tipped the balance…
-
Alistair.Cockburn.us Rss Feed
-
OOMCube100.png
23 Apr 2012 | 4:39 amRecent Change Note: from The Impact of Object Orientation on Application Development 1993 -
Interesting little proof that square root of 2 is irrational
15 Dec 2011 | 6:01 pmReading “My Mind is Open” about mathematician Paul Erdos (thanks, Mho) I saw but didn’t have time to digest the simple proof that sqrt2 is irrational. So I did it in my head in the taxi on the way to the hotel. But I have never been happy with proof-by-contradiction, because exactly as the woman in the book said, I always feel like I got lied to in the beginning. So I invented the “can’t possibly equal” symbol: for the sole purpose of being able to present the proof forwards. Here it is, the first-ever proof using the cantpossiblyequal symbol, that the… -
A story about the last responsible moment and real options
19 Nov 2011 | 10:18 am“Jobs couldn’t decide whether to use the version with his voice or to stick with Dreyfuss. Finally, the night came when they had to ship the ad; it was due to air, appropriately enough, on the television premier of ‘Toy Story’. As was often the case, Jobs did not like to be forced to make a decision. He told Clow to ship both versions; this would give him until the morning to decide. When morning came, Jobs called and told them to use the Dreyfuss version.” (from “Steve Jobs”, by Walter Isaacson, p 331) A perfect story for Last Responsible Moment… -
oomcube.png
13 Nov 2011 | 6:42 pmRecent Change Note: Precursor to Crystal, not bad for 1992! -
Sweeping the lines on a clay tennis court
6 Nov 2011 | 4:50 pmA friend showed up on my doorstep the other day, dressed in tennis whites with smudges from the clay courts. Those were indeed the days when one was supposed to wear white on tennis courts, especially on the clay tennis courts at private tennis clubs. She wanted my advice on, of all things, the shortest walking distance for sweeping the lines on the clay court after playing. True… after playing hard tennis for an hour, she wanted to save a few steps while brushing the dust off the lines as required by club rules. (Indeed, most of the tennis players I’ve met would dearly love to know…
-
Managing Product Development
-
Programs and Technical Debt
15 May 2012 | 10:09 amOnce you have a program (a collection of interrelated projects focused on one business goal) and you have technical debt, you have a much bigger problem. Not just because the technical debt is likely bigger. Not just because you have more people. But because you also geographically distributed teams, and those teams are almost always separated by function and time zone. So, my nice example of a collocated team in Thoughts on Infrastructure, Technical Debt, and Automated Test Framework, rarely occurs in a program, unless you have cross-functional teams collocated in a program. If they do,… -
Management Myth #3 and #4 Posted at Techwell
9 May 2012 | 7:04 amI’ve been writing a series of management myths this year. I didn’t realize when myth #3 went live and #4 went live yesterday. Management Myth #3: We Must Treat Everyone the Same Way and Management Myth #4: I Don’t Need One-on-Ones are up. Please leave comments over at Techwell. -
Why Does Management Care About Velocity?
8 May 2012 | 9:36 amI’ve been talking to people whose management cares about their velocity. “My management wants us to double our velocity.” Or, “My management wants us to do more in a sprint.” Or, “My management wants to know when we will be a hyper-performing team, so they want to know when we will get 12x velocity like Scrum promised.” “Double Your Velocity” is an agile schedule game. It’s easy to manage–you double the points you assign to your stories. Whee! You’ve just doubled your velocity. No muss, no fuss. But let’s understand… -
Pragmatic Managers Posted
4 May 2012 | 8:38 amI have posted my two most recent Pragmatic Manager email newsletters: Building Rapport Distributed? Yes. Alone? No. If you think you subscribe, but you are not receiving your own personal copy, email me. We’ll discern what is going on with your subscription and fix it. If you don’t already subscribe, and you would like your own subscription, either sign up using the handy-dandy form on the right, or email me, and I can add you myself. -
Great Recollections from the Geographically Distributed Teams Workshop
25 Apr 2012 | 8:42 amShane and the participants and I had a great time at the Geographically Distributed Agile Teams workshop last week. We ran a couple of simulations, and here are some of the emails the teams had: Do you have something for us to test yet? We have completed the card Hi again. I didn’t hear back from you yesterday on this. We’ve already lost a day of status. Please find some time today to send us your status. Hurry. I need to test! Hi guys and gals, in the standup you mentioned that you had questions about the requirements. Could you please provide us with details regarding the…
-
Insights You Can Use
-
The Elements of Improvement
14 May 2012 | 7:18 amImprovement requires three factors: Information. People need information about the context and how their work fits into the big picture. They need information from the work so they can self-correct. Without this information, systematic improvement is impossible. A desire to improve. Most people want to do their best and learn to do better–until that impulse is squashed. One-sided evaluations, organizational hurdles, relentless pressure strangle the desire to improve. Time to reflect and learn. People need time to design and implement new processes, and practice new skills. Relentless… -
Self-Awareness Matters: Finding Your Filters
3 May 2012 | 12:41 pmI remember sitting in a project meeting back when I worked for a Big Company. The project manager, Ted, announced the top three priorities. When I offered a different view point, Ted declared, “You’re wrong. We decided on these priorities yesterday.” He didn’t notice six out of eight people at the table shaking their heads “No.” Ted didn’t notice the responses and reactions of people around him. He also didn’t notice that he didn’t notice. We all have filters. That’s a good thing–our cognitive systems can’t… -
Alternatives to bureaucratic hierarchy
23 Apr 2012 | 10:59 amI don’t doubt that its possible to have an organization with out traditional managers. I’ve read about Semco and Morningstar Farms. I’ve talked to people who work at Gore. My husband works for a less well know firm that doesn’t have traditional managers. But those companies didn’t get there by happenstance. They got there by design. People chose, designed, evolved practices and structures to support a specific culture. They didn’t take off-the-shelf models of functional or product based organizational structures. They didn’t slide into typical… -
What do middle managers do?
16 Apr 2012 | 12:38 pmLast week, someone tweeted that the C-suite “gets agile,” but middle managers “resist” it. I also saw a tweet that the C-suite doesn’t get agile, but middle management does. I don’t doubt the observations of either of these tweeters. I have observed situations where both senior and middle managers saw the value in moving towards a team-based organization and iterative incremental delivery. In my experience, it’s a little more common for middle managers to hold onto the existing pattern. And why not? When they don’t see their place in agile they… -
Hiring is a Team Activity
9 Apr 2012 | 11:32 amIn an earlier article, I said, “Hiring new people for a team should always be a joint decision that involves team members.” After all, who has more at stake than the people who will work with the new person day in and day out? Consider what happened when a well-intentioned manager decided to hire without involving the team. His rationale was the team had fallen into group-think and needed “new blood” to shake them up. When I visited, I found a fractured team. The new member struggled for credibility. Half the team wouldn’t speak to him. The other half of the team spoke to…
-
Agile Management | NOOP.NL
-
What's Your Reason to Join the Stampede?
