InfoQ Homepage Agile Conferences Content on InfoQ
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Jeff Sutherland: Are Agile Teams Truly Agile?
Ten Years after the Agile Manifesto Jeff Sutherland muses the question of whether Agile teams are truly Agile. You’re not Agile if you’re not producing product at the end of each sprint. Jeff discusses doing scrum well, velocity and production measurements and the next big challenge for Agile leaders.
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Lyssa Adkins and Michael Spayd on the Role of the Agile Coach
In this interview, Lyssa Adkins and Michael Spayd, cofounders of the Agile Coaching Institute, discuss the role of the Agile Coach and the competencies (i.e. facilitation, mentoring, teaching, and coaching) necessary to become effective in that role. Also discussed are ways an Agile coach can transform teams and organizations while reinforcing behaviors that will endure after the coach leaves.
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John Rudd on the Use of Real Options for Agile Portfolios and Projects
Funding models and portfolio management approaches need to account for increasing levels of uncertainty, change and competition by compressing planning horizons, speeding time to market and recalibrating frequently. In short, organizations should apply real options and Agile methods for project approval, planning and oversight, not just for execution.
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Jeff Patton on the Product Owner’s World
In this interview, Jeff Patton discusses the Product Owner role and points out that Agile has never been very focused on the customer. While Agile development excels at “delivery”, it struggles to support “discovery” (i.e. defining what the customer really needs). Also discussed are techniques such as Lean Startup and story maps and the importance of defining business value in an Agile context.
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Linda Cook Discusses the Agile Coaching Profession
Linda Cook, a well-known agilist, and board member of both the Agile Alliance and the Agile Leadership Network, discusses the agile coaching profession. Among other things, she covers servant leadership, being as a role model, types of individuals appropriate for the profession, and the differences between being an external coach versus being an internal employee in the coach role.
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Andrew Hunt on Pragmatic Programming
InfoQ sits down with Andrew Hunt, one of the original Agile Manifesto signatories, to discuss how Agile has diverged from the original vision and how pragmatic programming has evolved. Andy discusses CoffesScript, Arduino, and HTML5 and he shares his views on the effectiveness of pair programming, Agile testing methods and other practices.
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Chet Hendrickson on the Need for Good Technical Practices
Chet Hendrickson was interviewed at Agile 2011. He discusses the need to get back to basics, to the ideas that made agile successful in the first place - small teams working closely with empowered product owners and using good technical practices. He describes the Agile Sweet Spot and talks about how organizations can work towards achieving it.
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Ward Cunningham on Agile: 10 Years After
On the 10th anniversary of the Agile Manifesto, Ward Cunningham discusses software craftsmanship, pair programming, and the changes in Agile over the last ten years. He explains how his original ideas have become diluted, and shares his latest project, based on ideas originating from his work with HyperCard, to create federated documents.
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Examining the Roots of Agile
How did the Toyota Production System influence the formation of Agile practices, and what advances in systems thinking can be useful to Agile thinkers today? This also interview examines the current state of software development in Japan, where waterfall processes still hold sway but Agile techniques are taking hold.
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Creativity and Brain Science with Mark Levison and Roger Brown
Agile teams are an ideal environment for collaborative creativity. Great teams can apply creative ideas to problem solving and innovation for new product ideas. Neuroscience gives us new insights into how creativity works. Research into creativity enhancement gives us ways to guide people in a group to create results that are greater than the sum of its individual members.
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The IC Agile Training Mix
Founding members of the ICAgile Consortium, Ahmed Sidky and Alistair Cockburn, discuss IC Agile, along with Bob Payne, a consultant, coach and trainer. They explain why ICAgile was created, how it fits in with popular certifications like the Certified ScrumMaster, how organizations that deliver training can fit their courses into the ICAgile road map and how individuals can collect knowledge.
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Jez Humble on Continuous Delivery
In this interview at Agile 2011, Jez Humble discusses continuous delivery and the deployment pipeline, emphasizing the importance of feedback and automating tests at every level to validate deployments. Gone are the days of massive acceptance test scripts. He also talks about the evils of feature branching, and speaks on the DevOps practices to collaborate all the way through the delivery cycle.