One of the fundamental Agile values is “we value responding to change over following a plan” which has sometimes been misintrepreted to mean we don’t need to plan on an Agile project. Nothing could be further from the truth - in reality agile organisations and projects plan at many different levels. Shane Hastie discusses the different types and approaches to planning and how the work together.
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.
There are usually multiple things which need to be done before the start of a project. Teams usually use 'Iteration Zero' to put all necessary systems in place in order to start delivering business value in subsequent iterations. Is this the right way?
Fixed price contracts are evil - this is what can often be heard from agilists. On the other hand those contracts are reality which many agile teams have to face. But what if we try to tame it instead of fighting against it? How can a company execute this kind of contract using agile practices to achieve better results with lower risk? This article will try to answer those questions.
There has been a lot of conversation going on around the configuration of applications, and how to manage it. This article explores things people can do from within their code to make their lives, and the lives of anyone else who has to administer or maintain their application, easier. These patterns have been used a number of times on ThoughtWorks projects, and they have proven their worth.
While some agilists consider only user stories as necessary, Gerard Meszaros believes that we need to find the proper balance between upfront planning and decision deferring. In this presentation, Meszaros explains what should be going on behind the curtains from product conception to the user stories backlog.
Traditional thinking says the more critical the application, the more tightly its development must be planned, staged and controlled. The truth is, a flexible culture is stronger, safer and more robust. This talk gives practical tips for adopting an agile approach to planning, team interactions and risk management. When the culture shifts, teams achieve goals sooner and safety is greatly enhanced.
Management consultant Johanna Rothman helps her clients manage risk: be it risk in a project's people, risk in how the people are managed, or the risk in the projects themselves. In this interview she talked about strategies for risk reduction, useful for teams in all stages of agility, contained in her new book "Manage It! Your Guide to Modern Pragmatic Project Management."
In this short InfoQ interview, Nils Haugen spoke with Floyd Marinescu about the "Planning Poker" technique he relies on to improve team estimates. Having consciously experimented with it for a while, he described this simple practice and why it works: by making space for team members to each contribute their own perspective. In this way, it's good for estimates and for teambuilding.