16 May 2012 | 10:37 amWhy do people register for the Stoos Stampede in Amsterdam? Let’s try and make some educated guesses by using the champfrogs schale. Curiosity I am sure plenty of change agents are curious to know how this new kind of event will play out. Will it lead to actionable results for organizational transformation? Will it lead to nothing? No better way to know than to be there. Honor Maybe some will feel it an honor to be there. It will be the first “stampede” under the Stoos umbrella name. And there are already rumors that others will follow on other continents. It’s great to be among the… -
Deferred Terminology
15 May 2012 | 7:38 amOh, how we love discussions about terminology… Is my course about management or leadership? Are the problems we discuss complex or complicated? Do the teams need coaches or mentors? Should they have responsibility or accountability? Are we being agile or lean? The discussions about terminology go on and on. Yes, I’ve been guilty about this too. I love a good fight about a few letters, every now and then. :-) But does it matter? After more than a decade we should know that we can make good progress in our work despite uncertainty, fuzzy boundaries, diverse opinions, and minimal… -
People Don't Ask Questions
14 May 2012 | 10:21 amPeople don’t bother with understanding. Really, they don’t. When I tweet something like “Maybe it’s interesting to care more about polar bears” I get replies in the form of “It is a bad idea to own penguins” or “Indeed, global warming is a big problem”. But I was neither referring to penguins, nor ownership, nor global warming. When I complain about something like “Riding my bicycle is a real pain” half a dozen people will suggest that I switch to a submarine or a spaceship. But submarines and spaceships are totally different kinds of things than bicycles. They… -
My 2nd Book is Out: How to Change the World
8 May 2012 | 12:18 pmFrom complexity thinkers I picked up that it is good to experiment, in safe-to-fail ways. Well, I’m now experimenting being a self-publisher, and I perform this experiment with a little book (or booklet) called How to Change the World. It was already available earlier in PDF in both A4 and Letter formats. But people have been asking for Kindle and paper versions. And where there’s demand, there should be supply. So here it is… Order How to Change the World on Kindle Order How to Change the World in Paperback The new booklet is based on my popular How to Change the World presentation,… -
Eating Elephants
7 May 2012 | 3:31 amHow do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. My Big Projects I started working on my third book. It requires a significant amount of research (and some writing). Every week I read, and every week I write. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. But no week goes by without at least some progress. I could even measure it, if I wanted. (But I know I’m moving forward, so I don’t bother.) I am also cleaning up my contact lists on Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, and other websites. It’s a huge task. I have 4,000 “contacts” in Gmail alone. But every week I set aside 30 minutes, and I clean up a…
-
Michael Feathers
-
Type Driven Development
27 Apr 2012 | 2:25 pmThe other day, Uncle Bob Martin wrote an interesting blog about estimation. The problem he used as an example was a simple line break algorithm. The typical way of implementing something like that withTDD involves building up your solution in small steps, maintaining state variables to keep track of where you are as you traverse the text. I'm pretty sure that maintaining indices as state is a major cause of grief as people move toward a solution, so I started wondering.. what would a pure functional solution to this problem look like and would you get to it in small steps? -
My Satisfaction with Git: No Abstraction
26 Apr 2012 | 1:29 pmWe like to think that there is a lot about technology that is objective, but I can't count the number of times that I thought that particular design choices made no sense until I understood why they were made. Before I understand, design choices often look awful. After I understand, my annoyance is often transformed into the realization that I'm probably getting more than I expected. When I read My Problem with Git: No Abstraction this morning, I felt like it had the first part down. The author bemoaned many of the design choices in git. He's not… -
The Tyranny of the Diff
7 Apr 2012 | 4:43 pmI spent a lot of time thinking about the little things that we do that affect software development. When things are easy, people tend to do them. When they are hard, they don't do them as much. That much is self-evident. The thing that we often forget is that code is the sum of all of the things we do in relation to it, so we shouldn't be surprised when process-y and language things affect our code. The thing I'm wondering about now is our practices around using diffs in our version control systems. It just stands to reason that looking at diffs of… -
Tell Above, and Ask Below - Hybridizing OO and Functional Design
20 Mar 2012 | 2:05 pmI have an idea I’ve been holding back for a while because I think it is wrong. It’s just too general to be true, and the argument that I use for it is, well, a bit abstract, but I think there is something there. Here it goes. Object-orientation is better for the higher levels of a system, and functional programming is better for the lower levels. Interesting idea, but how do we get there? Well, for me it comes back to the basics of the approaches. There are many different flavors of functional programming - many different definitions, but at their core is one central… -
Temporal Correlation of Class Changes
26 Sep 2011 | 10:22 amHow do you know that you have the right architecture for your application? First of all, we have to define what "right" is, and there are many opinions. One worthwhile goal for an application is to have classes that are reasonably independent. If we have some functional change to make, we should be able to go to a single class and make the change. If we have to modify several classes it could be because we are introducing a large feature, or it could be because of the way that our application is decomposed. Adding a field to a model class might…
-
Partnership & Possibilities
-
Adaptive Action Method: An HSD Retrospective
14 May 2012 | 9:30 amDiana has written previously about the Human Systems Dynamics Institute and their excellent program that provides models and methods for dealing with our VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) world of complex adaptive human systems. In this post she focuses on the HSD Adaptive Action model and its unexpected connection to retrospectives: In 2006 Esther and I introduced a Flexible Framework for Agile Retrospectives, a series of stages for designing effective retrospectives: Set the Stage; Gather Data; Generate Insights; Decide What to Do; and Close the Retrospective. We recommended a… -
Project Weather
7 May 2012 | 9:30 amby Diana Larsen Add “Project Weather” to your retrospective design to both “Set the Stage” and “Close the Retrospective”. As an opening, it provides a useful segue into creating a shared story and begins the process of gathering data. As a closing, it illustrates any shifts in team members’ perspectives that have occurred as a result of their collaboration in the retrospective. To Prepare: Create a pre-drawn flip chart with a heading at the top: Project Weather. Add hand drawn graphics across the top, like a sun coming out from behind clouds, clouds… -
The Art of Agile: NYC
20 Mar 2012 | 8:55 amTake your Agile knowledge to the next level and learn how to effectively implement Agile methods to make ‘good’ teams brilliant. Join industry experts, James Shore and Diana Larsen, for an in-depth immersion into real-world Agile development. Learn how to plan and deliver Agile projects and practice doing so in real teams delivering working software. The training emphasizes real-word experiences and promotes a hands-on approach for students. Days 1 & 2: The Art of Agile Planning (April 23rd - April 24th) Discover how to use Agile methods and how to plan an Agile project. You will… -
Work-Life Balance: What Does It Mean to You?
1 Feb 2012 | 8:00 amIn December 2011, cbsnews.com published an article by Dave Logan, Ph.D., author of Tribal Leadership, suggesting that “work-life balance “ is a crock, an idea whose time has come and gone. Although I too have felt that this is an unrealistic ideal, I’m not so sure that I could clearly articulate what I do believe about this idea. I decided to take a look at some other current commentators writing about work and life balance. Here’s a sample of what I found: David Greuse at Convergence Design, noted that “…we reject the notion of work-life balance, although we take the idea very… -
An Opportunity: Strategies for Responding to Today’s Unpredictable, Complex and Emergent Environments
22 Dec 2011 | 1:03 pmAs part of my commitment to my own professional development, a few months ago I attended a certification training program on effective practices in organizational change and leadership development. Although it required more time commitment than usual on my part, I found the experience well worth it. I would make the same decision again if I had it to do over. So when I heard that the Human Systems Dynamics Institute was bringing its HSDP Certification Training Program to Portland in January 2012, I wanted to share my experiences and how the HSD methodology has positively impacted my…
-
Scaling Software Agility
-
Scaled Agile Framework Updates
14 May 2012 | 3:32 pmTwo (or maybe three) things: 1) The Upcoming May SAFe certification class is sold out. The next available is July 23-26. You can register here: 2) I’ve put up a few update posts at ScaledAgileFramework.com. They are http://scaledagileframework.com/announcing-the-scaled-agile-academy-and-updated-safe-certification-program/ http://scaledagileframework.com/may-certification-class-is-sold-out-next-available-is-july-16-19/ http://scaledagileframework.com/team-level-details/ -
Scaled Agile Framework Practitioner and Consultant Certification Curriculum
18 Apr 2012 | 9:04 amWe’ve finalized the first release of the Scaled Agile Framework (pronounced SAFe) consultant certification curriculum. It’s posted at my Scaled Agile, Inc. partner’s website here: http://www.scaledagile.com/downloads/SAFe_Certification_Curriculum_17-APR-12.pdf The curriculum establishes three continuing levels of certification: SAfe Practitioner, SAFe Program Consultant, and SAF Program and Portfolio Consultant, aligning reasonably well to the levels (Team, Program and Portfolio) of the framework itself. We’ve tried to establish a balance between a rigorous curriculum… -
Scaled Agile Framework Detail Pages for User Stories and Developers Testers
18 Apr 2012 | 8:53 amWe’ve completed User Stories (stories) and Developer and Tester detail pages to the Scaled Agile Framework. Thanks to Alex Yakyma for pushing these over the top. -
New Scaled Agile Framework Content
31 Mar 2012 | 8:46 amWe’ve just pushed three new detail pages to the Scaled Agile Framework™: Spikes, Tasks and Agile/Scrum Master. (Thanks to Colin O’Neill for the extra push on these). FYI, all icons on the Framework already have abstracts, so it useable and navigable. We are in the process of filling in the detail pages bottom up, starting primarily with the Team Level. That will take us until about summer. (see the Roadmap). Also, in case you missed it, we have now added a blog page where we will post updates. You can subscribe there so you don’t have to search for updates. -
Scaled Agile Framework Certification Now Available
26 Mar 2012 | 5:04 pmAn Invitation I’m pleased to announce that Leffingwell, LLC. and Scaled Agile Academy (a division of Scaled Agile, Inc.) are collaborating on a training and certification process intended for consultants and agile working group leaders interested in deploying the Scaled Agile Framework (SAF, pronounced “safe”). About the Scaled Agile Framework™ Readers of this blog know that the framework is a proven, codified, and publicly-facing knowledge base that has been used to successfully scale Lean|Agile development at a number of large software enterprises. The purpose of SAF is to:…
-
James Shore
-
Announcing: Test-Driven Javascript Screencast
15 May 2012 | 3:02 am15 May 2012 James Shore/Blog It's alive! Let's Code: Test-Driven Javascript has been launched on Kickstarter. Let's Code: Test-Driven Javascript is my new screencast series focusing on Javascript, TDD, Node.js, and professional web development. It's a response to the success of my Let's Play TDD series, which has grown to be truly massive--189 videos and 45 hours, at the time of this writing. Where the original series focuses on Java and Swing, the new series focuses on Javascript and web technologies. Many people I meet don't bother testing the front-end logic in their web applications. But… -
Let's Play TDD #189: A State-Based Approach
15 May 2012 | 3:01 am15 May 2012 James Shore/Blog/Lets-Play The source code for this episode is available here. Visit the Let's Play archive for more episodes! Many thanks to Danny Jones for figuring out the HD Youtube embed code. Comments -
Let's Play TDD #188: How Saving Works from End to End
10 May 2012 | 3:01 am10 May 2012 James Shore/Blog/Lets-Play The source code for this episode is available here. Visit the Let's Play archive for more episodes! Many thanks to Danny Jones for figuring out the HD Youtube embed code. Comments -
Let's Play TDD #187: __Invocation
8 May 2012 | 3:01 am08 May 2012 James Shore/Blog/Lets-Play The source code for this episode is available here. Visit the Let's Play archive for more episodes! Many thanks to Danny Jones for figuring out the HD Youtube embed code. Comments -
Let's Play TDD #186: Finishing SaveAsDialog Extraction
3 May 2012 | 3:01 am03 May 2012 James Shore/Blog/Lets-Play The source code for this episode is available here. Visit the Let's Play archive for more episodes! Many thanks to Danny Jones for figuring out the HD Youtube embed code. Comments
-
David J. Anderson and Associates
-
Kanban Weekly Roundup - May 8, 2012
8 May 2012 | 4:04 pmBy Dominica DeGrandis Next week the Lean Software and Systems conference in Boston will undoubtedly supply a plethora of buzz. Until then, here’s a series of blog posts from some prolific writers. News A slide deck from November by @drunkcod. I find slide 35… -
Tolerance #2
1 May 2012 | 5:23 amYesterday’s post was inspired by my recent bike rides around my home neighborhood in Clallam County, Washington. I typically ride the last few miles home on the Discovery Trail - a bike path crafted out of an abandoned railway line that ran from Port Angeles to Sequim and on toward Discovery Bay. About 5 miles from home, the path is cut by a gravel road inside the Carlsborg, WA, industrial park. Recently, the road was resurfaced with rather course gravel, some of the small rocks measuring 1”-2” in size - fine for trucks, not so easy for a racing bike with 25mm tires. When I hit the road… -
Tolerance #1
1 May 2012 | 4:55 amMy father was a real engineer. He used to get his hands dirty with machinery. He was a machinist (a turner) by trade. He spent much of the latter part of his career commissioning plant and machinery at an explosives factory. Often he or his colleagues would hand craft some of the manufacturing tools with their own machine tools. He spent a lot of time thinking about tolerances. The tolerance in the actual size of a machined part, or a manufactured component, from its specification. These are typical measured in microns, or in his younger days, fractions of an inch. In his broad Glasgow brogue… -
Kanban - What are we Certifying?
