InfoQ Homepage Agile Content on InfoQ
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Measure Agile Productivity in $
Earlier Scott Ambler posted an article of how to measure productivity on agile teams by utilizing acceleration. Recently he followed up with another post where he answers some frequently asked questions related to agile productivity and acceleration. Specifically one question answers how to measure the amount of $ saved by an accelerating team.
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"Classic" versus "Mockist" TDD, Distinction Real?
Hot in the TDD Yahoo group is a discussion concerning the perceived continuum between the "Classic" and "Mockist" TDD. Steve Freeman, Nat Pryce, Michael Feathers, Dale Emery, and many more discuss terminology and describe their approaches. The discussion also debates whether there even really exists such a continuum, and if so, what distinguishes the approaches that represent it's extremes?
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Example Driven Acceptance Testing
Unit and Integration testing often get more importance in Agile teams as compared to acceptance testing. Gojko Adzic and Lisa Crispin suggest approaches to efficiently include acceptance tests as a part of development.
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Eclipse PHP Development Toolset 2.0 released
The Eclipse Foundation has announced the immediate availability of PDT 2.0, a major upgrade to the popular Eclipse PHP Development Tools project. PDT is an open source development tool that provides all the basic code editing capabilities developers need to get started developing PHP applications.
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Venkat Subramaniam on Facts and Fallacies of Everyday Software Development
Software development is challenging and lot of fun, but there are several factors that interrupt teams from succeeding in IT projects. These are usually not tools or technologies but it is the people that affect the success of software projects. In a keynote presentation at the recent CodeMash 2009 conference, Venkat Subramaniam talked about facts and fallacies of everyday software development.
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Pair Programming vs. Code Review
Pair programming and code review are each practices that improve the quality of software, as well as promote knowledge sharing. When the agile vs. lean, XP vs. Scrum, and vi vs. Emacs debates get slow, developers have been known to debate the merits of pair programming vs. code review. Theodore Nguyen-Cao described code reviewers as chickens, and paired programmers as pigs.
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Presentation: Kent Beck: Trends in Agile Development
In this presentation, Kent Beck, the father of eXtreme Programming, shows the synergies between business and Agile development. The reason Agile is becoming more popular every day is because it responds to the business needs as they evolve.
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Presentation: Testing is Overrated
In this talk from RubyFringe, Luke Francl asks: is developer-driven testing really the best way to find software defects? Or is the emphasis on testing and test coverage barking up the wrong tree?
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First Kanban Conference
First annual Lean Kanban Process and Practices will be held in Miami, Florida, May 6-8th and featuring keynotes from Dean Leffingwell, Alan Shalloway and David Anderson. The other speakers include most of the players in Kanban movement (Corey Ladas, Karl Scotland, Eric Landes et al.).
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Agile For Embedded Systems
Some might say that agile development and embedded software (ie. "software supporting a hardware device") do not mix well. Mark Levison has taken some time to assemble and writeup a resource reference of people, experiences, and advice that help to show otherwise.
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Over-Commitment Versus Over-Delivery
A major goal of sprint planning is to make a commitment to what is intended to be delivered by the end of the sprint. However, many teams either over-commit or over-deliver. Both situations are considered as smells and lead to lack of predictability along with other related pitfalls. The team is required to walk a fine line between the two.
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Burn Stories Not Tasks
Developers commonly break user stories into tasks to facilitate distributing the implementation work across the team, and allow tracking of progress at a finer level of granularity. Unfortunately, a story can explode into a list of non-trivial tasks so large that the story is not deliverable by the end of the iteration. Ron Jeffries suggests: "Do stories as a unit, not broken into tasks."
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Panel: BayAPLN Agile Expert Panel
During QCon San Francisco 2008, InfoQ and BayAPLN, a local group of Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN), organized a panel comprised of Agile experts which answered questions from the audience. The panelists were: David Chilcott, Moderator, Polyanna Pixton, David Hussman, Sue Mckinney, Pat Reed.
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QCon London 2 Months Away; Special Discounts by Jan 15th
InfoQ's 3rd QCon London (March 11-13) is a couple of months away and will again feature 15 tracks, 100 speakers, and excellent learning and networking opportunities. The last chance to save £295 expires next week January 15th!
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Handling Your Team's "Rotten Apple"
Recently there has been an active discussion in the Scrum Development Yahoo Group about handling an "under-performing" team member. In the 130+ response thread, "Rotten apple in Scrum team", talk ranged from advice for the primary question, to talk of team morale and who manages it, to the classic debate of measuring individuals, to distinguishing whether a team is really a "team", and more.