Craig Smith has been a software developer for over 15 years, specialising in a large number of technologies in that time. He has been an Agile practitioner for the last eight years, is a Certified Scrum Master and a member of both the Scrum Alliance and Agile Alliance and currently works as an Agile Coach, fulfilling technical lead, iteration manager and Agile coaching roles on technology and business projects. He has presented at many international conferences and is a reviewer of a number of Agile and software development books. In his spare time, Craig is an avid motorsport fan.
Net-Map is a tool developed by Eva Schiffer that allows you through interviews to visualise and analyse how different people and groups influence a particular situation. It is of interest to Agile teams as it can help you understand who your stakeholders are, how they are connected and the level of influence they have. InfoQ recently caught up with Eva and asked her a few questions.
Craig discusses how Suncorp are extending the adoption of Agile beyond IT into business departments. They are achieving positive results with measurable benefits. He also discusses what it takes to form an "A-Team" of passionate people working effectively together and delivering value to their businesses.
Forrester have recently released the results of their November 2011 Global Agile Software Application Development Online Survey in a report entitled "Survey Results: How Agile Is Your Organization?" It contains a number of interesting findings around how organisations that have adopted Agile are dealing with their implementation.
A series of recent articles by Steve Denning on Forbes have highlighted the challenges that the Agile community faces to get acceptance by mainstream management.
A recent post by Paul Dolman-Darrall on the Value, Flow, Quality blog proposed a list of the 20 most influential people in the Agile community.
The Agile community has a great tradition of making fun of itself and April Fools Day 2012 was no exception. Here is a wrap up of some of the best gags from this year that you may have missed.
ThoughtWorks recently published the latest update to its Technology Radar; a report produced to help technology decision makers understand emerging trends in software development techniques, tools, languages and platforms. There are some interesting observations of interest to Agile software development teams.
VersionOne have recently released the results of their State of Agile Development Survey for 2011, and as always it gives an interesting insight into Agile adoption and trends.
Interruptions are something that every team has to deal with and, if not managed appropriately, they can potentially have a detrimental affect on their ability to deliver. In a recent post on the Agile Advice blog, Mishkin Berteig described seven options that teams could consider to deal with interruptions when using Scrum or iterative Agile approaches.
The debate as to whether a ScrumMaster is a full-time or part-time role in an Agile teams has created a lot of discussion in the community in recent months. As a result, the community have developed a ScrumMaster Manifesto.
What is the most important thing that the Agile community needs to embrace in 2012 and beyond? InfoQ had the opportunity to attend the recent YOW! Australia Software Developer Conference and took the opportunity of having such a large number of Agile speakers in one place to sit in on the sessions and ask them their thoughts on this question.
