InfoQ Homepage Adopting Agile Content on InfoQ
-
Agile Adoption: Projects Should Dive-In, Organizations Should Toe-Dip
Hearty debate abounds about whether agile adoption is better done in a gradual "toe-dipping" manner or with an all-or-nothing "head-first dive" approach. Johanna Rothman says do both: projects should dive all-in, while organizations should take it gradually.
-
Opinion: Agile Coaches Frequently a Source of Adoption Problems
Increasingly there are reports of initial success followed by failures with Agile adoption. Sometimes these problems are inadvertently caused by Agile coaches.
-
Ensuring Success for Self Organizing Teams
Self organization is defined as a phenomenon in which the internal organization of the system increases in complexity without being guided or managed by an outside source. However, successful self organization needs the right level of support from not only the team members but also the management and the organizational environment.
-
No Easy Road to Agile Cultural Change
A number of commentators have written about the challenges involved in migrating an organisation to an Agile culture. Ken Schwaber has estimated that 75% of Scrum implementations will fail to deliver the anticipated benefits. This article looks at some of the reasons why and what can be done to improve success rates.
-
Agile In a Flash
Many people playfully credit the 3x5 index card as the "agilist's badge". In many ways though this is not an inaccurate or inappropriate; going through a stack of index cards is a often real hallmark of many agile activities. But what about using index cards to learn and remember agile? With their 'Agile In a Flash' project, Tim Ottinger and Jeff Langr want to help people do just that.
-
An Evolutionary Perspective of Software Development
Memes, originally coined by Richard Dawkins in "The Selfish Gene" are cultural genes; ideas that propagate among people and affect the way we think and act. Julian Everett has suggested that we can look at software development practices, ideas, and culture as a collection of memes. By doing so, our understanding of what works and why can be turned on its head.
-
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.
-
Agile Project Sponsorship – A Light Hand for Effective Results
Organisations embracing Agile methods need to reassess their approach to project governance and sponsorship. Project decisions need to be made rapidly, responding to changes in the organisational ecosystem while keeping a clear eye on the project’s and organisation’s goals. Advice from commentators on project sponsorship and important metrics to keep projects on track.
-
What Should Your Agile Organization Value?
Adopting agile is not easy. Many organizations often struggle trying to squeeze the practices of Scrum or XP into the way they work. Mike Cottmeyer offers a reminder to such organizations that placing too much value in the "how" of agile may be a misguided approach.
-
A Comprehensive Collection Of Agile Mailing Lists
As a participant of the Agile community here on InfoQ, you've already shown you are interested in learning more about agile, and likely have ideas of your own that you're interested in contributing back. This is what you can experience in the various mailing lists that exist related to agile development. But what lists are available? Mark Levison helps to answer that question.
-
Automated Acceptance Tests - Theoretical or Practical
There have been sporadic reports of successes in writing requirements as acceptance tests and automating them. This practice is only used by a small minority of the community. Are automated acceptance tests written at the beginning of each iteration just a theoretical assertion that have been proven ineffective by the lack of adoption?
-
High-performance Teams – Avoiding Teamicide
High-performance teams constitute a mere 2% of the workforce, but Agile processes appear to stimulate the formation of these types of teams. This article discusses Steve Denning's perspective on how such teams can be nurtured in the workplace; it also looks at a recent talk by Ominlab Media's Stefan Gillard on how to select and employ for the formation of high-performance teams.
-
Interview with Bas Vodde at Agile 2008
Bas Vodde describes strategies for large teams with legacy software to adopt Scrum successfully. Bas discusses communication problems found in most component teams and why and how teams - especially large ones - should make the change to feature teams and how that change affects organizational structure.
-
James Shore With More On Keeping It (Agile) Real
In a casual interview, InfoQ got to talk with James Shore about some of the topics he's been most vocal about lately, including his Art Of Agile book, recent waves of watered-down agile, and how Kanban might be less than the whole picture.
-
An Agile Team's Weekly Schedule
It's 9:35 AM; do you know where your agile team is? If they are using William Pietri's example schedule, they are in the middle of their stand-up meeting, unless it's Monday, in which case they are doing iteration planning & kickoff. William's sample schedule is understandable and practical, and sparked discussion that explored subtitles in scheduling for agile teams.