InfoQ Homepage Agile Content on InfoQ
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Charming the Army: the Power of Delivery
Here is a story about Agile's use in a governmental organisation: at the 2006 APLN Leadership Summit Mark Salamango and John Cunningham looked at the problems and opportunities of introducing Agile in Army environments. True Agile practices cannot be 'commanded' or 'directed’ but frequent delivery offers Agile leaders a "soft" kind of power that is, in fact, very effective.
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Book Excerpt and Review: Release It!
Release It!: Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software by Michael Nygard discusses what it takes to make production-ready software, and explains how this differs from feature-complete software. InfoQ spoke with Michael Nygard and asked him several questions related to the book and some of the issues it raises.
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I'm Not Sure What You Heard is What I Thought I Said
Are family celebrations a challenge? You get together to catch up and swap stories, and invariably something gets "taken the wrong way." It's not restricted to families is it? So it's not surprising that the Satir Communication Model jumped the fence from family therapy to team building! J.B. Rainsberger uses an amusing Christmas-at-Walmart anecdote to illustrate its use.
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The Power of Checklists
In a recent New Yorker article, Atul Gawande describes how Dr. Peter Pronovost is dramatically decreasing infection rates in hospital intensive care units with "stupid little checklists". If simple checklists can save lives, can they improve your agile development team?
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InfoQ Interview: Hugh Ivory on DSDM's Public "Atern" Release
DSDM has been called "the grandmother" of the agile methodologies, first released in 1995. Until recently it was only available to members but this year, for the first time, the DSDM Consortium made the "Atern" release available to the public. Director Hugh Ivory provided an overview at Agile2007, including a look at both old and new customer-facing roles in DSDM.
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Agile2008 Call for Submissions
The call has gone out to anyone interested in presenting at the Agile2008 conference in Toronto. Grigori Melnik of the Agile Alliance explained in a video the new collaborative submission process, which rewards early birds with feedback and a chance to improve their submissions right up to the deadline.
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Opinion: Refactoring is a Necessary Waste
Refactoring is one of the key technical practices in the Agile developer's toolkit. Refactoring also has no measurable customer value by its very definition - it involves changing the structure (design) while maintaining the behavior. In the Lean world - anything that does not have customer value is waste, and a customer only perceives behavior/functionality and not structure.
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'MSF for Agile' with MS VSTS - Worth a Look?
At Qcon London, Kevin Jones spoke from his experiences about Building Better Apps using MSF for Agile with Visual Studio Team System (VSTS). Using examples from Agile teams, he walked through the layers and components of Microsoft's tools, emphasising their flexibility. For Agile teams considering / already committed to Microsoft, this video provides an experienced viewpoint & may be worth a look.
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Can architecture create a gap between developers and software they build?
Many software project management and architecture approaches tend to parcel out work on a project in a way to create hierarchical layers. This helps simplify both developers’ work and management. However, the underlying information shielding among layers can potentially create a gap between developers and the software they are building, if their tasks are totally taken out of functional context.
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Continuous Integration and Code Inspection with Hudson and FindBugs
A recent article published in IBM developerWorks talks about automating Continuous Integration and Code Inspection tasks in a build process using open source tools. It explains how to install and configure Hudson server with Subversion, Ant, and software inspection tools like FindBugs and PMD to create a build process with continuous feedback on test results and defects.
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Static Code Analysis can Highlight Deeper Flaws
Static code analysis (SCA) tools like those offered by FindBugs, PMD, CheckStyle, IntelliJ IDEA can help a development team track down problems and keep quality high. But when an SCA tool flags a problem, how should a team react? Vikas Hazrati's Static Code Analysis is just the Tip of the Iceberg suggested: look deeper.
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Agile Contracts Require Trust
Contracts are the seam that tie together different organizations. Traditional contracts are based on mistrust and a CYA philosophy. Fixed price contracts don't take into consider the uncertainty of software development. Time-for-money projects are not based on value delivered - a team can work for a long time and not have much to show for. The Agile community is looking for something better.
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Teleconferencing: How To Keep 'Em Engaged
While Agile processes recommend to colocate team members for synergy, it's not always possible. More and more projects are utilizing talent from locations all over the world to solve various problems. In these cases leaders and facilitators can contribute significantly to teamwork by mastering the ability to run effective remote meetings.
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Do Dedicated Team Rooms Make for More Productive Teams?
Following a recent article on Science Daily, and a flurry of activity on the Lean Agile Scrum mailing list, InfoQ summarizes what factors make for an optimal team room, and in some cases influence whether a team room is effective at all.
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Multiple Projects, One Agile Team
It's not uncommon for an organization to have one group of developers who need to complete multiple projects. In those situations, how should the group be structured, and how should their work be planned and allocated?