What We Have Learned in Testing and New Developments in Agile Testing
Software development in agile is based on testing says José Díaz. Agile has brought us real teams of development and testing without borders. Some of the currently relevant topics in agile testing are the transition from waterfall to agile methodologies, tester skills and Certified Agile Tester, DevOps and mobile testing.
Scrum Alliance Launches "Added Qualifications"
The Scrum Alliance has launched a new program of Added Qualifications aimed at existing CSM/CSPO certification holders who want to explore more advanced Scrum topics. The first Added Qualification is in Scaling Scrum Fundamentals to larger organizations and multiple teams. InfoQ spoke to Scrum Alliance Managing Director Carol McEwan about the new qualifications.
Scaling Agile: Frameworks and Experiences
The Agile Consortium Belgium together with UNICOM is organizing the Scaling Agile for the Enterprise 2015 congress in Brussels, Belgium. InfoQ interviewed Arie van Bennekum and Jan de Baere from the Agile Consortium about activities organized by the Agile Consortium, issues that the software industry is facing with agile scaling and stories from enterprises that have successfully scaled agile.
A MS Certification Based on Publishing an Application
Microsoft has been trying to create generally accepted software development certifications for at least two decades. In an attempt to distinguish between those who actually know the material and those who are just good at memorizing study guides they’ve tried a variety of tactics. This time they are allowing programmers to submit examples of their work for credit towards a certification.
Developing Leadership Skills by Using a Metaphor of Orchestra Rehearsals
Rehearsals of top-notch orchestras and ensembles can represent an unprecedented source of deep learning for management teams said Dominique Dejonghe and Luc Galoppin from Pensato. InfoQ interviewed Dominique and Luc about leadership development, the relationship between making music and managing organizations and on finding the oboe in your project or process.
Empowered People Control Their Own Career
Fons Leroy, CEO of VDAB (a public employment service in Belgium), talked about how innovation and co-creation has helped strengthen citizens on the labor market. He explored what VDAB is doing to empower citizens to be in the driver seat of their own career. Organizations can use a similar approach to empower employees and increase organizational agility.
Adopting Agile: Should We Start with the Structure?
When an organization decides to adopt agile the way it is structured often has to change. An agile way of working also brings new practices for teams and managers, and usually impacts the culture and mindset. All of these are related, but changing everything at the same time might be a too big challenge for an organization. Let’s explore what can happen when we start with the structure.
Becoming a Continuous Learning Organization
Software Development is often considered to be knowledge intensive, therefor organizations look for ways to enable continuous learning. “We need learning organisations and they start with learning individuals” says Marcin Floryan. Individual learning can be difficult and scaling individual learning even more challenging. What can organizations do to become a continuous learning organization?
Value of Certifications for Agile Transformation
Does agile certification depict the knowledge of professional? Thoughts shared by various thought leaders.
Nurturing a Culture for Continuous Learning
Continuous learning supports agile adoption in enterprises. A culture change can be needed to enable and support continuous learning. There are several things that managers and agile coaches can do to establish and nurture a continuous learning culture.
Examining Different Approaches to Scaling Agile
Scaling Agile is a source of great consternation - what does it mean, how to scale, what framework or approach to use, what techniques need to change when adopting agile at scale, etc. Richard Dolman & Steve Spearman have built a matrix for comparing agile scaling frameworks. They spoke to InfoQ about their work.
Agile Training and Coaching for Managers
Several authors discussed the importance of training for the success of agile adoption. Teams usually receive training when organizations are adopting agile. The question is how much and what kind of training and coaching is needed for the managers to make an agile transformation succeed.
Management Buy-in and Support in Agile Adoption
Adopting agile is an organization change which involves management. It is said that management buy-in is crucial for agile to succeed and that a lack of management support can be a barrier in agile transformations. There are different ways for management to support agile in enterprises.
Experiences from Applying Kanban at SAP
The experiences with more than two years of applying Kanban at SAP were presented by Alexander Gerber and Martin Engel at Lean Kanban Central Europe. Their case study showed how they supported the implementation of lean and agile processes. InfoQ interviewed them about how Kanban was introduced and received within SAP, the training approach and the experiences from teams with the Kanban practices
Rocket to Mars: A Sprint Planning Game
“Many team and their product owners believe that the team's unique job is to deliver more and more story points, but we consider this to be a complete misunderstanding of the relation between the team and the product owner” said Damien Thouvenin and Pierrick Revol. They ran a sprint planning game on investing time to produce stories, investigate issues, reduce technical debt, or do training.