27 Apr 2012 | 2:30 amWhen we announced the Accredited Kanban Training program in Lean Kanban University in February some people initially believed we were announcing a certification scheme for individuals taking Kanban training. We were not! Instead we were introducing standards into Kanban training by introducing a defined curriculum and accredited training material against that curriculum. We were also providing a professional designation of Accredited Kanban Trainer (AKT) to those individuals that we believed to be qualified to teach the curriculum adequately. We were “certifying” trainers.Certification of… -
Kanban - Lack of Roles is a Strength
27 Apr 2012 | 2:24 amIn their mini-book, Kanban and Scrum - making the most of both, Henrik Kniberg and Mattias Skarin point out that the Kanban Method does not prescribe any roles. Often people ask about roles in Kanban, expecting to be trained to play a specific role. The response is that your role remains the same as it is today. This is a core principle of the Kanban Method - you start with what you do now and you initially respect current roles, responsibilities and job titles.There is a Role in Kanban There is one role that helps when using the Kanban Method - the role of Change Agent. I hope to document…
-
The Agile Management Blog
-
Open Space Connects Like-Minded Agile Development Professionals at AgilePalooza Portland
14 May 2012 | 11:06 amPeople interested in agile development gathered from all across the Northwest (Beaverton, Gresham, Hillsboro, King City) to attend AgilePalooza Portland last month. The attendees were eager to get started. An exceptional collection of agile development experts were poised to share knowledge, excite, inspire and persuade. After sharing logistics and speaker introductions, it was time to get out of the way and let the learning begin. Before the stage was yielded to the keynote speaker, Santeon Group’s Ahmed Sidky, I asked the Portland audience a question: “How many in the audience had… -
Best Week Ever – What You May Have Missed in Agile Development
12 May 2012 | 5:13 pmGet the takeaways of the week, once a week. Everything you love, everything you missed, and all the stuff you need to see again… in agile news: Controversy Over Story Points Reaches Fevered Pitch No two agile teams use story points the exact same way and according to Mike Cohn many teams don’t really understand them either. Christopher Goldsbury followed up with Mike about his recent blog on story points to find out if some agile development teams are really that clueless. Are You on the List? Probably NOT! Get the scoop on the who’s who of agile development in Peter Saddington’s… -
Overcoming Internal Resistance to Agile Development
8 May 2012 | 1:41 pmThis advice comes with a disclaimer… I am a warrior, so my message will be harsh. Resistance to agile development is futile. I say this to show the ‘Trekkie’ in me and to set the framework for destroying resistance to agile. Personal Resistance: When faced with, “I don’t see the value of agile,” I remind the troops that management has hired me, the ScrumMaster/Coach, to help them transition to a different way of working. Whether the label for that change is agile, Kanban, whatever, my presence is a signal from management that something was wrong. The… -
What You May Have Missed in Agile Development – New Ongoing Series
4 May 2012 | 3:08 pmGet the takeaways of the week, once a week. Everything you love, everything you missed, and all the stuff you need to see again… in agile news: VersionOne and LeanKit Kanban Announce Availability of Long Awaited Integration [Insert shameless plug here]. Get the full story. Alan Shalloway Quotes Einstein and Stirs Up Controversy. Alan shared his thoughts on the differences in mindsets between 1st generation agile (old school) and 2nd generation agile (new school). Read Mindsets: Waterfall, 1st & 2nd Generation Agile – check out the comments section for the juicy stuff. You… -
Fred’s Foot: A Lesson in Managing Team Conflict – Part 2
2 May 2012 | 9:53 amThe team had been locked in a room for 8 hours with long-time respected teammate, Fred, who now had a horrifying funk emanating from his body that made nose hairs curl. How did I handle the situation? Dutifully and reluctantly, I called Fred into a meeting room and explained that there had been anonymous complaints from the team about how his smell was offensive and distracting to the rest of the team. Naturally, Fred was a little taken aback. Here he was just 30 minutes ago, joking around and working with his team and friends, and now he was hearing how these same people were ready to…
-
manage well
-
Seek new assignments for things you have not done before & develop deep expertise in one area…
16 May 2012 | 8:28 amSamir interviewed me for his wonderful blog Future of Project Management. It is all about my perspectives on how one can seek new assignments for things that one has never done before and develop deep expertise in one area to create an enriching and satisfying career. -
How to establish credibility in a democratic workplace?
5 Mar 2012 | 11:45 amFlattening of organizations is an oft-repeated phrase that means different things to different people. My favorite connotation is what I call as ‘democratization of management’, which essentially means a more symmetric power distribution between erstwhile ‘management’ and the erstwhile ‘worker’- if at all such words make sense anymore. While there are serious advantages of such ...more -
Role of Integrative Thinking in Project Management
24 Feb 2012 | 9:11 amThe conventional wisdom is to try to find a via media but that is perhaps meekly surrendering to complexity by taking a short-cut to a suboptimal solution. He argues that the some of the most exceptional leaders do not succumb to the obvious “either/or” thinking but rather work patiently towards synthesizing the best from both of these opposing views to create a best-of-breed solution that is far superior to either of these. He calls it “integrative thinking”. -
Time to throw away your Talent Pyramid
25 Jan 2012 | 11:24 amAsk any HR Manager on talent profile for their organization and you will get a ‘talent pyramid’ – an odd-looking ‘pyramid’ that is supposed to reflect the talent profile of the organization. Ask them further – what is the measure of ‘talent’ in this pyramid, and chances are 9 on 10 that the answer will be ‘experience’. This experience is typically the number of years of (supposedly relevant) experience in the workforce, and pretty much determines how roles, and consequently the compensation are derived out of it. Question is – is that the right measure of talent? -
Inexperience is the new Competency?
19 Dec 2011 | 8:44 pmPast experience is often considered to be a proxy for future performance. After all, when there is no single perfect way to forecast someone’s future performance, the best you can do is to look at the past track record and extrapolate it! However, experience will only tell that if the given person were to undergo similar experience once again, would they achieve similar results? But, how do you know that experience is not really getting in the way of future success?
-
Learn Software Development
-
What happens when your product is not stable close to release date ? – Part 6
15 May 2012 | 2:56 pmThis is a series of short posts about the scenario where a product that decides the future of the company is being released, and how it can be difficult to make a decision about release vs. delay when there are suspicions that the quality of the product may not be as desired. In the previous post (bug closure during the end game), I was talking about the bug closure rate near the end, and how the pressure near the end can be problematic for the people in charge of approving or deferring bugs. In this post, I will talk about a horror situation where the management is not connected with the… -
What happens when your product is not stable close to release date ? – Part 5
10 May 2012 | 3:47 pmThis is a series of posts which talk about decision time when a major product such as Microsoft Office is near release, and the product is not yet stable (which means that the team that should sign off the release is uncomfortable with the current quality levels of the application). The release being on schedule is fairly important for the company because of the strategic, and revenue reasons, and delaying it will have an impact. The previous post on this topic (getting information up the management chain) talked about how there should be a process whereby the team does frequent status… -
What happens when your product is not stable close to release date ? – Part 4
10 May 2012 | 10:24 amIn this series, I have been writing about the problems that arise when a product (deemed very significant for the organization) are near release. In the last post (deferral of bugs near the release date), I talked about the rate of deferral of bugs in the end game, and how this time of the schedule means that bugs are evaluated much more carefully to review whether these need to be fixed or can be deferred (and there is a lot of review to ensure that bugs are not let through which could cause a risk to the release). In this post, I will talk more about some of the measures that management… -
What happens when your product is not stable close to release date ? – Part 3
9 May 2012 | 3:16 pmIn the previous post in this series (Getting advice from the team about status), I talked about the importance of making sure that feedback from the team is not crushed, and that people are not put in a position where they feel that they are doing something against the organization when they report status that is not comfortable, or where they say that according to them, the product is not in a good position. Now, for a large product, there will be several layers of organization that will be working on the product, and it is good to remember that all of them have some fact and some… -
What happens when your product is not stable close to release date ? – Part 2
8 May 2012 | 2:57 pmIn the previous post in this series (Making the right decisions), I talked about some of the decisions that the senior management team has to make when they are near the release of a major product, and the balancing act that they need to make while making the right decision (in a situation where the wrong decision can break their career and cause huge damage to their companies). With such risks, it is a wonder that these managers are able to make a decision at all, and yet you see people making such decisions under these high pressure situations all the time. So in this post let us talk about…
-
Atlassian Blogs » Developer
-
CodeCache is full. Compiler has been disabled.
