Sharon Robson on Agile Testing
Sharon Robson discusses how software testing practices change, and how they stay the same, in agile projects. She examines the state of practice, looks at certification and the future of testing.
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Process & Practices Content on InfoQ
Latest featured content about Process & Practices
News about Process & Practices
Using DRY: Between Code Duplication and High-Coupling
DRY reduces duplication and the maintenance problems coming with it, but misusing it leads to high coupling and reduced readability. The lesson: a software development principle should be applied considering other corresponding principles, patterns and practices.
Lean Software & Systems Consortium Reorganizes as Lean Systems Society
The Lean Software & Systems Consortium (LeanSCC) whose mission is to improve the world by improving its systems and system-building capabilities (well known in the agile community for promoting the use of Kanban for software development) reorganized as the Lean System Society. The goal is to accelerate and deepen the Lean paradigm and bring together thinkers and doers from different perspectives.
A Very Personal Look at 12 Years of Agile
Simon Baker from Energized Work talks about past, present and future of Agile in his paper "No bull". The publication covers Baker's 12 years of experience with different teams and companies.
Articles about Process & Practices
Distributed Version Control Systems in the Enterprise
Every major Open Source project worldwide has already embraced Distributed Version Control Systems (DVCS), will enterprises be next?
Swarming Across Distance
"Swarming" is a technique whereby many members of a team work together to deliver a User Story, taking advantage of the skills of many team members working together at the same time. It is recognised as a powerful approach to delivering high quality stories quickly. Johanna addresses how to achieve the same results when your team is geographically distributed?
Net-Map - A Toolkit to Understand and Visualise Stakeholder Influence
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.
Presentations about Process & Practices
Deliver Early - There Is No Excuse!
Jesper Boeg discusses why it is important to deliver software early, why it is difficult to do so, along with tools/tips/practices: shared vision, story maps, coaching, and others.
Technical Debt - Why You Should Care
Felipe Rubim discusses several forms of technical debt, emphasizing that every member of the team should consider it, and suggesting taking concrete steps in measuring and reducing it.
Interviews about Process & Practices
James Grenning on Agile, from co-authoring the Manifesto, to fathering Planning Poker, to Agile for Embedded Development
James shares his experience as one of the Agile Manifesto co-authors, fathering the original Agile estimating game (which became Planning Poker) and how Agile methods fit with embedded software development. James also discusses his new book, Test Driven Development for Embedded C, while sharing some surprises, such as his recommendation that teams stop using Planning Poker.
Alan Shalloway on Scaling Agile With Lean and Kanban
Alan Shalloway discusses the challenges associated with transitioning companies to Lean and Agile methods on an enterprise scale. The interview discusses how Lean and Kanban can be used to encourage encourage incremental change and ongoing improvement, the cultural factors that can hamper Agile adoption, and why practices that benefit teams can actually harm the organization as a whole.
Books about Process & Practices
Priming Kanban
This mini-book offers an easy to follow 10 step guide to taking the initial plunge and start using Lean principles to optimizing value and flow in your system. Each step consists of a section explaining “why” followed by examples of specific tools, practices and rules that have helped other teams better understand and optimize their system.
Your Scrum Checklist: Scrum Hard Facts: Roles. Artefacts. All Meetings
Scrum, arguably the fastest-growing Agile methodology, is well described in the original Scrum books, which tend to be read once and put aside. Scrum is a framework with simple rules. This Scrum Checklist will help you to remember these simple rules in the heat of daily work and stress. It enable you to create an enjoyable and productive work environment with your Scrum-Team.
Kanban and Scrum - making the most of both
Scrum and Kanban are two flavours of Agile software development. So how do they relate to each other? Part I illustrates the similarities and differences between Kanban and Scrum, comparing for understanding, not for judgement.Part II is a case study illustrating how a Scrum-based development organization implemented Kanban in their operations and support teams.
Scrum and XP from the Trenches
For those getting started with Agile, this book offers a detailed first-person account of how one Swedish company implemented Scrum and XP with a distributed team of 40 people, and how they continuously improved their process over a year’s time.
Agile Patterns: The Technical Cluster
This book guides the reader on crafting their own agile adoption strategy focused on their business values and environment. This strategy is then directly tied to patterns of agile practice adoption that describe how many teams have successfully (and unsuccessfully) adopted them. Business values are also a component of these patterns so your adoption is always focused on addressing your particular environment.
Domain Driven Design Quickly
Domain Driven Design is a vision and approach for designing a domain model that reflects a deep understanding of the business domain. This book is a short, quickly-readable summary and introduction to the fundamentals of DDD; it does not introduce any new concepts; it attempts to concisely summarize the essence of what DDD is, drawing mostly Eric Evans' book, as well other sources since published such as Jimmy Nilsson's Applying Domain Driven Design, and various DDD discussion forums.