InfoQ Homepage Best Practices Content on InfoQ
-
26 Hints for Successful Agile Development
Keith Swenson, recently compiled a list of 26 hints for Agile software development. Keith suggested that he frequently collects nuggets of wisdom on various topics and the list is a distilled set of hints which really matter for Agile software development.
-
97 Things Every Programmer Should Know
The 97 Things series continues, after the architect and the project manager, with things every programmer should know. InfoQ talked to its editor Kevlin Henney.
-
Handling Project Termination
Terminating a sprint in Scrum is a rare event, but it does happen. An abnormal sprint termination can be called by either the team or the product owner. Most of the times terminating a sprint or the project leaves a sense of bad feeling. Robert K. Hurley and Joseph T. Jimmerson discussed the ways to deal with the trauma of a terminated project.
-
Measuring Agile Performance with the Agile Triangle
Traditional software development teams were supposed to work within the confines of the software 'Iron triangle'. The three sides of the triangle are Scope, Schedule and Cost. Jim Highsmith suggested that the Iron triangle, imposes a lot of constraints on the flexibility of the Agile teams and suggested an alternate Agile Triangle.
-
Slow Down to Speed Up Profits
General understanding suggests that, if everyone on the team works at top capacity then the team would be most productive. Contrary to this, Steve Bockman discussed that this assumption might not always be true. In some cases, it may be necessary to slow down and work at less than top capacity in order to boost productivity.
-
Rescuing Your Ruby on Rails Projects
Ruby on Rails has been around for about 5 years and in those years developers have created a lot of applications. Many of those applications were created while learning Ruby and Ruby on Rails and may not have used the best practices but yet made it into production web sites. These web applications can be problematical but a new book focused on the solution is available.
-
Resource Management in Agile Projects
Agile projects are known to address the problems of rapid change. These may be changes in market forces, system requirements or implementation technology. One of the change, that does not gel well with Agile projects, is the frequent change of people working on the project. The idea is not to disturb the high performing teams so that they can continue to deliver high velocity.
-
How to Tide Over Organizational Politics?
Politics is an integral part of all organizations.Generally, technical people have a distaste for politics because technical matters are mostly precise and can be stated in black and white where as political matters generally involve shades of gray, which are not always easy to decipher. Recently, members on the Scrum Development group discussed ways to deal with politics.
-
Is Measuring Hyper-Productivity a Waste of Time?
In a presentation about Shock Therapy, Jeff Sutherland mentioned that Hyper-Productivity is at least Toyota level of performance which is four times the industry average. In a recent discussion on the Scrum Development group, members debate whether it is both fruitful and possible to accurately measure productivity across sprints.
-
A Good Velocity
Buddha Buck recently asked the Extreme Programming list if there were a velocity range that could be considered 'good' for a team of about seven people doing two-week iterations. He felt that a velocity of eight or below indicated that the team's stories might be too big. The resulting discussion provided some answers to the question, and the questions behind the question.
-
Presentation: Meeting the Challenge of Simplicity
This session addresses the abstract notion of simplicity, looks at why it is critical in modern UI design and answers questions: Why does simplicity matter? Is there a meaningful definition of simplicity? Why do design processes and good intentions undermine simplicity? What processes and techniques can software developers use to achieve simplicity?
-
Article: Where To Now With Build Automation
Most developers nowadays are familiar with the basic tenets of Continuous Integration, but arguably only a small proportion of these are fully benefiting from an optimized CI set up. This article, by John Smart of Atlassian, discusses Continuous Integration practices that can take CI beyond merely being a glorified cron job and make it an effective, productivity-enhancing hub for development.
-
8 Best Practices to Improve Scalability
Wille Faler proposes 8 scalability and performance best practices like offloading the database, using caching, minimizing network traffic and others.
-
Presentation: 10 Ways to Improve Your Code
In this presentation recorded during QCon SF 2008, Neal Ford, an architect at ThoughtWorks, shows 10 ways to write better code. This is practical advice for developers, but application architects can benefit from it too.
-
The Cloud Security Alliance Wants Safer Clouds
The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) is a non profit organization meant to be an open forum promoting the exchange of information and knowledge related to security and cloud computing with the aim to create a set of best security practices for cloud vendors and consumers.