9 May 2012 | 8:00 pmWhen I was timing how long it takes JIRA 5.0.1 to reach a steady state for GC & code compilation with JDK 1.6.0_26 for a GC tuning guide; I noticed a log message that I’d never seen before: 12Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM warning: CodeCache is full. Compiler has been disabled. Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM warning: Try increasing the code cache size using -XX:ReservedCodeCacheSize= This cache is a memory area separate from the JVM heap that contains all the JVM bytecode for a method compiled down to native code, each called an nmethod1. This is where the JIT compiled methods… -
AtlasCamp EU Videos Now Online!
8 May 2012 | 11:00 amFor those who missed the event, the AtlasCamp Europe 2012 videos are now online. This AtlasCamp was our first ever developer event in Europe and it was a smashing success. Thanks for all who made it possible. Here are the talks: Keynote – Jean-Michel Lemieux, VP of Engineering, Atlassian All About the Marketplace — Jonathan Nolen, Director of Developer Relations, Atlassian Licensed to Sell: How to use Atlassian’s new Licensing API to Sell your Plugin on the Atlassian Marketplace — Ben Woskow, Integrations Developer, Atlassian Plugin Safety Check – How to Ensure… -
My Hip New Workflow with HipChat
2 May 2012 | 11:00 amI’m not a huge fan of most notifications, especially the ones that vie for my constant attention — like badge notifications on my iPhone. However, there is a time and place for focused and timely notifications that have increased my productivity. Many people who’ve never used HipChat before are quick to dismiss it as a simple group chat application. However, once you use it, it becomes apparent that it’s a lot more than a group chat app. One of my favorite features of HipChat is the ability to bring in relevant notifications into your team’s room. Here’s an… -
How Gliffy is managing the risk of re-writing their product in HTML5
19 Apr 2012 | 8:00 amThis is a guest blog post by Chris Kolhardt, CEO and Founder of Gliffy, a tool that makes it easy to create, share, and collaborate on a wide range of diagrams. In this post Chris shares the process, risks, and rewards of migrating away from the outdated technology that powers the editor in Gliffy Confluence Plugin, a web based diagramming tool that makes it easy to insert UML, wireframes, network diagrams, flow charts, and more right into your Confluence pages. How many times have you looked at a code base and dreamt about how much better life would be if you could just start over from… -
Atlassian Devs Talking JIRA Mobile Connect on iDeveloper Live Podcast
12 Apr 2012 | 2:20 pmUPDATED: The recording of iDeveloper Live Episode 50 featuring JIRA Mobile Connect is now available for download and on iTunes. We launched JIRA Mobile Connect (JMC), a free library for JIRA that allows mobile developers to gather in-app feedback from their users, back in October 2011. Then, we introduced iPad compatibility and HockeyApp integration for JMC in January 2012, so that developers could seriously beta test their apps before releasing them to the wild. Now, our very own Nick Pellow, the original developer of JIRA Mobile Connect (JMC), and Josh Devenny, product manager…
-
Agile Software Development
-
The Role of the Product Owner in Moving a Backlog Item to Done
16 May 2012 | 12:00 pmThis article explores how to achieve the productivity benefits of an up-front enabling specification, given the reality that Scrum is an empirical framework in which emergent understanding of the story under development is inherent. -
Back to Basics: Daily Scrum
16 May 2012 | 11:49 amThis article looks into a variation of how the daily Scrum (or daily stand-up) might be understood by teams and individuals. -
I Have No Impediments
16 May 2012 | 11:46 am"I have no impediments." It's the most common sign-off for every team member in the daily Scrum. It's also a lie. We've all been there. Standing in a little circle of people, listening to the carousel of "This is what I did yesterday, this is what I am going to do tomorrow, I have no impediments" fr ... -
LeanKit Announces Integration Partnership with Focused Objective
16 May 2012 | 4:14 amLeanKit, recognized as the leader in electronic Lean/Kanban software, and Focused Objective, makers of the most powerful risk management solution for Lean-Agile management, today announce a partnership to provide customers with an integrated product offering. The combined solution will bring industr ... -
Scrum and Agile Trac Plugins
14 May 2012 | 11:40 amTrac is an open source enhanced wiki and issue tracking system for software development projects. Trac uses a minimalist approach to web-based software project management. It provides an interface to version control systems (Subversion, Git, Mercurial, ), an integrated Wiki and convenient reporting ...
-
Agile Voices - Extreme Programming, Scrum, Test Driven Development & Lean aggregator
-
Michael Dowling's Whispers: My first blog post on Scriptogram
10 Dec 2012 | 11:00 pmScriptogram? Hello! This is my first blog post, hosted by Scriptogram. Let's see how it goes! -
Michael Dowling's Whispers: My first blog post on Scriptogram
16 May 2012 | 9:58 amScriptogram? Hello! This is my first blog post, hosted by Scriptogram. Let's see how it goes! -
DevAgile.com: LeanKit Announces Integration Partnership with Focused Objective
16 May 2012 | 4:14 amLeanKit, recognized as the leader in electronic Lean/Kanban software, and Focused Objective, makers of the most powerful risk management solution for Lean-Agile management, today announce a partnership to provide customers with an integrated product offering. The combined solution will bring industr ... -
Scrum Expert: LeanKit Announced Partnership with Focused Objective
16 May 2012 | 4:12 amLeanKit and Focused Objective announced a partnership to provide customers with an integrated product offering. The combined solution will bring industry leading quantitative analysis to LeanKit’s and Focused Objective’s customer base in an easy to use and immediately available way. This analysis includes forecasting project delivery dates, pinpointing what factors such as staffing, quality, scope change, etc.read more -
Scrum 4 You: Product Backlog and Taskboard Evaluation – JIRA
15 May 2012 | 11:32 pmJIRA is everywhere. Everyone talks about it, everybody wants it, but not everybody can have it – why is that? In my first article, I announced that a series of articles will follow in which Scrum tools will be reviewed. This blog entry is the first of many in which I will evaluate currently available Scrum tools that are able to represent a taskboard.read more
-
Scrum Planet - Agile Software Development Project Management Feeds aggregator
-
Scrum Expert: LeanKit Announced Partnership with Focused Objective
16 May 2012 | 4:12 amLeanKit and Focused Objective announced a partnership to provide customers with an integrated product offering. The combined solution will bring industry leading quantitative analysis to LeanKit’s and Focused Objective’s customer base in an easy to use and immediately available way. This analysis includes forecasting project delivery dates, pinpointing what factors such as staffing, quality, scope change, etc.read more -
Scrum 4 You: Product Backlog and Taskboard Evaluation – JIRA
15 May 2012 | 11:32 pmJIRA is everywhere. Everyone talks about it, everybody wants it, but not everybody can have it – why is that? In my first article, I announced that a series of articles will follow in which Scrum tools will be reviewed. This blog entry is the first of many in which I will evaluate currently available Scrum tools that are able to represent a taskboard.read more -
Emiliano Soldi - Project Management Agile Blog: #Agilmente PMI-NIC Conference Reflections
15 May 2012 | 4:01 pmMay the 11th I participated to the #Agilmente conference organized by the PMI NIC in Portonovo (a wonderful place at the mediterranean sea), in collaboration with club ti Marche (@clubtimarche) and Controller Associati Ancona. In that occasion I had also the pleasure to give a talk named “Agile project management: a trade-off between pro-activity and re-activity“. [...] -
Johanna Rothman : Programs and Technical Debt
15 May 2012 | 10:09 amOnce you have a program (a collection of interrelated projects focused on one business goal) and you have technical debt, you have a much bigger problem. Not just because the technical debt is likely bigger. Not just because you have more people. But because you also geographically distributed teams, and those teams are almost always separated by function and time zone.read more -
Assembla Blog: Assembla + Google Drive = Awesome
15 May 2012 | 10:05 amAfter the much-anticipated release of Google Drive, there have been many articles about teams using it for project related collaboration. With Assembla’s Google integrations, using Google Drive in combination with Assembla results in the ultimate collaboration powerhouse. read more
-
Software Development Musings from the Editor of Methods & Tools
-
Practical Unit Testing with TestNG and Mockito
8 May 2012 | 2:17 amI have just published a review of the book “Practical Unit Testing with TestNG and Mockito” written by Tomek Kaczanowski. For a full disclosure, Tomek has written an article about TestNG in the last issue of Methods & Tools and will contribute another article on Mockito in our upcoming Summer issue that will be published in June. This being said, I was a little curious of what I will be able to grasp and take out of his book as I am not primary a Java programmer. The book has however ... -
Excellence in Software Engineering Conference Report
30 Apr 2012 | 5:43 amI spent one day last week at the Excellence in Software Engineering (ESE) Conference in Zurich. This conference is aimed at professionals involved in decisions regarding software development processes, methods and technologies. The 2012 edition proposed three tracks: Agile and Lean, Cloud Computing and Mobile Applications. Presentations were in German or in English. Here is a brief summary of the sessions I attended. Elizabeth Woodward of IBM presented a keynote about introducing Agility in a large organization. Her talk was mainly an introduction to Agile with some promotion of the… -
Software Development Conferences Forecast April 2012
25 Apr 2012 | 7:43 amHere is a list of software development related conferences and events that will take place in the coming weeks and that have media partnerships with the Methods & Tools software development magazine: Future Insights Live, April 30 – May 4 2012, Las Vegas, USA Android DevCon III, May 14-17 2012, San Francisco, USA Gartner PPM and IT Governance Summit, 21-23 May 2012, National Harbor, USA GOTO Amsterdam, May 24-26 2012, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Agile Development Conference West, June 10–15 2012, Las Vegas, NV, USA Better Software Conference West, June 10–15 2012, ... -
Project Management Tools Usage
23 Apr 2012 | 6:34 amThe last Methods & Tools poll asked the following question: “Does your project use a software tool to plan, estimate and track project activities?” The good news is that most of the participants use a tool to manage their software development projects as only 19,5% operate without software. We should however note that the absence of software tools isn’t always synonym of poor project management practices. Agile recommends collocated project teams and face to face communication. In this context, physical visual boards and paper cards can be used for the ... -
Software Development Linkopedia April 2012
