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An Introduction to Lean Thinking for Software

For Agile developers only familiar with Scrum or XP, it may be unclear how Lean relates to what they do. This article introduces Lean Thinking and how it enhances software development. Ning Lu of ThoughtWorks China identified the biggest obstacle to Lean or Agile as the mind-set developed during the period of large-scale manufacturing.

Jacky Li
on Jun 23, 2008
Using Numbers to Communicate - in the Spirit of Agile

It's an old story. Techies cave in to the business guys because they don't know how to push back. The problem? Developers use numbers primarily for computation, but the business uses numbers to make decisions. In this story the "Spirit of Agile" encourages a developer to turn non-computational problems and issues into number language.

Barbara Chauvin Linda Rising
on Jun 13, 2008
The Agile Coach, from A to Z

Agile approaches introduce a new leadership role, the "Agile Coach," which is not familiar from traditional methodologies. What's so important about this role? Is it just a new name for an old role? Why does Monster.com list 54 positions with this title? Patrick Kua of ThoughtWorks lists 26 useful answers to this question, in the form of an A-to-Z primer.

Patrick Kua
on May 22, 2008
Creating Product Owner Success

The role of the Scrum Product Owner is powerful, but challenging to implement. Success can bring a new and healthy relationship between customers/product management and development, even competitive advantage, but it comes at a price: organizational change is often required. In this article Roman Pichler looks at what it takes to succeed as a Product Owner.

Roman Pichler
on May 14, 2008
Culture & Methods

Distributed Version Control Systems: A Not-So-Quick Guide Through

Since Linus Torvalds presentation at Google about git in May 2007, the adoption and interest for Distributed Version Control Systems has been constantly rising. We will introduce the concept of Distributed Version Control, see when to use it, why it can be better, and have a look at three actors in the area: git, Mercurial and Bazaar.

Sebastien Auvray
on May 07, 2008
Software Development Lessons Learned from Poker

There is no silver bullet. We know it, but don't act like it. Your language, tool or process is better, right? Jay Fields says: "It depends". The right choices varies with context, people, and more. This article touches upon how a lot of things must impact a choice; learning culture, skill levels, teamwork, incomplete information, metrics - and context.

Jay Fields
on Apr 26, 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
Development

Key Takeaway Points and Lessons Learned from QCon London 2008

This article presents the main takeway points as seen by the many attendees who blogged about QCon. Comments are organized by tracks and sessions: Keynotes, Architectures you've always wondered about, The Cloud as the New Middleware Platform, SOA, REST and the Web, Evolving Java, Banking, Agile in Practice, Programming Languages of Tomorrow, Effective Design, .NET, The Rise of Ruby.

Ryan Slobojan
on Apr 09, 2008
Development

Version Control for Multiple Agile Teams

When several agile development teams work on the same codebase, how do we minimize chaos, and ensure there's a clean, releasable version at the end of every iteration? Here Henrik Kniberg outlines the scheme used in "Scrum and XP from the Trenches". This paper is not so much for version control experts as for the rest of us, who just want to learn simple and useful ways to collaborate.

Henrik Kniberg
on Mar 31, 2008
Help Your Teams Trade Cubicles for Communication Skills

The Agile “self organising team” paradigm demands new skills of team members – including the people skills for which they may once have depended upon their Project Managers. Far from being redundant, management can now play an important role in helping teams learn new ways to communicate and collaborate. This article proposes some strategies for imparting new skills and suggests some resources.

Deborah Hartmann Preuss
on Mar 24, 2008
Better Best Practices

Organizations often introduce Best Practices as part of a change program or quality initiative. These can take a number of forms, from cheat sheets to full-blown consultant-led methodologies, complete with the requisite auditing and accreditation. In this article, Dan North shows how best practices can not only fail to help, but even have a severe negative impact on your top performers.

Dan North
on Mar 11, 2008
The Three M's - The Lean Triad

The discussion of applying lean principles to software development has largely focused on identifying and eliminating waste (in Japanese: muda). Lean Thinking equally aims to remove overburden (muri) and unnecessary variation (mura). Roman Pichler discusses the relationship of the "three M's" and proposes to eliminate overburden as the first step toward a leaner process.

Roman Pichler
on Feb 27, 2008

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