Modeling supports us in communicating and understanding when we create software solutions. As communication and understanding are two of the most critical aspects of delivering software solutions - modeling is a valuable tool that should not be overlooked. Agile Modeling adheres to and aligns with Agile values and principles and should be one of the practices within your Agile toolkit.
Agile experts suggest a slow ramp up, thinking beyond Scrum of Scums, and using techniques like Feature teams, for scaling Agile projects. A feature team takes responsibility for one or two features at a time and works on them as a whole until they are done. Once the features are delivered, each team member signs up for the next feature by joining another feature team.
A number of commentators have been talking about the perceived dichotomy between Agile techniques and architectural thinking. This post investigates some of the tensions between Big Up Front Design (BDUF) and You Aint Gonna Need It (YAGNI) thinking and looks at how the two approaches can in fact work together in complimentary ways.
Mike Cohn and others present their case to why you should consider structuring your teams around software "features" rather than software "components".
Promoting, sustaining, and evolving agile practices in an organization requires expertise and experience. Initially, many companies bring in outside experts to help get things started. Laura Moore has described a model, based on the Blue Angels, which companies can use to develop and deploy internal experts.
Elisabeth Hendrickson, 2010 winner of the Gordon Pask award, talks about the collaborative nature of the agile community and how it has changed the nature of work in organisations large and small. She reflects on how the community has changed over the years and become more and more inclusive, and invites one and all to join the conversation and contribute to the changes happening in the workplace.
Feature teams, common enough in small groups, are all too rare in large product development - but they can be a key to scaling with agility. This article analyses how feature teams resolve weaknesses of component teams, and points out key issues to address when transitioning. It is an excerpt from "Scaling Lean and Agile Development," by Craig Larman and Bas Vodde, to be published later this year.
"But does Agile scale?" Emerging stories and case studies indicate that it certainly does. InfoQ brings you two excerpts from Dean Leffingwell's book "Scaling Software Agility: Best Practices for Large Enterprises". Chapter 1 presents how Agile methods respond to the need for competitive advantage, and Chapter 2 revisits "Why the Waterfall Model Doesn’t Work".
Bas Vodde describes strategies for large teams with legacy software to adopt Scrum successfully. Bas discusses communication problems found in most component teams and why and how teams - especially large ones - should make the change to feature teams and how that change affects organizational structure.