18 Apr 2012 | 8:27 amHere is our monthly selection of interesting knowledge material on programming, software testing and project management: Blogs: Thoughts on Infrastructure, Technical Debt, and Automated Test Framework Blogs: Let’s Test prequel with Ilari Henrik Aegerter Blogs: What is Capability? Blogs: Sources of Variance Articles: Acceptance Testing for Node.js Articles: Metrics in Distributed Product Development Articles: Can Support and Maintenance Become Agile? Articles: Business Analysis and Software Requirements Certifications Articles: Java for Robotics Tools: FluentLenium, a framework that helps…
-
Axosoft Blog - Agile, Scrum and Business of Software
-
OnTime V12.0.1 Released
25 Apr 2012 | 12:00 amToday, we’re making OnTime 12.0.1 available for download and as of a little while ago, all OnTime OnDemand customers are running OnTime 12.0.1. This release is primarily focused on bug-fixes that slipped through with version 12′s release. One important enhancement we added was support for IE 7 in the OnTime Customer Portal. We were overly anxious and jumped the gun on dropping support for IE 7 in the Customer Portal with version 12.0′s release. So I’m happy to say that Customer Portal version 12.0.1 adds back limited support for IE 7. Here is a full list of everything… -
Introducing the New TransferBigFiles.com
16 Apr 2012 | 2:56 pmThis past weekend, we released a major new update to the TransferBigFiles.com site. The update features: A brand new user interface that looks nicer and is much easier to use! Streamlined interactions to eliminate unnecessary page loads making the site much faster! New contact management features which add drag-and-drop contact grouping so you can easily send transfers to a whole group of people A new tutorial system that shows you how to use the new TransferBigFiles.com interface A new “Favorites” feature to quickly see the transfers that are important to you As with the major… -
Agile/Scrum Tools List and Pricing Comparison
11 Apr 2012 | 1:31 pmAlmost every day prospects who are evaluating OnTime will ask us “how does OnTime compare to [Fill in a Competitor's Name]?” Of course, the answer to this question is very subjective and requires a detailed analysis of the needs of the prospect. It might not matter how fast two cars can go from 0-60 if the prospect is looking for a minivan with sliding doors. In software, the problem has additional complications because new releases are constantly changing the specs. Keeping up and answering that question totally accurately and objectively is impossible for a vendor. But there is… -
iPhones Taped to Nerf Guns – Office Battle
6 Apr 2012 | 4:23 pmIf you follow this blog, you know that we made a ton of new announcements this week (new products, pricing, web sites, logos, etc.). Last Friday, we had a little pre-release party that inevitably led to a few of us taping our iPhones to nerf guns. This was a memorable battle: By the way, we’re hiring! Come join us. -
10 Years in, Time to Reinvent Axosoft and OnTime
31 Mar 2012 | 1:38 pmToday, I’m excited to announce our biggest transformations to date – for both the OnTime product and Axosoft as a company. This transformation is bigger than just a new product announcement or a new pricing strategy. It’s also a fundamental change in how we will do business in the future. We’re changing a lot of things and I want to go through the process and the reasoning behind why we are making these changes. Most of the Axosoft Team as of March 2012 It’s hard to believe that 2012 marks the 10-year anniversary of Axosoft and OnTime. A lot has changed since…
-
LeadingAgile
-
People are Messy
16 May 2012 | 10:20 amIt’s almost a cliche in the consulting field that all problems are people problems… sometimes though, I don’t think we really appreciate the depth of truth in that statement. Improving the systems in which we work, introducing some new processes, or bringing in a new approach or methodology or tool requires people to change what they are doing today and requires them to do something different tomorrow. Change is hard… change is scary… change isn’t safe. I’m guessing that most of us have read Kotter’s work on leading change… and while I do believe that… -
The Influencers Mantra by Siraj Sirajuddin
14 May 2012 | 9:41 amThe Influencers Mantra: Mantra (n): A word or group of words, an act or a series of acts – all considered capable of creating “transformation”. (“man” – mind + “tra” – liberation). My good friend Siraj Sirajuddin is hosting his workshop “The Influencers Mantra” at the VersionOne offices in Alpharetta, GA on June 7, 2012. While I haven’t had the opportunity to attend this workshop personally, I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Siraj over the past several years, and find him very wise and full of great advice and practical guidance. I’m… -
Catching Everyone Up…
13 May 2012 | 10:10 amUnless you happen to be connected with me over Facebook… or in my immediate circle of family, friends, or clients… you probably haven’t heard much from me the past year or so. I was thinking back over the past several months and all the lost opportunities to connect that just haven’t seemed to make the cut. Back in November… I really wanted to sit down and write an appreciations post to all the people that have directly or indirectly helped LeadingAgile get to where we are today. It didn’t happen. The past several years I’ve written an end of year… -
LeadingAgile is Speaking at Agile2012
19 Apr 2012 | 2:05 pmI am really excited to announce that Dennis and I both had talks selected for the Agile2012 program this year. Personally, I’ve slowed down my speaking and writing to focus on the operations of LeadingAgile and growing our client base. Given my schedule, I almost missed the deadline to submit… even though it was on my radar for months. I’m glad it all worked out in the end, I really wanted to be at this event and speak. Here are the abstracts, location, and time for the selected talks: Patterns for Agile Adoption and Transformation – Mike Cottmeyer Room: Texas D … -
Agile at the Speed of Trust – Self Trust
17 Apr 2012 | 1:00 amThe first post in this series provided an overview of the synergy between The Speed of Trust and Agile. This post focuses on the first wave of trust, Self Trust. Agile relies on cross-functional teams of individuals. These individuals bring a set of personalities and skills to a team. In great teams, these individuals have credibility. That is, they contribute character and competence that helps make the team more than the sum of its parts. The Speed of Trust describes “four cores” of credibility, two dealing with character and two dealing with competence: Integrity Intent…
-
About Agility
-
NextStep 2012 - Only one week away!
3 May 2012 | 7:31 amIf you haven't yet heard about NextStep, I want to share a bit more info about what we have planned for 2012! This year the event will take place on May 10 and 11 and we're expecting over 400 participants in Lisbon during next week, ready to learn, network and have some fun. To host the event we picked a new, beautiful and cool location - the Lisbon Congress Center in Parque das Nações, right on the waterfront. Our main theme for NextStep 2012 is "Simplicity"! This will be our motto throughout the 2 days of the event. Come and learn about streamlining complex IT processes while delivering… -
The Big Move: How We Migrated Core Applications to the Cloud
19 Mar 2012 | 7:54 amFor the last couple of months, it seemed a few of our core applications weren't behaving as well as they should... Some applications were running a bit slow, and we experienced connectivity problems related to our ISP. This was serious because these are core systems running on top of the Agile Platform, and include our website, our community, our partner network, our product management tool, and a host of other internal applications.Since responsiveness and availability are two fundamental traits of a great app, we had to do something about it. We decided to move our infrastructure to the… -
The 6 Major Mobile Trends for 2012
9 Feb 2012 | 11:22 amMobile is one of the big trends for 2012, and with the year just starting, it's a great time to make some predictions about what will happen in the upcoming months. So here they are, the 6 major mobile trends for 2012:Mobile Web will be the dominant architecture. Native mobile apps may be sexy, but their cost and the lack of support for multiple devices make them a no-go for the enterprise. According to Gartner, by 2014, less than 15% of enterprises will develop B2E native apps.HTML5 will keep evolving in 2012. More access to the device's features and sensors are sure to appear in all… -
Add a bit of Xmas to your web app
13 Dec 2011 | 6:40 amWe're already deep in the holiday season, but it's never too late to add a bit of Xmas spirit to your Web Application! I thought about adding Xmas lights, flying reindeers, working elves... but it seems to me that for an Enterprise Web Application something a bit subtler was in order. So I ended up just putting in a bit of snow on the Sales application: Check the video to see snow in action, or visit the OutSystems Network to see it live in a real web page! If you're using the Agile Platform and want to add some snow to your app, here's what you need to do: Get the "Xmas" component from… -
The 3 Mobile Architectures Distilled
30 Nov 2011 | 7:43 amI don't know about you, but I am getting asked more and more to deliver some type of application that has a mobile front end. Of course mobile is one of the big trends nowadays, and there are good reasons for it. In a recent Forrester survey, 75% of decision makers claim that deploying mobile apps has increased their workforce productivity. The question I seem to get asked often is, how should you implement mobile? To keep it simple, I have found that there are three implementation strategies you can choose from to build your mobile app:Native ApplicationsMobile Web ApplicationsHybrid Native…
-
Software Configuration Management and Agile Software Development
-
The Changing Landscape of SCM
1 May 2012 | 9:19 amIt’s 1998. I’m just starting my job at Rational Software, supporting ClearCase. During my training and through my first few months handling customer issues, I developed a deep understanding of the complexities of SCM and the heavy-handed centralized control that ClearCase provided its customer base. Wrappers, triggers and script automation were the key to a tightly controlled, centralized development environment. In the developers’ eyes, dealing with the version control tool was just a part of doing their job. Developers like to code, not “waste time” with tools or infrastructure. -
General Availability for Industry’s First Seamless Integration of Enterprise-Level Security and Visualization into Git
3 Apr 2012 | 12:44 pmAccuRev released for general availability today the first Git integration that seamlessly bridges the world of commercial tools and open source software configuration management. AccuRev’s Kando, an enterprise security and compliance platform for Git, which was released in beta in January, complements the open source SCM tool with additional functionality, allowing organizations using Git to simultaneously leverage enterprise-level security and requirements traceability. Kando is the first software development solution that enables Git development shops to add workflow, issue tracking,… -
Avoiding Merge Hell
7 Mar 2012 | 8:15 amAs you start to scale a software development process it becomes apparent that code and user stories have to be merged more frequently. Sometimes changes may flow from one organization to another. This means that you will need to take code from one team, merge, integrate and test those changes with everyone. Each team needs to be able to work on its own schedule, this means that if multiple teams want to work on different sized iterations they can. It also means they can deliver changes as needed and on a regular basis, independent of other teams. To do this in a traditional Software… -
Why Create Branches?
