BT

Facilitating the Spread of Knowledge and Innovation in Professional Software Development

Write for InfoQ

Topics

Choose your language

InfoQ Homepage Agile Content on InfoQ

  • Agile Development at the Enterprise Level: Misconceptions That Jeopardize Success

    Most large companies struggle to deploy Agile in the face of compliance demands, lengthy funding cycles, and the need to involve many stakeholders. Are user stories really enough? Are BAs really irrelevant? How can we give up the BRD? Successful Agile enterprises work around these and other common misconceptions by adding the structure and discipline they need to manage complexity and risk.

  • Teaching Modern Software Development Techniques at University

    We often hear how there is a skills shortage in the software industry, and about the apparent gap between what people are taught in university and the “real world”. This is how Imperial College London aims to bridge this gap, providing students with relevant skills for industrial software engineering careers, and teaching tools and techniques for professional developer working in a modern team.

  • Internal Tech Conferences - How and Why

    Software engineering today is every bit as much about the people as it is about technology - empowered teams don’t appear overnight. We need to oil the wheels of collaboration so they roll smoothly. Here, Matthew Skelton and Victoria Morgan-Smith discuss how to use internal conferences to boost your organisation’s social capital, the currency by which relationships flourish and businesses thrive.

  • Proper Usage of Metrics with Flow Debt as an Example

    Flow Debt is a leading indicator that provides a view of what is happening inside a delivery system; an important metric for improving software development. This article provides an example how a metric like Flow Debt can be used improperly, i.e. out of their domain, or properly, i.e. context aware usage of Flow Debt with an IT operations team.

  • When Feature Flags Go Wrong

    Feature flags can superpower development, allowing faster features. But they can also be the worst kind of technical debt if misused or mismanaged. This article walks us through some horror stories of feature flags gone bad, and lessons learned.

  • Standardizing Requirements Descriptions on Scrum Projects for Better Development and Testing Quality

    Standardizing requirements descriptions on Scrum projects benefit development and testing quality. Without standardizing, the project may suffer. Standardizing requirements descriptions provides a minimum of eight benefits from requirements descriptions unification, which in turn positively affects testing and makes management of ongoing changes in requirements easier with the help of tools.

  • Agile in the UK Government - An Insider Reveals All

    The Government Digital Service (GDS) aims to transform the relationship between citizen and state, moving the UK towards becoming a world-leading digital-by-default government. Nick Tune explores what GDS has achieved with assessments, sharing agile practices and experiences, and open source software, and shares what isn’t working so well in government IT.

  • The Top 5 Problems with Distributed Teams and How to Solve Them

    In this article, Hugo Messer shares the top 5 challenges distributed teams face along with practical solutions. They are based on his 6 books, many workshops and a decade of hands on experience. The top 5 challenges: 1. We're thinking 'us versus them'; 2. Keeping the team in the dark; 3. Culture is a mystery; 4. We stop communicating; 5. The black box.

  • Communities of Practice: The Missing Piece of Your Agile Organisation

    Communities of practice bring together people who share areas of interest or concerns. They have specific applications in agile organisations: scaling agile development and allowing individuals to connect with others who share similar concerns. Communities of practice bring people together to regain the benefits of regular contact while keeping the value of multidisciplinary agile teams.

  • Q&A and Book Review on Liftoff, Second Edition

    The book Liftoff, Second Edition by Diana Larsen and Ainsley Nies, provides practices and insights for chartering teams by understanding their needs, building trust, and defining how they will interact in the team and align with other parts of the organization. It's a book for Agile coaches, Scrum masters or agile product and project managers to help teams to understand the why behind the work.

  • Introduction to SQL Server Containers

    Containers are just around the corner for the Windows community, and this article takes a closer look at using SQL Server containers. The author discusses the value, use cases, and means for taking advantage of SQL Server containers today.

  • Adaptable or Predictable? Strive for Both – Be Predictably Adaptable!

    Our efforts to improve software development face the question of what to focus on. Should we govern for predictability without concern of value, maximizing cost-efficiency without concern for end-to-end responsiveness? Or maybe do the opposite and govern for value over predictability, focus on responsiveness over cost efficiency? What we really need is to be predictably adaptable.

BT