Articles

Are You a Whole Team?

Key to the success of Agile is a "Whole Team", a cross functional team of generalizing specialists. A group that works across boundaries. Matthew Philip diagnoses some of their common problems, such as "Emphasis on Titles", the "Hero Culture" and more. Matthew looks at the root causes and possible cures.

The Curse of the Change Control Mechanism

Unprecedented levels of change caused by the pace of innovation are stretching traditional contract models to the breaking point. As more organizations adopt Agile and Lean for the development of innovative/complex products and services, new contract models are needed that accommodate change. The Evolutionary Contract Model, based on Agile / Lean principles, offers promise as a possible solution.

A Process for Managing Risks in Distributed Teams

In this IEEE article, John Stouby Persson and Lars Mathiassen discuss a process for managing risks associated in managing the distributed software projects. The process includes identifying and analyzing distributed-team risks in the areas of task distribution, geographical and cultural distribution, stakeholder relations and communication infrastructure.

Threat Modeling Express

In this article, authors Rohit Sethi and Sahba Kazerooni discuss an agile threat modeling approach called "Threat Modeling Express" that can be used to collaboratively define threats and countermeasures based on the business priorities.

Agile at 10 – A State of Contradiction

Mike Beedle states that agile is in a state of contradiction, the agile of 10 years ago is now passé and we run the disk of diluting the real meaning of being agile through lip service implementations without focusing on quality. He echoes the call in the 10 Year Reunion meeting for a concerted focus on quality, and asks what an Agile Manifesto 2.0 should contain.

Agile Architecture Interactions

James Madison shows how architects can bring agile and architecture practices together to pragmatically balance business and architectural priorities while delivering both with agility.

Patterns-Based Engineering: Successfully Delivering Solutions via Patterns

InfoQ spoke with Lee and Celso about the Patterns-Based Engineering: Successfully Delivering Solutions via Patterns book, discussing patterns for working with patterns, MDD and the promise of reuse. The book focuses on how to improve efforts in identifying, producing, managing and consuming patterns – leading to better software delivered more quickly with fewer resources.

Bridging Internal and External Software Quality with Sonar and JaCoCo

In this article, author Olivier Gaudin discusses the differences between internal and external software quality and how to perform the software quality assessment using tools like Sonar and its new extension JaCoCo.

Key Takeaway Points and Lessons Learned from QCon London 2011

This article presents the main takeway points as seen by the many attendees who blogged or tweeted about QCon. Comments are organized by tracks and sessions: Keynotes, Tutorials, Architectures You've Always Wondered About, Building Systems With REST, Design and Objects 2011, Enterprise Agile Transformation, Functional Web, HTML5, the Platform, iOS4 and Android, NoSQL: Where and How, and many more!

How ALM Drives Business/IT Alignment, Competitive Advantage

ALM and Business Processes

Large-Scale Agile Design & Architecture: Ways of Working

During my 2011 QCon London keynote on "Scaling Lean & Agile: Large, Multisite or Offshore Delivery", I mentioned — as an aside — that, "Architecture is a bad metaphor. We don't construct our software like a building, we grow it like a garden." This prompted many a tweet, and some people were interested in clarification or elaboration.