20 Feb 2012 | 9:45 amBranching and merging is one of the most critical things a development team must work on over the course of a software release cycle. But there’s a funny thing about branching and merging – it’s usually not thought of as part of the development process. How often do you see a user story called “as a developer I want to merge code to trunk”? The fact that we often don’t follow a process for the branching and merging of code leads to disarray and pain. It really shouldn’t be that hard! Teams end up in “merge hell” and deliver changes late to schedule. This problem stems… -
Quick Tips on Branching Patterns from an Expert
10 Feb 2012 | 11:56 amThe goals of a branching pattern should always to be to manage a software team’s development process and to make this process as easy and straight-forward as possible. With this process, the team should be able to complete all of the things that need to happen in order to release a piece of software. So how you establish this pattern? Make Merging Changes Easy and Straight-forward The funny thing about branching patterns is that we often attempt to create a process, but have a hard time following it. Typically someone from the team will draw the branching pattern on the whiteboard, and even…
-
Learn Software Development
-
What happens when your product is not stable close to release date ? – Part 6
15 May 2012 | 2:56 pmThis is a series of short posts about the scenario where a product that decides the future of the company is being released, and how it can be difficult to make a decision about release vs. delay when there are suspicions that the quality of the product may not be as desired. In the previous post (bug closure during the end game), I was talking about the bug closure rate near the end, and how the pressure near the end can be problematic for the people in charge of approving or deferring bugs. In this post, I will talk about a horror situation where the management is not connected with the… -
What happens when your product is not stable close to release date ? – Part 5
10 May 2012 | 3:47 pmThis is a series of posts which talk about decision time when a major product such as Microsoft Office is near release, and the product is not yet stable (which means that the team that should sign off the release is uncomfortable with the current quality levels of the application). The release being on schedule is fairly important for the company because of the strategic, and revenue reasons, and delaying it will have an impact. The previous post on this topic (getting information up the management chain) talked about how there should be a process whereby the team does frequent status… -
What happens when your product is not stable close to release date ? – Part 4
10 May 2012 | 10:24 amIn this series, I have been writing about the problems that arise when a product (deemed very significant for the organization) are near release. In the last post (deferral of bugs near the release date), I talked about the rate of deferral of bugs in the end game, and how this time of the schedule means that bugs are evaluated much more carefully to review whether these need to be fixed or can be deferred (and there is a lot of review to ensure that bugs are not let through which could cause a risk to the release). In this post, I will talk more about some of the measures that management… -
What happens when your product is not stable close to release date ? – Part 3
9 May 2012 | 3:16 pmIn the previous post in this series (Getting advice from the team about status), I talked about the importance of making sure that feedback from the team is not crushed, and that people are not put in a position where they feel that they are doing something against the organization when they report status that is not comfortable, or where they say that according to them, the product is not in a good position. Now, for a large product, there will be several layers of organization that will be working on the product, and it is good to remember that all of them have some fact and some… -
What happens when your product is not stable close to release date ? – Part 2
8 May 2012 | 2:57 pmIn the previous post in this series (Making the right decisions), I talked about some of the decisions that the senior management team has to make when they are near the release of a major product, and the balancing act that they need to make while making the right decision (in a situation where the wrong decision can break their career and cause huge damage to their companies). With such risks, it is a wonder that these managers are able to make a decision at all, and yet you see people making such decisions under these high pressure situations all the time. So in this post let us talk about…
-
Agile Ottawa
-
Registration Open for Agile Coach Camp Canada – Ottawa, June 22-24, 2012
1 May 2012 | 3:27 pmRegistration is now open for Agile Coach Camp Canada, to be held June 22-24, 2012 here in Ottawa at the Travelodge Hotel on Carling Ave. Registration is FREE, but space is limited so get your name in now! More details can be found on the Agile Coach Camp Canada web site, or you can register [...] -
April 26th Agile Thursday Meetup – The Fundamentals of Extraordinary Change
18 Apr 2012 | 6:14 pmAs an Agile practitioner, you understand that successful implementation of Agile is about successful shifting of cultures. You also know this can be slow. But do you know why? Understanding why not only will help you gain comfort with it, but will offer you insights to get control of it. Change occurs through the application [...] -
January 2012 Agile Thursday Meetup – The Survival Guide For New Agile Coaches
19 Jan 2012 | 10:13 amThe next Agile Thursday meetup will be held on January 26, 2012 with “The Survival Guide for New Agile Coaches”. (Please note that this session applies to ScrumMasters as well, and in fact anyone who is involved in Agile projects or product development!) You know Agile Software Development reasonably well, using it on a few [...] -
Slides from January 2012 – Agile Goes Way Beyond Software
11 Jan 2012 | 7:58 amThanks again to Dan Murphy for his presentation last night! Dan’s slides are now available for download (PDF 1.2 MB). See you all on January 26th for Agile Thursday… details to follow. -
January 2012 Meetup: Agile Goes Way Beyond Software
14 Dec 2011 | 12:53 pm** NOTE ** This is the rescheduled November 2011 event that had to be canceled last minute Date: Tuesday, January 10, 2012 Time: Networking 6:00-6:30PM , Meeting 6:30-8:00PM Location: The new Agile Tuesday location is Mercury Grove on 738A Bank St. between First & Second Ave. RSVP: http://www.meetup.com/Ottawa-Scrum-Users-Group/events/44942252/(Requested by not required, Free) Agile Methods have been used for [...]
-
Practical Agility
-
Registration Open for Agile Coach Camp Canada - June 22-24, 2012
1 May 2012 | 3:32 pmRegistration is now open for Agile Coach Camp Canada, to be held June 22-24, 2012 here in Ottawa at the Travelodge Hotel on Carling Ave.Registration is FREE, but space is limited so get your name in now! More details can be found on the Agile Coach Camp Canada web site, or you can register directly with the button below. -
Pragmatic Agile - Remember the First Value!
10 Apr 2012 | 12:50 pmEveryone, I'd like you to meet Al. He's a real person, not a conglomeration of people or a fictional persona created for this post. Al is a ScrumMaster at a recent client... a ScrumMaster with a secret. I coached Al and his team quite a bit for the first few months I was engaged at that client, and then to a lesser extent for the next 18 months. That team was very high performing, avoiding -
Agile in its Second Decade
5 Apr 2012 | 12:43 pmFor quite some time I've been working on a post to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Agile Manifesto. I suppose that, as the 11th anniversary has now passed, it would be rather silly to continue to celebrate the 10th! :) Part of my foot-dragging has been the feeling that I wasn't adding anything to the discussion about a decade of Agile. Every now and then something would spark my -
Occupy Agile
4 Apr 2012 | 8:03 amI understand that the "Occupy" meme and movement is "so 2011", but after some conversations with friends over the past few days I've begun to realize that I'm not the only person who thinks that the Agile world has been moving further and further away from its origins in the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto. I've had multiple people now say that they were beginning to feel that they -
The Power of Community Agreements
1 Mar 2012 | 4:40 amI recently attended and spoke at Agile India 2012 in Banglore, India. It was a wonderful experience - the conference was excellent, and my first trip to India was memorable to say the least. I'm quite sure that I'll be returning to see more of the country and experience people and the culture! Coming from North America, there was one particular aspect of Indian culture that was significantly
-
Agile Pain Relief
-
Looking for 100 Agile Voices we should hear more from
23 Apr 2012 | 11:23 pmIn the past few years a number of Agile people I respect have published top 100 or even top 200 lists. While I like many others appreciate the attention they’ve brought the whole idea seems very anti-agile. Agile promotes a democratic meritocracy. These lists do the opposite, they create “hero’s” people whose ideas are more important others. Instead I think we should be widely read in the Agile community often reaching outside our immediate realm. To that end I’m asking for your help creating a list of voices we should hear more from. My goal is find ~100, the limit is more from my… -
ScrumMaster Tales – New People on the Team
11 Apr 2012 | 1:03 amAfter six months ScrumMaster John has finally found someone to fill the role of Senior Software Developer on the team. The goal is to find someone who can round out the team and play many roles (see: Bottlenecks). After many interviews they’ve settled on Kirby[1] who has over 20 years experience developing software, both server side and GUI. He is a self proclaimed expert in most of the technologies the team uses and that’s where the problems start. In addition the team members assume that he is being very well paid, perhaps better than any of the rest of them. Attempting to learn the… -
ScrumMaster Tales–The Team Learn How to Learn
28 Mar 2012 | 1:47 pmThe Team are struggling to payoff the Technical Debt (or mess) that they’ve spent the last six months accumulating. They’ve started to institutionalize writing Unit Tests (by adding it to “Done”) and they’re using Sonar to help track Code Coverage, PMD warnings et al. (Ed: Don’t take Sonar or any other measure as more than a first order view of the code, it hints where you need to look no more). Story During the Standup Ian reports that he is starting his third day of refactoring[1], a monster class called BuyABook. ScrumMaster John’s antenna go up immediately, after all the… -
Scrum Training Goal
23 Mar 2012 | 7:44 pmI was asked earlier in the week the ultimate goal of my Scrum training. Someone wanted to know, did I expect my students to use Scrum? That has given me pause for thought, Scrum is an excellent tool in many situations but not the only one. I’ve never worried if people use Scrum, what matters more is if you help your organization by delighting your customers/clients. To that end the goal of my course: Open peoples eyes to what is possible, help them see opportunities/impediments and awaken a spirit that won’t let go. All else is an implementation detail. -
ScrumMaster Tales–Stop Digging New Holes
28 Feb 2012 | 1:10 pmScrum Team digging a hole The first law of holes is “When you’re in one stop digging”. In the last sprint the team discovered that they’re in a hole – in this case they had dug themselves into technical debt. We join the team this week in their Sprint Planning session, they start by rechecking their Retrospective action items: Respect the “Definition of Done” – write Unit Tests (their complete “Definition of Done): Checked In, Peer Reviewed, Unit Tested, Manually Tested) Temporarily add Unit Test column to their story board Install Sonar (a platform to help visualize Code…
-
BrainsLink
-
Hidden Assumptions Can Take Down Your Project
15 May 2012 | 8:31 pmWhat are you assuming? Every project plan, user story and task list contains assumptions. An assumption is something that’s taken for granted by the software development team — something presumed to be true. This is in contrast to risks, in that risks are adverse events that we believe are unlikely to occur. Some assumptions will be obvious and others will be obscure. If an assumption proves to be wrong, the team will be adversely impacted. (That would be a risk.) Here are a few examples of obscure or hidden assumptions: The team will remain intact for the duration of the project. -
Software Outcomes Matter, Test Results Don’t
13 May 2012 | 8:32 pmHow do you determine the success (or not) of a software project? How do you measure the final outcome? How do you know if the project delivered what was expected? You might be inclined to refer to the number of remaining known defects, the number of test cases, the improvements made in the code, the number of new features added, the feedback from the Product Owner, etc. Sadly, those are all the wrong metrics and don’t measure business outcomes. What matters is end user perceptions and business value, not internal software metrics. Real people, conducting real business with the software… -
Team Velocity Is Not as Simple as It Seems
10 May 2012 | 9:19 pmThe subject of Scrum team velocity can be confusing and controversial. My intent is not to add fuel to the fire but rather, to contribute to the knowledge base around velocity and what it represents. The simplest way to do this is via an example. Let’s say a Scrum team has an average velocity of 20 story points per sprint. Everyone considers that to be a pretty good number. But what does it really mean? I’d start by asking how many sprints were completed to arrive at that number. In other words, how many sprints are we using to calculate the average? I’d also want to know… -
How Much Project Planning Is Too Much?
