InfoQ Homepage Adopting Agile Content on InfoQ
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Open Office Layout is Bad for Brain !
Open office layout is usually considered the default layout for Agile teams. Cubicle farms are boring and a thing of the past. Open office is known to improve communication, collaboration and build stronger teams. Is it all as good as it sounds?
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How Rigid is Scrum?
Scrum is seen as an adaptive and flexible software development methodology which aims to improve the development process. Over the years, there have been many success stories which have been attributed to Scrum. However, some teams continue to smell a good amount of inflexibility and rigidity. Is it Scrum at fault or is it a flawed adoption process?
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Adopting Agile in an Environment of Fear
Agile adoption and transformation is sometimes effective, and sometimes not. Is there a common thread to the failures? Does fear have anything to do with it? And what can we expect if we start an agile adoption initiative in an environment that is full of fear?
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Systemic Constellations at Agile Coach Camp Montreal
Todd Charron is reporting about the Agile Coach Camp Canada 2011, in Montreal, Quebec where Michael Spayd demonstrated a powerful coaching technique called Systemic Constellations. Systemic Constellations comes from family systems therapy and was developed by Bert Hellinger.
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Happiness and Self Organizing Teams
Does happiness affect our results - both positive and negative - with self organizing teams? Mark Levison shares research in psychology that shows that choice and control are interchangeable: "if people lack power, they clamor for choice, and if they have an abundance of choice they don’t strive as much for power." Does this explain successes and pains of self organization?
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Commercial Interests Censoring Failures
Philippe Kruchten described the Agile movement as "The agile movement is in some ways a bit like a teenager: very self-conscious, checking constantly its appearance in a mirror, accepting few criticisms..." and shared a list of twenty elephants in the room - uncomfortable issues that are ignored on purpose. The first of these unmentionables is that commercial interests are censoring failures.
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Learning from History - or not
Consultant and author Gerald M. Weinberg has been in the computer industry for over 50 years; he raises concerns about the seemingly inevitable hype cycle associated with new techniques and how the industry so seldom seems to learn from previous cycles. In a similar vein Elisabeth Hendrickson recently blogged about the impact of "fake agile". They also provide some advice on how to improve.
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When to Cease Being an Agile Coach?
Agile coach Morgan Ahlström recently turned to the Agile Coach Support mailing list to ask how to deal with an organization that said they wanted the benefits of becoming more agile, but was behaving in ways contrary to that goal.
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Is there an Agile Personality Type?
There has been quite a bit of research in both academic and practitioner circles into the impact of personality types on agile teams. Various commentators have asked variations on the question “is there an agile personality type”. The most common answer seems to be “it depends”, but there seem to be some key characteristics that seem to indicate an affinity with agile methods
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What Constitutes A High-Quality Agile Transition?
In a number of blog postings, members of the Agile community offer their perspectives on what constitutes a high-quality transition to Agile methods within an organization
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Predictions about Agile in 2011
As is normal at the beginning of a new year predictions about where industry and practice are heading abound. Mario Moreira and Scott Ambler predict the continued adoption of agile practices across more and more organisations, and the adaptation of agile techniques to larger and more distributed teams, with an emphasis on more structured implementations.
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Characteristics of an Agile Organization
Jim Collins, in his famous book “Good to Great” talks about his teams five year research where they determined what it takes to change a good company into a great one. Can Agile help in the creation of great companies?
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Should You Assign Story Points To Bugs?
When migrating an existing project to Scrum, one often faces a backlog of unfixed bugs from the pre-Scrum era. Is it effective to assign story points to these bugs and prioritize some along with the user stories in each sprint?
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Working with Difficult People and Resistance in Scrum
How do you work with difficult and uncooperative people? People who are combative or unprofessional? People who seem actively opposed to the agenda?
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Common Mistakes in Agile Adoptions
A number of commentators have written about common mistakes and antipatterns of Agile adoption. Factors range from over-reliance on tools to fixation with a particular process are commonly identified as inhibiting effective Agile adoption. The lists provide food for thought and advice on things to be wary of when implementing Agile.