Tracking change and innovation in the enterprise software development community
It is possible to measure certain properties of code, and on the one hand, correlate them with project factors known to have economic merit and on the other, with programmer-pleasing practices. This session surveys emerging evidence that we can measure the effect of the technical practices of Agile development, and explores what we might be able to do about it to our benefit.
When should you refactor? There are times when you simply need to pay down technical debt - you should stop and refactor. No, you should only refactor when one is working on a User Story. Which advice is best? Is there, perhaps, a third option?
Is quality supposed to mean a lack of defects that are holding us back? Mike Bria, Lisa Crispin, James Bach and JB Rainsberger debate the meaning of quality and the limitations our current definition is placing on us.
Ryan Cooper reviewed Amr Elssamadisy's new book and found it a useful framework for designing customized adoption strategies. Rather than a single recipe of Agile practices for everyone, the reader is offered patterns and tools to help determine which practices will most effectively help them reach their own organization's specific goals.
For Agile developers only familiar with Scrum or XP, it may be unclear how Lean relates to what they do. This article introduces Lean Thinking and how it enhances software development. Ning Lu of ThoughtWorks China identified the biggest obstacle to Lean or Agile as the mind-set developed during the period of large-scale manufacturing.
In this presentation held during Agile 2008, Alan Shalloway, CEO and founder of Net Objectives, presents the Lean software development principles and practices and how they can benefit to Agile practitioners.
Choosing the right features can make the difference between the success and failure of a software product. Mike Cohn presented 'Prioritizing your Project Backlog' at Agile 2008 on how a project backlog should be organized and prioritized and non-financial techniques for prioritization such as kano analysis, theme screening/scoring, relative weighting and analytic hierarchy process.
Pragmatic Programmer Dave Thomas, author of the 'pickaxe book' Programming Ruby, and co-author of Agile Web Development with Rails and The Pragmatic Programmer, found some time to talk with InfoQ about Ruby, Rails and the importance of choosing the right tool for the job.
Lean software gurus Mary and Tom Poppendieck share their years of practical experience, as they speak on the history of Lean thinking, the value of fast delivery and deferred committment, their use of Value Stream Mapping to identify and reduce waste, the importance of identifying and dealing well with cross-organizational and inter-organizational boundaries, and how Lean relates to RUP and Scrum.
