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Building an Agile Team

Building an agile software development team is not easy. Many managers and team leads hire technically capable people, throw some form of an agile process at the team, and hope that everything works as well as the literature says it does. This approach is not only unrealistic, but is prone to failure. This article will describe the components of a successful team and how we built this team.

Darren Hale
on Oct 20, 2009
Making Scrum Stick: Overcoming Anxiety And Fear

While a team can grab on to something as simple and effective as Scrum quickly, the associated changes can cause worries. There are common issues that occur when adopting Scrum as well as nuances that will almost inevitably crop up. By being aware of these issues you can be prepared for them or, perhaps, not feel too bad that you are experiencing them yourself – they are common.

Geoff Watts
on Aug 27, 2009
Coping with Change on Scrum Projects

This article surveys the expected variation of different roles in the Agile organization and proposes techniques with which to better handle the transition to Agile methodologies from traditional Waterfall. The following roles are discussed in this article: Customers/Stakeholders, Product Management, General Management, Project Management, Developers and Quality Assurance.

Agilebuddy Jack Milunsky
on Jul 30, 2009
Book Excerpt: Agile Testing

This book is for testers on an agile team, test and quality assurance managers transitioning to agile development, and agile teams learning how to approach testing. The book introduces agile testing, how it's different from testing on a traditional team, and what makes agile testers different. The book contains dozens of stories about the various testing-related issues faced and resolved.

Janet Gregory Lisa Crispin
on Mar 24, 2009
Successfully Adopting Pair Programming

Jay Fields takes a look at pair programming from an adoption perspective. This article is for you if you already know what pair programming is and guidance on how to get to the point of successfully practicing pair programming. Jay goes over everything from an optimal seating arrangement, to effective coaching techniques, to calling out common mistakes to avoid.

Jay Fields
on Mar 05, 2009
Case study: Distributed Scrum Project for Dutch Railways

How we customise Scrum to our local context plays a large role in the success or failure of a project. This article describes a successful, large, distributed Scrum project, which had already been scrapped once under a traditional approach. The authors share lessons learned on: project startup, product ownership, testing and the importance of estimates and effective communication.

Martin van Vliet Marco Mulder
on Aug 12, 2008
Improvement, Success and Failure: Scrum Adoption in China

This recent inquiry, by InfoQ China editor Jacky Li, picked 5 very different cases of Scrum adoption in China, which got different results, and asked: Why did you use Scrum? How did you adopt it? What problems did you encounter, and why did it succeed or fail? Despite the small sample size, it's an interesting comparison, pointing out that improvement doesn't ensure success.

Jacky (Jian) Li translated by Jacky (Jian) Li
on Apr 16, 2008
Kanban Applied to Software Development: from Agile to Lean

In this InfoQ article Kenji Hiranabe applies lessons learned while working with Japanese manufacturers. While many Agile teams are optimizing only a portion of the value stream, Hiranabe proposes a simple way to adapt lessons from Lean Manufacturing's "Kanban" visual tracking system to make process visible to more of the organization, for better communication and process improvement.

Kenji Hiranabe
on Jan 14, 2008