8 May 2012 | 9:00 pmDoes your organization spend weeks and weeks preparing to launch a project? Does it seem like new projects take forever to get off the ground? Have you seen projects get cancelled after months of planning but no implementation activity? I’ve seen it all and it can get ugly. As a general rule, planning and analysis should take no more than 20% of the time for the entire project. I’ve see that number go over 50% in some cases. For example, 6 weeks of planning and analysis for a 12-week project. That extra planning time delays the solution implementation and may prove to be very… -
Guest Post: How Technology Can Help in Your Business Development
6 May 2012 | 8:38 pmToday, technology has become so advanced that it can greatly contribute to the development and productivity of the business. One needs to research, analyze and understand how technology can greatly assist in boosting one’s business. Communication Communication is the most important aspect in any business. One can improve communication or be in touch with business clients, customers, employees by making use of the technology. Today, every person owns a Smartphone or mobile phone with camera facility. One can see and communicate face to face using video conferencing. You can view the other…
-
Agile Scout
-
Agile in Hardware Projects – When Issues Arise
16 May 2012 | 7:15 amRuhroh. Looks like we have some issues here… What you see above is one of the hardware issues we encountered when we started laying the conveyors for a hardware and Agile manufacturing project, conducted in an Agile fashion. If it don’t fit… So let’s talk about the implications of taking an Agile approach when these types of issues arise: Contractor Considerations – We need to talk with the hardware contractors as to what happened here. Supplies – How can we get the right supplies, (sooner rather than later) to help mitigate this issue? Timeline – How… -
Business Optimization and Human Potential
14 May 2012 | 7:15 amWe are often blind. As Agile Coaches, consultants, and organizational improvers, we strive to help teams and businesses alike improve their performance, output, and even culture. The problem is… that we often come into a team or business blind, not understanding the full context of each team and each individual who makes up that team. This is a problem. To be the most effective we need to understand how people operate. We need to understand how they work collectively, as a group, as a team, and as individuals. The quicker we can assess and understand the contextual culture of our… -
Retrospective 84 – Servant Leader #Fail & History of #Agile
12 May 2012 | 7:18 am[Question] – ScrumMasters? Their Role? 113 Crickets Mag – Launched ScrumMasters are NOT Servant Leaders History of Agile User Stories Help Build Sales Weekly Commenters: peter (8) Jordan (4) Ken ‘classmaker’ Ritchie (4) YvesHanoulle (3) Michael Abugow (2) AgileRenee (1) Ed Hill (1) Matthias Marschall (1) Nick Jenkins (1) Simon Prior (1) You just finished reading Retrospective 84 - Servant Leader #Fail & History of #Agile! Consider leaving a comment! We run our blog on Standard Theme. Be a writer for us. Post a job with us on Agile Jobs. Retrospective 84 – Servant… -
Scrum Masters: Who’s Driving?
11 May 2012 | 7:15 amDO SCRUM MASTERS “DRIVE” RESULTS? What do you think? Care to share? I’m listening… You just finished reading Scrum Masters: Who's Driving?! Consider leaving a comment! We run our blog on Standard Theme. Be a writer for us. Post a job with us on Agile Jobs. Scrum Masters: Who’s Driving? -
113 Crickets – A Journal of Creative Writing from Silicon Valley
10 May 2012 | 7:15 am113 Crickets is a new literary periodical based in Silicon Valley and published quarterly by Dymaxicon and edited by Tobias Mayer. Through the publication of both technology-orientated books and works of fiction it strives to promote connections between the two fields. With the advent of agile practices, complexity science, and other modern, more human-centric ideas over the past ten years, many leading technology companies and start-ups alike have embraced a new approach to running businesses, one that treats work as a creative endeavor, and people as unique individuals, rather than…
-
AgileIQ Blog
-
Work Harder
15 May 2012 | 12:52 pmby James Rosko A manager I once worked with got out of an executive meeting, walked over to development, and said, “I’ve been talking with the VPs and everyone has to work harder.” Fred, the manager, continued by saying, “We’re going to have to be creative about how to get all this work done.” I took Fred aside and said asked him, “by ‘creative,’ you mean work more hours don’t you?” He replied, “Yes, I mean work more hours.” Before you criticize Fred, let’s try to understand what it means to… -
Goal Setting and Appraisals in the Agile World
9 May 2012 | 12:33 pmby Jayaprakash Puttaswamy As a practitioner of the agile way of working, most of my actions, techniques, and experiments were driven through “common sense” and the “ground realities” of the team, team members, and organizations I have worked with. I would like to describe one such experiment where I attempted to change the way individual and team goals are set, and change the way people get appraised against those goals in large product organizations. It was fairly successful and worked as an important element that drove effective agile adoption. Traditionally, most… -
Join us at Scrum Gathering Atlanta, May 7-9
1 May 2012 | 1:53 pmby Pam Dyer The Scrum Alliance regularly hosts Scrum Gatherings in various cities around the world. These conferences are attended by Scrum community members who share experiences, exchange information, and collaborate about Agile best practices. SolutionsIQ is a Silver Sponsor of next week's global event, May 7-9 at Atlanta’s Marriott Buckhead Hotel and Conference Center, and several members of our team will be giving presentations: Bryan Stallings: Agile Release Planning by Example Stakeholders readily establish release expectations, but many teams do not know how to plan beyond the… -
Bottlenecks and Value Stream Mapping in Agile
26 Apr 2012 | 8:00 amby Joe Justice A bottleneck in Agile work is probably what you think. It is the area of least flow. Optimizations made elsewhere can't increase the overall flow of the system unless the bottleneck is addressed first. We discover bottlenecks via Value Stream Mapping. A value stream map can grow in complexity to model complex relationships, but here we only need a very, very simple implementation: To get what we need, it's simply the flow of a product from idea to customer, divided up any way you like along that flow, with a number of days where that division is actively adding value… -
Agile and Value (Part 2)
20 Apr 2012 | 11:23 amby Dan Williams In the agile world, incremental delivery of value to the customer is the ‘mom and apple pie’ of countless Certified ScrumMaster training courses and books. What is the value and how is it measured and when is it communicated to management? In my previous post on Agile Value, I referenced Software by Numbers. (For additional information on the authors and the approach introduced by this book see their website). It introduced an approach to quantifying value using the concept of Minimum Marketable Features (MMF). In the second edition of Jim Highsmith’s book…
-
The Agile CEO: A Blog About Agile Management
-
Why Agile is Not a Methodology
10 May 2012 | 2:01 pmIf Agile isn't a methodology, what is it? What is a methodology? A methodology is a process taxonomy designed to govern a work domain (e.g. software development). Each process is defined in terms of a set of prescriptive formulas or rules. Rules generally take on forms similar to the following: Under these circumstances, do these activities. When you get to this point, do this activity. An activity is defined by executing this task sequence. The input of this task is “X” and the output of this task is “Y”. And so forth… At the highest level, a methodology is a… -
Agile in the Mainstream: The Daily Standup on WSJ Front Page
2 Feb 2012 | 11:50 amHere's another indication that Agile and Scrum in particular are catching on like wildfire. Agile’s radiation through the tech sector is easily explained since it fits hand-in-glove with software development, but when we hear about it in the Wall Street Journal, we witness something else: Penetration of these ideas into the business mainstream. What is a stand-up but a vital daily status meeting ruthlessly stripped of all waste? You can’t get more lean than that. Agile is a pointer to a waste-intolerant, performance-driven culture obsessed with the pursuit of excellence. What… -
Software Development is Design Work, not Construction Work
1 Dec 2011 | 12:43 pmIn my last post, we discussed why software development is more like designing than building. The following diagram illustrates the point: Construction is building to specification. In the case of a house, the construction is done by tradesmen and the specification is a blueprint. In the case of a software system, the construction is done by a compiler and the specification is the source code. In both cases, the work to produce the specification is design work. So just how different is building to specification from design work and how might this change our expectations regarding software… -
Why Agile Spreads Like Wildfire: Upfront Specification is Impossible
16 Nov 2011 | 1:31 pmIn my last post, I talked about why it’s really hard to produce a software specification before you start work that is as complete as the blueprint you would use to guide the construction of a building. Today we will discuss why it’s also impossible. Let’s review our building blueprint example from another angle. After the blueprint is completed, just about any competent builder can use the blueprint to construct the building. Carpenters know what dimensions the house and rooms should have, roofers know how many square feet to roof, etc. In addition to knowing what work… -
Why Agile Spreads Like Wildfire: Software Specifications
27 Oct 2011 | 4:12 pmThe principle reason that Agile development methods have caught on like wildfire is that they address the root cause of most software development project failures: Unreliability of software specifications. To put it differently, if software specifications were as reliable as building blueprints, then the principle justification for investing in Agile competencies would disappear. Agile practices might still have value, but the argument that they should be the dominant approach used by the industry would be much more difficult to make. With this in mind, it’s worth considering the…
-
agileManiac
-
Q: How do we change from individuals in workgroups to effective, self-organizing teams?
