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  • Making Retrospective Changes Stick

    Agile teams may find it easy to talk about change during their retrospectives, but not so easy to make that change actually happen. Esther Derby, well-known thought-leader on the human aspects of software development, recounts an experience from her personal improvement efforts to illustrate this and offer a few suggestions on how to succeed with making change actually happen.

  • Article: "Who Do You Trust?" by Linda Rising

    During Agile 2008, Dr. Linda Rising held a presentation centered on experiments conducted many years ago, presenting how deep, powerfully affecting, and difficult to avoid are human “prejudices” and “stereotypes” as seen from the perspective of psychology and cognitive science. The article, written by Tsutomu Yasui, is a summary of that presentation.

  • How to Handle Unfinished Stories?

    It is not uncommon for a scrum team to get to the end of the sprint and find that they have a story that has been worked on, but is not yet done. Perhaps the story appears to be about 80% done. What should become of such stories and how should the progress made on them be tracked? These are questions that every agile team will face. In a recent blog post, David Starr shares his approach.

  • Presentation: When Working Software Is Not Enough: A Story of Project Failure

    In this presentation filmed during Agile 2008, Mitch Lacey talks about a real life project that was on the verge of being successful, but was deemed as unsuccessful by the customer. Considering that "the true measure of project progress is working software", Mitch and his team delivered the software, but the client was not satisfied.

  • When is Ok to Break the Rules

    In “Just Ship Baby” Kent Beck, author of the JUnit Framework, reminds us that the point of all the Agile processes and practices is to produce shipping software. If they’re getting in the way of shipping software – then perhaps you need to break the rules.

  • Announcement: Agile Journal Making Big Changes

    Going into it's third year of operations, the Agile Journal is making some note-worthy changes to how it brings "need-to-know information and resources" to the agile community. Among these changes are a new Editor in Chief, Amr Elssamadisy, as well a fresh new content format and publishing approach.

  • Is a "Sprint" Detrimental to an Agile Transition?

    Joe Kreb's says that the term "sprint" in Scrum is detrimental to successful Agile transitions. "On the one side, a sprint may convey the wrong message in an organization among executives and the team alike. It requires, however, little explanation because everyone knows a sprint is short. It could simply mean, we are "fast", but it could also mean "over-time" or "aggressive schedules". "

  • Lego Is Not Just For Kids Anymore

    Lego blocks have been used for playing and building interesting structures. Michael Hunger and Takeshi Kakeda show how Lego blocks can be used as effective information radiators.

  • Can Authors Use Agile Methods?

    Can Agile methods be used to write a book? For a growing number of authors (Lisa Crispin, Janet Gregory, Alistair Cockburn, James Shore, Shane Warden and Jurgen Appelo) the answer is resounding yes.

  • Agilists Certifying Agilists, "We Vouch For..."

    A relatively longstanding topic of debate within the agile community has been that of "agile certification", namely the question of how, if at all, it could be done reliably and effectively. The "We Vouch For..." initiative represents a unique approach to answering this question.

  • 'State of Agile' Survey Shows Wider Agile Adoption

    The results of Version One's 3rd annual 'State of Agile' survey are in. According to the survey, agile practices are being used more widely and with impressive results. More than half of the respondents indicated that 90 - 100% of their organization's agile projects have been successful, and 93% indicated that agile practices had enhanced their ability to respond to changing priorities.

  • Presentation: Agile in Practice: What Is Actually Going On Out There?

    In this presentation filmed during Agile 2008, Scott Ambler talks about actual data resulting from surveys made during 2006-2008, showing how Agile is perceived and implemented within organizations. Some of the topics surveyed are: the adoption rate of Agile, the effectiveness of Agile approaches, the effectiveness of various techniques.

  • Questioning Servant Leadership

    Is the role of an agile manager only that of servant leader? Should they ever use traditional command and control tools? Should the agile manager ever wield authority and make demands of the team? Should they ever make changes in the membership?

  • Martin Fowler on Avoiding Common Scrum Pitfalls

    Jacky Li of InfoQ China spoke with Martin Fowler during ThoughtWorks' AgileChina conference. In this print interview, Martin Fowler talked about Scrum certification and the future of Agile.

  • Interview: Joshua Kerievsky about Industrial XP

    In this interview taken by Sadek Drobi of InfoQ, Joshua Kerievsky, founder of Industrial Logic, talks about Industrial Extreme Programming which extends XP by including practices dealing with management, customers and developers.

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