13 May 2012 | 9:20 pmA colleague of mine at VersionOne, Dan Naden who works to support the Agile community, delivered several open questions from a recent Agilepalooza and asked for help answering. The one that jumped out at me and my experiences was “How do we change from individuals in workgroups to effective, self-organizing teams?” When I first started looking at this question, I was keying in on the word “individuals” and how individual team members impact our ability to come together and self-organize. The more ideas I got down on paper, the more I came to the conclusion that it is… -
SUCCESS = RESULTS – EXPECTATIONS
17 Mar 2012 | 11:20 amWhen I talk with folks learning about Agile, I often play the game Presto Manifesto where the room talks about what it means to have a successful project and then break up into groups and based on their experiences come up with a list of critical elements that they’ve noticed on successful projects. This exercise is meant to bring people to the concepts of what makes up the Agile Manifesto. The interesting thing is that in many cases we discover that we’re programmed to believe that failures of projects relate to not knowing everything up front. I almost always hear,… -
Video Parade Continues – Sh*t Bad Scrum Masters Say
9 Mar 2012 | 4:03 pmTo leverage the words from Larry the Cable Guy, now that’s funny right there … Actually, things are funny because they are true and I don’t know a Scrum Master who at one point in time hasn’t caught themselves in one of these moments. Thanks to Adam Weisbart for putting this out there. Adam has a resource laden website – http://weisbart.com/. Check it out! -
Another Video – Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From
4 Mar 2012 | 9:20 pmAs a quick follow up to the earlier post about Dan Pink’s Drive, I also like the following video put together for Steven Johnson’s book, Where Good Ideas Come From. I haven’t read this book; however, I’ve stumbled upon more than one post online that references the ideas from this book on ideas. Some folks don’t agree with the concepts presented; however, I find it to be a fascinating take on how ideas formed in the past and how they might be developed in today’s integrated information society. Let me know what you think. You can pick up the book here: -
10 Ways to Fail With Agile (Sandy Mamoli)
29 Feb 2012 | 8:28 pmThis is a Prezi presentation that I stumbled upon that Sandy Mamoli put out there last year. There are many points in this presentation that really ring true and should be noticed. Sandy does a great job laying out the Symptoms and Root Causes (a.k.a. organization smells). Much of these things are obvious, but almost every organization has some resemblance of these 10 ways. See more of Sandy’s work at Nomad8 blog. 10 ways to fail with Agile on Prezi
-
Pragilematic
-
NEWS ITEM: Scrum Extensions Update – 1Q 2012
30 Apr 2012 | 10:03 pmMy most recent news item covers the latest scrum extensions and asks a few questions about the purpose and future direction for scrum extensions. -
The Real Project Management Triangle
23 Apr 2012 | 9:25 pmAs a project manager you’ve heard and seen this diagram too often in your career. It’s often said that project managers are responsible for delivering on scope, budget and schedule. In turn they are asked to ‘manage’ this. But how does one do this? Answer: you don’t. Scope, schedule, and budget are not managed. They are tracked to ascertain proximity to targeted objectives. What’s managed are the things that affect scope, schedule and budget. What are those? 1. Risks – Or the things that could go wrong or right. Threats and… -
Iterations Are to IT What Containers Were To Shipping
23 Apr 2012 | 9:01 pmIntroduction Container shipping transformed the way goods were transported across geography and channel. Instead of having many diverse payloads in differing container configurations for different modes of transport; a standard was defined for a rectangular container that could, through a set of standardized connection points, be bolted to ship, train, or truck. The result of simplifying the container configuration meant that transferring cargo between modes of transport became easier, shipping times were reduced from port, to rail, to truck. Handling and management costs also… -
A Caboodle of Pragilematic Posts
16 Apr 2012 | 9:51 pmI’ve been hanging out and posting at the ASPE SDLC blog. Yes…I have their permission to do that. Geesh. Check em out Gilbert: Six Things To Avoid When Reporting Project Status - Project status is about the facts and your strategy to address and manage those facts. This Daily Standup Is a Joke – This article details some challenges associated with daily stand-ups and some potential strategies for dealing with these. An Axiom of Project Success – What’s the common thread to project success? We’ve seen projects that should have died. We’ve… -
Custom Built Software Is a Depreciating Asset
13 Apr 2012 | 10:34 pmCustom built software. It occurred to me this week that this ‘asset’ as it’s categorized by GAAP is a depreciating asset, much like a car or piece of capital equipment ( machinery ). Does it derive value? Yes….indirectly. But ultimately it’s value is underutilized, and quickly de-valued. Imperfect as it is…there is little alternative….FOR NOW. So what’s the best strategy for investing in this ‘asset’? Minimize it. The less you put in. The less you lose. Find the cheapest way to accomplish your custom software needs and…
-
QSM SLIM-Estimate blogs
-
Earn PDUs for QSM SLIM Training!
15 May 2012 | 3:09 pmQSM is pleased to announce that we are now an approved PMI Registered Education Provider (R.E.P.), making it easier than ever for SLIM Training attendees to earn PDUs! R.E.P.s are organizations that have been approved by PMI to help project managers achieve and maintain the Project Management Professional (PMP), Program Management Professional (PgMP) and other PMI professional credentials.QSM's SLIM Training Course teaches attendees how to accurately estimate project size (scope) and calculate productivity to project risk-buffered effort-time trade-offs. Additionally, attendees learn how… -
New Addition to QSM Consulting Team: Carol Dekkers
9 May 2012 | 1:38 pmPlease welcome Carol Dekkers who joins QSM as a part-time Consultant and Trainer. Carol will be a member of our consulting team and also assisting as needed with our research and training needs. Carol has been a longtime teaming partner of QSM and those of us who have worked with her know that she is an excellent speaker, writer, trainer and consultant. Carol is a recognized international expert in the software metrics and IT Project Management industries. A former President of the International Function Point Users Group (IFPUG), Carol has been project editor of the U.S. delegation to… -
How do the uncertainty ranges in SLIM-Estimate relate to Control Bounds in SLIM-Control?
4 May 2012 | 1:03 pmI am often asked this question during SLIM Training classes. I remember wondering about that myself. It is a logical question since SLIM-Estimate workbooks are often imported into SLIM-Control to create the baseline project plan. The answer is ‐‐ they are not directly related, because uncertainty ranges, probability curves, and control bounds are designed to perform different tasks. This post is the first in a series looking at risk associated with an estimate, risk of your project plan, and handling deviations from the plan.What are we talking about?The first… -
QSM Welcomes Andy Berner to the Software Development Team
1 May 2012 | 12:30 pmQSM is pleased to welcome Andy Berner to our development team as a Senior Software Engineer. He will be supporting the product development team on new SLIM software estimation, forecasting, and benchmarking products as well as the IBM Rational integrations. As an IBM Rational Partner, QSM has had the priviledge of working with Andy over the last several years designing and implementing integrations between the SLIM Tool Suite and the IBM Rational applications Rational Team Concert, Rational Focal Point, and Rational Method Composer. Andy Berner joins our team with experience… -
Demand the (Right) Right Data with SLIM-DataManager
25 Apr 2012 | 9:46 amA few weeks ago, Thomas C. Redman posted Demand the (Right) Right Data on the Harvard Business Review blog, about how managers should set the bar higher, in terms of data. Why are managers so tolerant of poor quality data? One important reason, it seems to me, is that most managers simply don't know that they can expect better! They've dealt with bad data their entire careers and come to accept that checking and rechecking the "facts," fixing errors, and accommodating the uncertainties that using data one doesn't fully trust are the manager's lot in life. Although Redman suggests that…
